The first half of the year will likely be "a mad attempt to get major must-pass things done," like keeping the government funded, authorizing defense spending and more, according to Kreps.
But if bills outside the "must-pass" category don't pass by June or July, "all bets are off," according to Melissa Kahn, managing director of retirement policy for State Street Global Advisors' defined contribution team.
The 2024 congressional calendar shows that both the House and Senate will not be in session from Aug. 3 through the end of the month, as the chambers typically take a recess in August. However, Congress is also scheduled for a recess lasting the entire month of October, which lawmakers can use to campaign for re-election.
With the time that Congress does have, sources said Republican lawmakers will likely focus their efforts on oversight and issues they find politically relevant, such as ESG and capital formation.
According to Kreps, "what you see in election years is a massive uptick in oversight," particularly from the party opposite the president.
For this Congress, that would come from the House GOP, "because they use the committee process and the oversight as a way to highlight real or perceived failings of the administration," he said.
Even throughout 2023, Republican leaders of the House Financial Services Committee have staunchly criticized the SEC, Labor Department, and other actions from the Biden administration in their hearings and various committee activity.
The Subcommittee on Capital Markets, led by Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., specifically honed in on capital formation, holding four separate hearings on the issue in early 2023.
In April, Wagner and House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., sent a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler criticizing the commission for what they said is a lack of attention to capital formation issues.
GOP lawmakers will likely continue to focus on capital formation in 2024 as the election approaches, industry experts said.
Kreps said that focusing on environmental, social and governance investing is another topic he expects Republicans to take further action on, as "that issue ties together a lot of their narrative threads for campaigns."
"They view it as a place where they have some substantive policy objections, and where those policy objections intersect with things that they believe are campaign-positive for them," Kreps said, noting that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has used anti-ESG policies as a part of his presidential campaign.
At a GOP presidential debate in December, both DeSantis and fellow presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy criticized money manager BlackRock and its CEO Larry Fink, tying both to the ESG movement. DeSantis said Fink and BlackRock "want to use economic power to impose a left-wing agenda on this country."
Following the debate, Fink denied DeSantis' claims, without naming the Florida governor, in a LinkedIn post. "The only agenda we have is delivering for our clients," Fink wrote, blasting what he called "political silly season."