What I like about the following is how it lacks any moral judgment. It simply puts the facts out there and let’s you decide what you think about it. The context is the shocking lack of legislative achievement we’ve seen so far from the Trump administration. The idea is that after a legislative burst in its first two years, the Obama administration accomplished much of its agenda through executive orders and regulations, so we should expect much of Trump’s initial efforts to be non-legislative as well as he makes efforts to undo Obama’s legacy. We’re told that Trump has been more active and successful than we might imagine.
Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to nullify 14 rules enacted by the Obama administration. Before this year, it had only been used successfully once in 20 years. If Trump and Republicans had not reversed these rules, then companies applying for federal contracts would have had to disclose their labor violations; coal mines would have had to reduce the amount of debris dumped into streams; telecommunications companies would have had to take “reasonable measures” to protect their customers’ personal information; individuals receiving Social Security payments for disabling mental illnesses would have been added to a list of those not allowed to buy guns; states would have been limited in the drug-testing they could perform on those receiving unemployment insurance benefits; certain hunting practices would not have been allowed on national wildlife refuges in Alaska; and states could have set up retirement savings plans for those who don’t have the option at work.
[Mark] Short [Trump’s director of legislative affairs] said the fact that Trump was able to use the Congressional Review Act more than a dozen times when it had only been used once before is “a pretty significant accomplishment” and one that he says will benefit the economy by billions of dollars each year.
“We look at that as one of the biggest accomplishments,” he said.
That’s quite a list. Maybe there are a lot of people who are excited that people who have paid into the unemployment insurance fund can be denied their earned benefits if they fail a drug test. To me, that seems more like robbery than solid policy. But it also looks like by far the least objectionable change on that list.
What’s the constituency for companies concealing their labor violations? Who wants toxic debris dumped in their streams? Is there anyone who wants their personal information to be less secure? How many people actually want someone who is so mentally challenged that they need help to managing their Social Security check to have an AR-15? Are there a lot of people whose idea of a wildlife refuge includes killing wildlife? And whose idea is it to say that states shouldn’t be able to create retirement savings options for folks who don’t have the option to work?
These are not popular accomplishments. There are narrow special interests who want these things, but you can’t take them on the campaign trail to the broader public and make a case that you’re getting things done to improve their lives. And that shouldn’t be surprising given the nature of what’s going on here. President Obama saw his legislative agenda blocked after the 2010 midterm elections, so he used his unilateral power to try to do things to help people. As a result, most of what he accomplished in this manner can’t be undone without hurting people. Corporations violate labor laws. Telecoms lose control of your personal information or sell it. Coal companies throw toxic sludge in your streams. Crazy people get military style weapons and use them to shoot up malls and first grade classrooms.
This is how Trump changes things. This is what his spokespeople tout as progress.
On the legislative front, though, he finds that policies this deeply offensive aren’t easy to move. Ronald Reagan understood that if he wanted tax reform he needed a Democrat to champion it. That’s why New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, who wasn’t even the ranking member of the Finance Committee, was tapped to author the reforms and push them through the Senate. And Reagan accepted that the tax reform was going to have to be based on ideas that were popular in Democratic circles. Bill Bradley wasn’t going to write the conservatives’ dream bill.
If Trump wants tax reforms or a big infrastructure bill, he’s going to have to make the same kind of concessions. He should be talking to the big Democratic hitters on finance and transportation in the Senate. That means we should be reading about negotiations with folks like Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson. But that’s not what we’re seeing, at all. This week, the president is pushing infrastructure in a way that is assured to get absolutely no support from Sen. Nelson.
President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a week-long series of events starting Monday at the White House…
…The president has invited executives from major airlines to join him as he kicks off the week with one of his more controversial plans: spinning off the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration to a nonprofit corporation.
Most people, when they think about infrastructure have in mind new bridges and roads, modern airports and rail lines. Privatizing air traffic control is no substitute.
Likewise with the effort to reform the tax code, there’s no evidence that any Democrat is going to be a player or get behind the effort, let alone author it. Sen. Ron Wyden is hardly involved at all.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with the Senate Finance Committee this week to discuss President Trump’s budget and, in particular, the administration’s stand on tax reform.
But Mnuchin wasn’t providing many new details, more often reiterating the same general concepts and vague assurances that he’s stated repeatedly.
The administration continues to promise tax reform this year. Yet the year is nearly half over and all the White House has produced is a one-page, double-spaced outline that’s shorter than the “typical drug store receipt,” said Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-writing committee.
As you can see, there’s a lot of truth to the following observation:
“We are in an ugly era of people who do not understand what the legislative branch is even for,” said Andy Karsner, who served as assistant secretary of energy for efficiency and renewable energy in the George W. Bush administration and is now based in California, working with entrepreneurs as managing partner of the Emerson Collective.
The Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress, Karsner said, “have no skill set, they have no craftsmanship. They have no connection to the time when people passed legislation.”
