House Speaker Paul Ryan with Melania and Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol after the election. 
 
 The Washington, D.C. beat in 2017 is going to revolve around covering a Republican Party that holds the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2006. 
 
 In those 10 years, Republicans have amassed a wish list of things they’d like to get done. Now’s their chance to tackle that list, and the story of 2017 in Washington will be how much progress they make toward those goals, and how effective Democrats will be in blocking them. 
 
 The Senate will be the site of most contention over the GOP’s agenda, because Democrats have the procedural tools (like the filibuster) and numbers required to fight back. Republicans will hold 52 seats to Democrats’ 46, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence as the tie-breaker. 
 
 In the House of Representatives, the GOP will retain a comfortable majority, holding 241 seats to Democrats’ 194. That chamber has more scheduled days of legislative work than any year since 2010 — a reflection of how productive a Congress leaders are imagining next year. 
 
 Democrats have said they’ll work with President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans where they can, but expect more partisan fireworks than friendly cooperation next year. 
 
 Also, don’t expect Trump and Republicans in Congress — many of whom kept him at arm’s length or openly criticized him during the campaign — to always agree, either. 
 
 Here are five big GOP agenda items I’ll be watching closely: 
 
 1. Obamacare 
 
 It’s the big one, the top of the GOP wish list since 2010, the one thing that Republicans believe they must do in the 115th Congress: dismantling the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 Congressional Republicans have been champing at the bit to get rid of President Obama’s signature achievement since its passage, voting numerous times on symbolic repeal measures in the House of Representatives. 
 
 Angry protest votes were easy enough. Now, with control of the necessary levers of power, comes the hard part for the GOP: figuring out a way to not just repeal Obamacare, but replace it with something else. 
 
 The repeal part is relatively simple. GOP leaders forecast a vote to repeal Obamacare as soon as February, which would easily clear the House. In the Senate, Republican leaders will likely use budget reconciliation — the same tactic Democrats used to pass the law in the first place — to ensure a repeal only needs a simple majority of the Senate, not a 60-vote majority. 
 
 The replacement will be much harder, in policy and logistics. Earlier this year, Speaker Paul Ryan outlined a plan aiming to make health coverage more affordable through expanding health savings accounts and allowing the purchase of coverage across state lines, among other things. 
 
 There is disagreement in the party about whether a repeal should be pursued before a replacement is hammered out. But key leaders are coalescing around a plan that would repeal Obamacare soon and then allow two to four years to figure out a replacement, setting up a potential deadline down the road. (D.C.’s already calling it the “health care cliff.”) 
 
 Minnesota’s Republican representatives all want to see the law gone. Incoming Rep. Jason Lewis made opposition to Obamacare a key plank of his winning campaign in the 2nd District. Rep. Tom Emmer said he expects Obamacare will be toast by February, but said the party needs to proceed with caution in its replacement plans. 
 
 How Republicans address Obamacare will be the story not just of 2017, but probably 2018 and 2019, too. 
 
 2. Tax reform 
 
 Republicans and Democrats have been talking about working on comprehensive tax reform for years. In 2017, those proposals will take on a decidedly more conservative tack. 
 
 Broadly, GOP leaders want to lower individual and corporate income tax rates, with a strong focus on the latter: the Ways and Means Committee, which sets taxation policy, has already drawn up a proposal to reduce corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent. 
 
 On other tax issues, Republicans are going to reach for long-held goals. They likely will take aim at the estate tax, which Trump, Ryan, and other GOP leaders want to get rid of. Most Democrats are loath to drop the tax, which would cost about $200 billion over a decade. In a vote in the House last year, only seven Democrats joined Republicans to repeal it. 
 
 It’s possible Democrats may not be able to put up much resistance to any of these measures. The budget reconciliation tactic is typically meant to reconcile tax legislation with budget legislation, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he expects that is how tax reform bills will move in the next Congress. 
 
 The member to watch on tax issues will be GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen: the only Minnesotan to serve on Ways and Means, Paulsen has floated an array of tax and health care policy tweaks over the years. 
 
 3. Entitlement reform 
 
 Any movement from the GOP on Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security could bring some of the messiest politics of 2017. 
 
 It is no secret that Republicans would like to “restructure” Medicare, the government’s program to cover seniors’ health care, and Medicaid, which covers low-income people, in order to reduce the programs’ costs. Medicare and Medicaid cost over $1 trillion in 2016 and cover more than 120 million people. 
 
