President Donald Trump is bending Congress to his will, hobbling minority Democrats with an everything-at-once strategy and rallying fractious Republicans behind his politically risky tax cut plan and billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crusade. 

That’s the backdrop for Trump’s scheduled address to Congress on Tuesday, five weeks into his second term and just over a week before a March 14 U.S. funding deadline that would ordinarily serve as a point of political leverage for the opposition party.

But Democrats are squeamish about a disruptive government shutdown and struggling to stymie Trump’s agenda, turning to the courts to blunt the effects of the president’s actions.

It’s all a remarkable contrast to Trump’s first term, when congressional Democrats were the face of an energetic resistance. Trump then failed to get Congress to rein in the burgeoning budget and expended political capital to wrangle his own party behind a tax cut bill. He and fellow Republicans also suffered the political fallout from two government shutdowns.

Now, however, an emboldened and experienced Trump benefits from a more compliant Congress, which has shrugged off legally dubious moves like unilaterally slashing the federal workforce and ending government contracts. His tax plan, which requires only a simple majority in both chambers, could be enacted as soon as May.

Democrats are training their attacks on that plan, which uses deep cuts in safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food aid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. But if Trump’s momentum keeps apace, at least through the spring, Democratic pushback will likely amount to little more than a 2026 election attack. 

Shutdown deadline

Democrats have, for weeks, tried to leverage talks to avert a government shutdown to tie Musk’s hands. But while Republicans need their votes to keep the government open, Democrats’ political pragmatism weakens their hand. 

“I’m not for shutting the government down,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic spending negotiator in the House. 

Others in the party — even those with large numbers of federal workers in their states — expressed similar defeatist sentiments. 

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said he’d like the spending bill to include language to prevent large government layoffs. “Whether that is practical I don’t know,” he said. 

And Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen questioned whether Trump, who has ignored Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, would even abide by any new legislative constraints to his power. 

The emerging GOP plan ahead of March 14 in the House is a stopgap bill lasting to Sept. 30, essentially extending current funding to the end of the fiscal year. 

They’ll need to court Democrats in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. But the final compromise will likely amount to a status quo for DOGE — no new constraints or freedoms. 

Tax cuts

On taxes, Congress is moving with much more rapidity to enact a plan than in 2017, giving businesses and individuals more lead time to adapt to looming changes. 

Trump’s campaign proposals to expand breaks to end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, once considered wishful thinking, are even gaining momentum despite their costs.

Last week’s dramatic, down-to-the-wire vote on the $4.5 trillion House tax cut outline was a milestone in the GOP’s evolution toward unity, with Trump quelling a rebellion from fiscal conservatives through a few last-minute phone conversations. 

The budget plan would add nearly $3 trillion in deficits over 10 years and raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. Nonetheless spending hardliners voted for the compromise.

“It’s a new day,” said conservative Ralph Norman of South Carolina.

In the Senate, Republicans are eyeing a budget gimmick counting the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as zero dollars because it’s current policy. That gives them ample room for even more breaks for businesses and individuals.   

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who discussed the idea last week with Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, would need to sell fiscal hawks on it. But several, like Texas Representative Chip Roy, have signaled they’d go along with it, in exchange for another trillion dollars in spending cuts. 

That could lift the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction and end the estate tax, while stopping taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits. Trump may even be able to convince Congress to go along with $5,000 stimulus checks he has floated.

North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said Trump is the most powerful president he has seen on budget matters.

“This is his second time around. He’s got the experience,” Hoeven said, pointing to Trump’s own lobbying push to get the House budget plan passed. 

But it also plays into Democrats’ 2026 strategy, banking that cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and other programs would be widely unpopular with voters, giving them an opportunity to take over congressional control. One Democratic political action committee, House Majority Forward PAC, is running ads in swing districts starting Monday on cuts to Medicaid, which insures nearly one-quarter of Americans. 

 “Today’s ad is just the beginning, and we will make sure every American knows exactly who is responsible,” Mike Smith, the PAC’s president, said in a statement.

The Treasury Department announced it would no longer enforce the Corporate Transparency Act, nor enforce any penalties or fines associated with beneficial ownership reporting under the existing regulatory deadlines.

The Treasury also said Sunday it would not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after forthcoming rule changes take effect either. The Treasury plans to issue a proposed rulemaking that would narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only. The Treasury said it’s taking this step “in the interest of supporting hard-working American taxpayers and small businesses and ensuring that the rule is appropriately tailored to advance the public interest.”

“This is a victory for common sense,” said Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement Sunday.  “Today’s action is part of President Trump’s bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy.”

The CTA was signed into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021 and requires individuals with an ownership interest in a limited liability company to disclose personal data to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a way to deter illicit activity such as money laundering, tax fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism financing by anonymous shell companies. Failure to comply could result in up to two years of jail time and a $10,000 fine per violation. 

The law has been the subject of a series of lawsuits that have gone back and forth in recent months, leaving businesses unsure of whether they needed to comply. The law was support to take effect for new businesses on Jan. 1, 2024 and for existing businesses on Jan. 1, 2025, but that deadline has been pushed back as a result of the court appeals. Last month, a federal appeals court in Texas lifted an injunction in one case after the Supreme Court granted a stay in an injunction in a different Texas case in January. After last month’s decision, FinCEN extended the reporting deadline by 30 days until March 21, 2025 for most companies and announced its intention to revise the reporting rule. 

