“What Congress has to do and the Senate majority leader has to do is say to the president of their own<br />party sometimes is, ‘We appreciate your interest, but we are not going to do that here today.’”<br />Indeed, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, warned the Trump administration soon after the election<br />that the best course of action was to accept a spending bill that would have gotten the government through the rest of the fiscal year without the bill’s being slowed or sidelined by tax and health care legislation.<br />“We believe that the Republican leaders should tell Donald Trump that we can do this at a later time.”<br />On Monday, as senators returned to Washington from a two-week recess to confirm Sonny Perdue for secretary of agriculture, Republican congressional leaders were negotiating with White House officials, who have been pressing for wall funding<br />and a mechanism to take some funding from the Affordable Care Act.<br />“That was a major asset for Trump as a candidate, but from a governing perspective<br />it can lead to competing priorities with the more conventional wing of the party.”<br />Mr. Spain added, “To the extent the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill can utilize<br />a hand-in-glove approach, the likelihood for success increases dramatically.”<br />While many presidents bring advisers from their home state during their first term,<br />they also tend to staff up with people wise to the ways of working with Congress.<br />“The general dynamic to get congressional leaders aligned with the White House is often a challenge,<br />but rarely impossible,” said Patrick Griffin, a former aide to Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and a legislative director during President Bill Clinton’s first term.