 The GOP has long wanted to give states money for Medicaid in the form of block grants; they’ve also pushed varying degrees of privatization for Medicare. Trump’s nomination of Georgia GOP Rep. Tom Price, a very conservative voice on health care, as Secretary of Health and Human Services has only added to speculation. 
 
 In November, Price suggested that a long-desired Medicare reform — a voucher program to let patients use government money to participate in a private plan instead of Medicare — could be included as a rider on a budget bill. 
 
 On Social Security, the Republican chair of the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee floated a bill that would restructure the program. It includes a raise of the retirement age, an idea favored by many conservatives. 
 
 Perhaps more than any others, entitlement issues are political third rails in Congress. They will not be as far up on the agenda as Obamacare, but Paul Ryan and others have been itching to take a crack at them for years. They now have the chance. 
 
 But this is a fight Democrats relish, and talking points they’re deeply comfortable with. Setting the battle lines for 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already declared a GOP “war on seniors.” 
 
 In entitlement debates, watch Democratic Reps. Rick Nolan and Keith Ellison, two of the most vocal opponents to GOP policy in either chamber. 
 
 4. Wall Street reform rollback 
 
 Trump’s populist appeal was bolstered by his calls to take on Wall Street. But Republicans in Congress see an opportunity to pass long-awaited measure to deregulate the financial sector, particularly a rollback of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform package. 
 
 A repeal of the entire law, which is 2,300 pages and incredibly complex, probably won’t happen this Congress. 
 
 But Republicans could chip away at pillars of Dodd-Frank, like the so-called “Volcker rule,” which prevents big banks from making certain kinds of risky investments. They also will likely target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, defanging it by replacing its director with a board and by giving Congress control over its budget. 
 
 Emmer, a vocal critic of Dodd-Frank, is on the House Financial Services panel, and could play a role in this debate. Ellison, a staunch defender of the CFPB and Wall Street regulation, is also on that committee, and could figure prominently into the debate as well, if he retains his congressional seat. 
 
 5. Energy and environmental deregulation 
 
 Among most congressional Republicans, Obama’s actions to tackle climate change were anathema. With a man friendly to the fossil fuels industry and skeptical of climate science moving into the White House, Republicans are now eyeing a few areas where they might be able to roll back Obama’s environmental policies in Congress. 
 
 Since Trump’s election, the Obama administration has been working frantically to complete 11th hour regulations on climate and environmental protection. Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress has 60 days to disapprove a regulation from the executive branch — so the 115th Congress could get to work undoing those rules, if it acts swiftly. 
 
 That process would take some work, but it’s feasible. Potential targets of a GOP effort include a rule from the Department of the Interior to reduce methane emissions on public lands, or even the recent rule to block Twin Metals from its leases to copper and nickel deposits near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. 
 
 Environmentalists worry that Congress could act to make big amendments to existing law like the Clean Air Act, such as excluding carbon dioxide as a regulated pollutant. 
 
 Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, the ranking member on the Appropriations subcommittee that deals with interior issues, is one to watch on these issues. ||||| A Republican-controlled Congress opens Tuesday with the most sweeping conservative agenda in decades, providing Donald Trump ample room to gut the Affordable Care Act, slash corporate tax rates and undo Obama-era environmental regulations. 
 
 The House is almost certain to reelect Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) as its first order of business, dispensing with the messy political infighting that has hobbled Republicans in the past. 
 
 And the Senate will swiftly begin vetting the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks, ready to confirm some when Trump is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20. 
 
 Yet Republicans remain at odds on some high-profile issues — such as how aggressively to investigate Russian hacking in the 2016 election — and how to fulfill other big-ticket promises, such as replacing Obamacare. 
 
 Despite firm Republican control of both the White House and Congress, the internal disputes have left them without a clear plan yet for Trump’s first 100 days, or an endgame for the two years of the 115th Congress. 
 
 Trump’s often shifting views on major issues will test relations with GOP’s leaders on Capitol Hill, and his willingness to skirt ideological rigidity gives incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco an opening to influence and shape the president’s evolving agenda. 
 
 President Obama will visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with Democrats bracing for their new role, not just as the minority party, but as the main roadblock preventing Trump from dismantling the healthcare law and other parts of the Obama agenda. 
 
 Republicans will also assemble behind closed doors. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was a popular conservative congressman before he was elected governor of Indiana, is likely to serve as a crucial link between the Trump administration and its allies in Congress. 
 
 Given Trump’s inexperience in government, Pence is expected to play an enhanced role, perhaps like the one former Vice President Richard Cheney held under President George W. Bush. 
 
