Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Eli PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday, but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28. We hope distance makes the heart grow fonder. Top aides to President JOE BIDEN are gaming out what happens next year in Congress when Republicans will hold a narrow majority in the House. And it’s not all about fending off oversight probes into HUNTER BIDEN’s laptop. Some even see glimmers of political opportunity. No one expects a divided Congress to produce the kind of landmark legislation Democrats have delivered in the two years since Biden took office. But even with some of Biden’s most trusted Republican friends retiring, the White House is confident new ones will emerge. In fact, the soon-to-be freshmen whose wins this month flipped control of the House to the GOP are being viewed as potential allies on some pieces of legislation. “Everyone in a district that Joe Biden carried [in 2020] is going to need bipartisan legislation to run on in 2024,” one senior administration official said. For all the talk from Oversight panel hard-liners like Reps. JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) and JAMES COMER (R-Ky.) about aggressively going after the Biden administration, some comments from these rookie moderates have offered White House aides reason to believe that bipartisan bills may yet emerge during the next two years. Rep.-elect MIKE LAWLER, the Republican who unseated SEAN PATRICK MALONEY , the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair from Westchester County, N.Y., said just after the election that his focus would be on curbing inflation and cost of living issues. Similarly, Rep.-elect GEORGE SANTOS, who flipped a swing district on Long Island, expressed a desire to focus on increasing the country’s energy independence and reducing crime. Lawler and Santos were also among a handful of Republicans on the House floor last week to hear Speaker NANCY PELOSI announce plans to step down from her post as Democratic leader. “Whether it's Ukraine [funding] or immigration or the debt ceiling or crypto, they're gonna have to make it clear that they're interested and that will take sitting on both sides,” said Rep. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.), the co-chairman of the problem solver’s caucus, a group of moderates he expects will grow next year. “We'll see very early on what direction we're moving.” Biden knows the importance of giving lawmakers space to hash out the details of future legislation on their own, his aides say. That said, there is some optimism that lawmakers could come together to address pocketbook issues. Sen. MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah) last year put forth a compromise proposal on the expired child tax credit enhancement, a policy area that could be revisited. But Romney will be up for reelection soon and facing a potential primary from the right. And some of Biden’s most trusted and helpful GOP interlocutors will be gone. One of them, Sen. ROB PORTMAN (R-Ohio), led infrastructure talks in 2021 and stood at Biden’s side during its South Lawn bill signing ceremony. He also attended a White House event in Ohio in September where Biden touted the bipartisan law to boost semiconductor manufacturing and the benefits for his state. Still, while Portman’s early decision not to seek reelection made it easier for him to work with a Democratic White House on policy, other Republicans have said they’re comfortable collaborating too. Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL , who has a years-long relationship with Biden, made clear he didn’t mind if more consensus-oriented GOP senators worked on policy with a Democratic White House. All Senate Republicans were, “to varying degrees, liberated by McConnell having trust that Biden was a willing participant in the talks and that both sides, at the end of the day, were probably willing to bend to get some sort of deal,” a senior Senate aide said. McConnell’s post-election commentary blaming his party’s losses on Republicans creating “too much chaos” signaled that his recent inclination toward deal-making in some areas could extend into 2023. On Tuesday, moderate Rep. DON BACON (R-Neb.) suggested that the time could be right for a long elusive compromise on immigration reform. “If we could agree on some security measures for the southern border, I think we could make some great strides on legal immigration,” Bacon said during an interview on CNN. In the final weeks before Election Day, Biden was criticized for focusing so much of his campaign appearances on his legislative achievements: the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure overhaul and CHIPS bill. In the end, a good chunk of Democrats believe, the administration’s record of accomplishment, including several bipartisan wins, helped vulnerable incumbents hold on. “The big takeaway for me from the numbers and how it shook out was: Americans want common sense and governing and unity, not division and extremism,” Gottheimer said. “There's a real opportunity to govern if they're willing.” MESSAGE US — Are you Rep.-elect MIKE LAWLER, the Republican who unseated DCCC chair SEAN PATRICK MALONEY? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com .
| 
