Congressman Tim Walberg calls 2025 was “an amazing year” in Washington as President Donald Trump began his second term and Republicans advanced some key priorities with only a slim majority.
Looking back on the year that’s almost over, Walberg tells us passage of a major reconciliation package — later called the Working Families Tax Cut Act — was the year’s biggest achievement.
“Individuals and small businesses will see their taxes stay cut and remain permanent, but also with the capability of that tax cut in place, we figured across my district that it would mean on average an $11,700 increase in earning capabilities and take-home pay for families across my district,” Walberg said. “That’s big stuff.”
Walberg also points to securing the border as a major accomplishment, something he said Republicans in Congress were able to do quickly by getting the president the resources he’d need to stop illegal immigration. He says the one drawback of the year was the government shutdown over COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“That now allows small business to join together in an economy of scale like unions and large corporations that are able to offer lower cost, better coverage, health insurance because of the numbers and employees that they’re dealing with.”
Meanwhile, while those Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, Walberg says House Republicans did advance a healthcare plan of their own that would lower premiums in alternative ways and promote association healthcare plans to lower costs for small businesses.
“If you took out the one big blot that was a Democrat-planned activity, and that was called a shutdown, the Schumer shutdown, the rest of the year was amazing what we were able to accomplish.”
Will there be a vote on reinstating the Affordable Care Act subsidies in the new year?
“We’ll see whether the Senate again takes it,” Walberg said. “We took a vote on it in the House. It didn’t pass in the Senate. They took those votes. It didn’t pass. I don’t think it will. I certainly won’t support it, not because I want to be cruel and inhumane to individuals who need their health insurance, but this was only for the COVID time. COVID, as a pandemic, has been over for the past two and a half years.”
Walberg says it was the Democrats who put the sunset in those extra subsidies in the first place.
As chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Walberg says his priorities for 2026 include continued oversight of higher education, addressing antisemitism on college campuses, pushing back on DEI policies, and expanding alternatives to four-year degrees, like trade schools and apprenticeships.
Walberg says a rightsizing of the Department of Education, leading to its eventual abolishment, will also continue in 2026.
