Sorry for self-quoting here, but I'm more optimistic about 2015 - 2017. I don't think immigration reform will pass while Obama is still President, because people will attribute it to him, not Congress (no one gives the Democrats in Congress credit for *Reagan's* amnesty in the late-1980s).
And as long as the majority of Hispanics remain poor and working class, they will vote for the party of safety nets (aka the Democrats). Only when Hispanics begin to achieve the American Dream and become more middle and upper-middle class, will they be open to voting more Republican.
I vote for Options 2 - 6 FTR.
I take the more optimistic view that while they won't exactly be eager to cooperate with Obama, they'll at least realize that 2016 is coming up and try to put through some small bills that they can point to and say "See? We're not that bad anymore! We can govern!". It will be mildly depressing stalemate and pointless drama, but I doubt the Congressional GOP will wage a scorched earth campaign against el Presidente.
Some less-controversial ideas that Obama might sign onto that I've seen floated are:
- Reform Medicare/Medicaid via reconciliation (but how, exactly?)
- Approve Keystone XL
- Give Obama fast-track authority for TPP and possibly a US-EU trade agreement
- Approve natural gas and crude oil exports (more likely the first)
- Pass a Veteran's employment bill of some kind
- Tax reform, focusing on business taxes and energy companies
- Speed up immigration visas for more highly-educated immigrants and more border security
Some things they might slip in the above bills as rider:
- Expand offshore drilling
- Block federal regulation of fracking
- Increase amount of logging allowed in national forests
- Changes to labor laws weakening unions
- weaken Dodd - Frank
Some obscure "we're actually doing our jobs, believe it or not" items:
- Approve water projects in Oregon and Cali
- Allowing business owners to record phone calls/meetings with regulators (the paranoia is real here, people)
- Modifying some federal agencies to make things more streamlined and address concerns about the VA and pipeline permit application process and the ACA rollout
- Eliminating the requirements for government agencies to give reports to Congress about obsolete things no one cares about (there's like 4,000+ different reports given per year)
- Consolidate patent and intellectual property rules and processes
- Block the Marketplace Fairness Act (aka the internet sales tax bill)
- Export - Import Bank as a sacrificial lamb to please TEA Partiers (in exchange for tax reform for the business community)
- Common Core gets shot in the face
- strip people who join terrorist organization of their passports and citizenship
- civil litigation reform
- return power to Senate committees (more of a Reid vs. McConnell leadership-style thing)
As for Obamacare, they'll probably try to implement parts of the Patient CARE Act proposed by Hatch/Burr/Coburn last year and pursue a "gradual repeal" strategy by targeting the medical device tax and return the definition of a full-time workweek back to 40 hours (this goes along with the "We're responsible and want to actually govern" line). They could even try and repeal the employer mandate and individual mandate (or roll it back to merely catastrophic insurance), but that's a whole lot less likely while Obama still can veto. Those things (especially the first two) are very popular, and they can fight Obama on the mandates to give their Presidential nominee some ammo about how Congress tried to cooperate with Obama on changes to the ACA that the American people wanted, but he was just so stubborn about his precious law and that's why you should give us the White House so we can make the changes needed blah blah blah etc. etc. etc.
They'll take control of lots of important committees and begin some investigations to harass Obama and his governmental structure and treat hated agencies (EPA, Education) as piņatas, but the leadership knows impeachment is political suicide. They'll roast the IRS for its "targeting" scandal, the Secret Service ("Why did you fail to protect the man we're trying to destroy?!"), BenghaziBenghaziBenghzai, and kick around the EPA on coal in the name of electric bills. Could they even audit the Fed?
A big conflict will be spending bills, as they'll try and force through spending cuts on social programs and defense spending increases that Obama will be reluctant to approve. So we might have 11th hour deals to prevent shutdowns at worst, "Is another shutdown coming next week?" media hype at best. They'll put watered-down Ryan plans through with the stated goal of having a balanced budget in 10 years or so, to replay the "We're fiscally responsible!" line ad nauseum.
A SCOTUS nomination will be very interesting, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about that to comment on it. If one occurs, it will probably be the ultimate throwdown of the 2015-2017 Congress. And for other federal court nominations, they'll force Obama to pick more moderate judge.
GOP leadership will have to carry on a careful balancing act of carefully picking their fights with Obama, keeping their loose cannons in line, and help their 2016 nominee. It will be a mixed bag, disappointing die-hard TEAbags but also somewhat relieving to Democrats who feared Armageddon (but a lot of "OMG Obama y u so pushover??").
........Or, y'know, they could shut down the government and even force a catastrophic default over the debt ceiling eventually leading to World War 3. It's whatevs.
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