 At a minimum, Pence could provide a vital conduit between the untested new president and his more ideological party members in Congress, especially as Ryan’s own relationship with Trump has been strained. 
 
 Ryan flip-flopped over Trump — first withholding his endorsement, then ultimately campaigning for him — but the speaker insists he and the president-elect have let bygones pass as they talk almost daily on their plans for fulfilling Republican promises to voters. 
 
 “Very soon after the race, Donald and I said: ‘Look, this is fantastic. We have so much to do. Let's forget about, you know, any differences in the past and let's get working on this agenda,’” Ryan said recently on Fox News. “And that's exactly what we've been doing from -- that day on.” 
 
 Once Trump takes office, Republicans will face enormous pressure to score some legislative wins after six years of trying to block most of Obama’s initiatives. 
 
 Lawmakers will vote this week on low-hanging fruit -- a popular GOP measure to rein in the executive branch by requiring congressional approval for new federal regulations with an economic impact of more than $100 million. 
 
 The measure, which passed the Republican House three times since 2011, is a GOP priority. Its supporters say it would have prevented nearly all the climate and employment rule changes of the Obama era. 
 
 Republicans are also expected to punish Democrats for last year’s gun control sit-in, led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), by imposing new rules that would slap up to $2,500 fines on lawmakers who film such floor protests from smartphones or other devices. 
 
 Whether that would pass judicial review is less clear. Opponents say the proposed ban is clearly unconstitutional. 
 
 But the GOP’s top promise — to end Obamacare — remains a tough haul. 
 
 Votes are expected in coming days on legislation to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act. But these first steps will be largely symbolic while lawmakers debate the details of dismantling the healthcare law. 
 
 With 20 million Americans now benefiting from Obamacare, the GOP’s gutting of it comes with an asterisk. 
 
 Republicans are also likely to postpone fully dismantling the healthcare law until they can sort out their own ideas for a yet-to-be-determined alternative. 
 
 That could push a full Obamacare repeal and replace until 2018 or 2019, after the midterm elections. 
 
 “Repeal and delay, it doesn’t even have alliteration,” Pelosi scoffed on a conference call Monday with reporters. “It’s an admission that it’s a lot for them to lose politically.” 
 
 Similarly, Republicans are still working out the details of tax reform beyond the lower rates proposed in the House GOP’s “Better Way” blueprint agenda for the new year. 
 
 Ryan will almost certainly reemerge as speaker in Tuesday’s floor vote. But his leadership remains constrained by the same internal party divisions that hobbled his predecessor, John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), and that have prevented Republicans from making gains on a cohesive agenda. 
 
 Those divisions surfaced late Monday when Republicans split during a closed-door session over a proposal to gut a congressional ethics office at a time when Trump has promised to come to Washington and “drain the swamp.” Approval of the proposal signaled a rocky start to the new session. ||||| WASHINGTON — On Tuesday at noon, with plenty of pomp and pageantry, members of the 115th Congress will be sworn in, with an emboldened GOP intent on unraveling eight years of President Obama’s Democratic agenda and targeting massive legacy programs from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson such as Social Security and Medicare. 
 
 In the election, Republicans kept their tight grip on the House and outmaneuvered the Democrats for a slim majority in the Senate. In less than three weeks, on the West Front of the Capitol, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the presidential oath to Donald Trump, the GOP’s newfound ally. 
 
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 First up for Republicans is repeal and delay of the health care law, expediting the process for scrapping Obama’s major overhaul but holding off on some changes for up to four years. The tax code is in the cross-hairs. Conservatives want to scuttle rules on the environment and undo financial regulations created in the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown, arguing they are too onerous for businesses to thrive. 
 
 The only obstacle to the far-reaching conservative agenda will be Senate Democrats who hold the power to filibuster legislation, but even that has its political limitations. Twenty-three Democrats are up for re-election in 2018, including 10 from states Trump won, and they could break ranks and side with the GOP. 
 
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 Here are a few things to know about Congress: 
 
 By the numbers 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden, in one of his final official acts, will administer the oath to 27 returning senators and seven new ones. Republicans will have a 52-48 advantage in the Senate, which remains predominantly a bastion of white men. 
 
 There will be 21 women, of whom 16 are Democrats and five, Republicans; three African Americans, including California’s new Democratic senator Kamala Harris, and four Hispanics, including Nevada’s new Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto. 
 