Last week, FinCEN confirmed that it would “not issue any fines or penalties or take any other enforcement actions against any companies based on any failure to file or update beneficial ownership information (BOI) reports pursuant to the [CTA] by the current deadlines,” essentially pausing CTA compliance for all covered entities indefinitely.

“FinCEN finally did the right thing and hit the reset button on CTA compliance,” said Joseph Lynyak, a banking partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, in a statement Friday. “Besides the current overhang of litigation challenging the CTA regulations, FinCEN’s responses to injunctions issued by courts arising from that litigation compounded confusion regarding compliance. For example, indicating that reporting entities had approximately 30 days to complete initial filings was both naive and impractical. Further, although FinCEN has repeatedly indicated that completing beneficial ownership reports was a simple matter, legal practitioners have filed numerous requests for interpretative guidance that generally has been ignored.”

The move by the Treasury Department to no longer enforce the Corporate Transparency Act was criticized by corporate transparency advocates.

“With one tweet, the Administration has contradicted 15 years of bipartisan work by Congress to end the scourge of anonymous shell companies — which are a favorite tool of our nation’s global adversaries and criminals including fentanyl traffickers, money launderers, and tax cheats,” said Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition, in a statement Monday. “Hollowing out the Corporate Transparency Act is an unconstitutional subversion of Congress’ intent that will not survive judicial scrutiny.”

“This decision threatens to make the United States a magnet for foreign criminals, from drug cartels to fraudsters to terrorist organizations,” said Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for Transparency International U.S., the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest and largest anticorruption organization, in a statement. “Inexplicably, it tells foreign criminals–fentanyl traffickers, illegal arms dealers, corrupt foreign officials—that they can evade the most powerful anti-money laundering law passed since the PATRIOT Act by choosing to set up their criminal operations inside the United States.”

He pointed out that the U.S.’s national security, intelligence, and law enforcement communities strongly supported the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act because it stopped criminals from hiding behind anonymous shell companies, regardless of where those companies happened to be formed

“Now, criminals can evade this national security law by simply starting and running those front companies inside the United States,” Gretak added. “A notorious Chinese drug trafficking organization, for example, used front companies formed in Massachusetts to distribute deadly fentanyl analogues and 250 other drugs to some 37 U.S. states. Anonymous companies in the U.S. have also been used by Iran to evade sanctions and by terrorist-affiliated groups to gain access to U.S. defense contracts.”

He anticipates that criminals will exploit the loophole by relocating to the U.S.

“Narrowing the scope of the Corporate Transparency Act to exclude U.S.-based companies creates a clear loophole for criminals to exploit, and risks making the U.S. a haven for illicit financial activity,” Greytak added. “It also ensures that the United States will be found noncompliant with baseline, globally accepted anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism standards. We emphatically urge the U.S. Treasury Department to reverse this decision with expediency.” 

Small businesses were seen as being subjected to unnecessary and onerous reporting requirements by the CTA, but they might be harmed by nonenforcement, according to one small business advocacy group.

“Small businesses suffer when they are forced to compete with fraudulent and criminal enterprises that exploit anonymous shell corporations to evade accountability,” said Richard Trent, Executive Director of the small business network Main Street Alliance, in a statement. “The Trump Administration’s reckless efforts to undermine the Corporate Transparency Act’s beneficial ownership reporting requirements threaten to roll back critical protections. Weakening these rules would allow bad actors to continue exploiting loopholes, harming honest small business owners and distorting the marketplace in favor of corruption. That’s why MSA stands firmly in defense of transparency and fairness—because Main Street businesses deserve better.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, also criticized the move. “The takeaway here is that Trump is a rich financial criminal, and he’s running his administration for the benefit of other rich financial criminals,” Wyden said in a statement Monday. “In particular, this is another gift to shadowy Russian oligarchs and money launderers, who have a lot of reasons to celebrate these days thanks to Donald Trump.”

Wolters Kluwer announced new enhancements to its ftwilliam.com employee benefits solution that now enables users to directly file a Form 5330 with the IRS directly from the platform. 

Users can now take advantage of streamlined form populating that allows each Form 5330 (used to report and pay the excise tax related to employee benefits plans) to be automatically filled with basic plan or company information already contained within ftwilliam.com. The software also sports a new Form 5330 template that lets customers populate multiple forms at once, minimizing redundant data entry and manual labor. The software connects directly with the IRS’s Modernized e-File system and allows users to track their submitted filings through ftwilliam.com. 

“With this innovation, Wolters Kluwer continues to demonstrate its unparalleled understanding of the evolving needs of retirement plan service providers. Customers can rely on ftwilliam.com to help them meet their compliance obligations with confidence and efficiency,” said Rocco Impreveduto, vice president of regulatory and compliance solutions at WK Legal and Regulatory U.S. 

Wolters Kluwer bought ftwilliam.com in 2010, becoming part of the company’s pension and benefits group. Back then, it was conceived of primarily as a way to securely comply with 5500 filing requirements. 

The news comes very shortly after Wolters Kluwer announced the planned retirement of its longtime CEO, Nancy McKinstry, who has led the company since 2003. Her official retirement date is February 2026, at which point it is intended that Stacey Caywood, current CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health, will take over as chief executive. The Supervisory Board plans to nominate Caywood as a member of the executive board during its May 15, 2025, shareholder meeting. After that, the executive board of Wolters Kluwer N.V. will consist of McKinstry, CFO Kevin Entricken and Caywood. The plan is that Caywood will then be appointed CEO of Wolters Kluwer once McKinstry officially retires.