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 Across the Capitol, the House is expected to re-elect Representative Paul Ryan as Speaker, with all the campaign-season recriminations involving the Wisconsin Republican and Trump largely erased by GOP wins. Once sworn in, Ryan will then administer the oath to the House members. 
 
 The GOP will hold a hefty 241-194 majority in the House, including 52 freshmen — 27 Republicans, including Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and 25 Democrats. 
 
 Confirming the Cabinet 
 
 The Senate will exercise its advice and consent role and consider nominations of 15 department secretaries and six people tapped by Trump to lead agencies or serve in roles with Cabinet-level status, such as the EPA and UN ambassador. 
 
 Democrats won’t make it easy. 
 
 Several in the party have been highly critical of several of Trump’s choices, from Rick Perry, who forgot during the 2012 presidential campaign that the Energy Department was the one he wanted to eliminate, to Treasury pick Steve Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive whom Democrats have dubbed the ‘‘foreclosure king’’ for his stake in OneWest Bank that profited from the foreclosure crisis. 
 
 Others nominees, such as retired Marine General James Mattis for defense secretary, should easily win confirmation. First, though, Congress must pass a law allowing the former military man to serve in a civilian post. 
 
 There is a limit to what Democrats can do. Rules changes in 2013 allow some nominees, including Cabinet picks, to be confirmed with a simple majority, preventing Democrats from demanding 60 votes to move forward. 
 
 Supreme Court vacancy 
 
 Adding to the drama of the new Congress will be high-profile confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. 
 
 Justice Antonin Scalia died last February and Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, insisting that the next president should fill the high court vacancy that’s now lasted more than 10 months. 
 
 Trump released a list of potential choices during the campaign that included Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who clerked for Justice Samuel Alito. Since the election, the president-elect also has met with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who clerked for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, prompting talk about a possible nomination for the onetime presidential rival. 
 
 Trump has said he wants to nominate a justice who would help overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. Cruz and Lee would fulfill that pledge. 
 
 New face in leadership 
 
 The point man for Senate Democrats is Brooklyn-born Chuck Schumer, who will be a chief antagonist to fellow New Yorker Trump. 
 
 Schumer succeeds Nevada’s Harry Reid, who retired after five terms, and joins Congress’ top leaders — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Speaker Ryan — in what is certain to be tough negotiations next year on spending and policies. 
 
 Russian hacking 
 
 The first public hearing on the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the US election is Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee, with James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, set to testify. Expect individual panels to investigate, but not a special, high-profile select committee. McConnell has rejected that bipartisan call.
– The 115th Congress will be sworn in at noon Tuesday, per WXYZ, which anticipates "an aggressive campaign" by Republicans to take down eight years' worth of President Obama's policies. The station adds that Democrats are ready to fight back by "swaying public opinion" and using their filibuster in the Senate. What else to look for Tuesday: Both the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe predict an easy re-election of Paul Ryan as speaker of the House. Once Ryan retakes the helm, he'll oversee the oath administration to House members. The vetting process will begin in the Senate for some of President-elect Trump's more eyebrow-raising administration picks, including "foreclosure king" Steve Mnuchin, tapped as Treasury chief, and Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO with questionable ties to Russia in line to be secretary of state. One confirmation expected to sail through: retired Gen. James Mattis for defense secretary. The biggest hunk on the legislative chopping block: ObamaCare. But the Times notes any immediate moves against the health care law would be "largely symbolic" as the GOP scrambles to work out the details and come up with their own alternative—which means a full repeal might not happen until after midterm elections. Blocking or pulling back on regulations will be another priority of the Congress, per USA Today, with a bill expected that would give the GOP-controlled Congress approval power over any new federal regulations, as well as a "Midnight Rules Act" that would give Congress sway to nullify in bulk any rules passed during a president's final year in office. Citizens are nervously watching the outcome for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, with MinnPost noting that "any movement from the GOP" in terms of entitlement reform "could bring some of the messiest politics of 2017." Also on deck: a major tax revamp, the dismantling of Obama-placed environmental regulations, and the nomination of a Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, per the Independent. "It's a big job to actually have responsibility and produce results," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday, per the New York Times. "And we intend to do it." Not that the Republicans' hold on Congress guarantees a unified GOP front: The Times notes "internal disputes" have resulted in no "clear plan yet for Trump's first 100 days, or an endgame for the two years of the 115th Congress." Also complicating matters for the GOP: the president-elect's "often shifting views" on big issues and a "willingness to skirt ideological rigidity." (Also on the Congress itinerary for Tuesday: a vote on a proposal to "effectively kill" the Office of Congressional Ethics.)