When Andy Karsner says that the Trump administration and the Republican congressional leadership have “no skill set,” that’s just another way of making my point. A president can’t magically make things happen. They have to look at Congress as it exists and figure out a way to work with them. President Obama couldn’t get very much through a Republican Congress that he wanted to sign, so Trump could be forgiven for finding himself in a similar position. But he has Republican majorities. When President Obama had Democratic majorities in his first two years he moved the legislative process at a breakneck speed. That Trump can’t move anything is a result of his decision to govern as a hard right nativist dependent entirely on conservatives for support. Obama took criticism when he passed his stimulus plan and his health care plan, but he passed them because he took account of the requirements of his more right-leaning members (in both cases) and the few moderate Republicans he needed (in the former case). A take it or leave it approach would have resulted in failures.
So far, Trump has managed to convince himself that his legislative problems can be solved if the filibuster is removed from the Senate entirely, but he can’t even get 50 votes for most of his agenda including his efforts to uproot the Affordable Care Act. The Republican senators have been trying to explain this to him, but he doesn’t seem to understand.
But, despite their laudable efforts to reason with the president, I can’t absolve the Republican senators here. They have not been willing to level with either the president or the Republican base about the need to find Democratic sponsors for the signature legislation that Trump wants to sign. When the Republicans controlled the Senate in 1986, they were willing to create space for Bill Bradley to lead on tax reform. Today’s Republican senators won’t do the same for Ron Wyden.
And that’s a lack of skill, basically, when you come right down to it. We can argue about how polarization and perverse incentives interfere with bipartisan cooperation, but either you know how to legislate or you don’t.
And they don’t.
So, an Air Traffic Control monopoly. That sounds like free market capitalism doesn’t it?
Or is the idea that each airport and region has it’s own ATC with is own rules? Or maybe each airline? What could go wrong? go wrong? go wrong?
If they’re privatized, can they strike?
Only in non-right to work states. Which of course is the point. Increase costs in union states and decreased costs in right to work states with the fragmentation of quality and pay from place to place driving up accidents and increasing hatred and frustration with the entire system with no regard to the fact that it can be made better by just nationalizing the air traffic controllers again.
On a more serious note, the standard playbook here for an actual strongman like Erdogan would be to whip up sentiment for their position and neuter the opposition via legislation or plebescite backed by public pressure . Our system makes that difficult and while Bannon (and likely Sessions) could do it, Trump doesnt have the discipline to pull it off even as a figurehead. Its too long a game.
Alternately Duterte seems to be simply ignoring the law because the domestic security services back him, the public strongly supports him and he has actual Muslim rebels in his country. Trump has only one of those things, the domestic security support.
Consequently I think Trump would be more likely to go the 2nd route but still fail.
Trump is about to taken down by our domestic security. See Thursday. Testimony. Comey.
A good point. FBI hates him now as presumably even the Trump faction is upset about how Comey was dumped.
What I was thinking of here were the police and border guys who now have a lot more slack to make policy at a local level because feds are not going to reign them in.
Yeah, “domestic security forces” are not monolithic.
Interesting parallel once again to the (surprise, surprise!) Third Reich, where both the domestic and secret police forces (Gestapo) were solidly controlled by Himmler and 100% committed to Der Fuhrer, while the Nazi intelligence chief (Admiral Canaris) and (ultimately) a large faction within the Army’s Great General Staff were behind the July Plot to assassinate Hitler.
Of course the Nazi plotters all ended up being tortured to death on the end of a meat hook, so good luck to the forces arrayed against Der Trumper….
Now now, we don’t say “torture”. We say “Harsh interrogation”. That makes it legal, right?
Well ok … Trump has been demonstrating that he’s a numbskull (whether he is or isn’t in fact). Can’t expect much out of him, based on what we’ve been seeing.
But if it’s the legislature that passes legislation, where’s their contribution? The Republicans have comfortable majorities in both houses … they should be able to get something done.
The only thing they seem to have come up with is an atrocious health care replacement.
This looks like an across-the-board failure.
It seems to me we could probably function as a country to some extent with a completely brain dead executive branch … the lower levels of the various departments would figure out something to do with the laws and mandates they were given. But what do they do, given nothing?
Is this kind of circus happening in all the states with Republican legislatures and governors?
Not in Ohio. Republican governance here is bad and harmful, but it isn’t simply nonexistent the way it is in DC.
And Kasich isn’t brain dead either – may not like his agenda but the executive branch there is functioning. What about the legislature?
Oh, it is functioning. Republicans pretty much have their way in the Statehouse. Senate and House have the largest majorities either party has had in the 50 years since Ohio went to a 33 seat Senate and 99 seat House.
Guess you could say that legislatively, for all intents and purposes, Ohio is owned by the GOP.
And will remain so forever if we double down on 2016.
Tug of war between Ryan and McConnell. Both turds but in different ways. Also the worthless Health Care bill (even more worthless than
RomneycareObamacare) is a desired feature. If it wasn’t for Republican jealousy, it would be law. I predict it will be. Further prediction: The Senate will make some cosmetic changes and at least three Democrats will vote for it.Equating Obama’s non-legislative efforts at progress (with a completely hostile Congress) to Trump’s non-legislative efforts (with a Repub-controlled Congress) would be intellectual dishonesty at Olympian levels.
And the nullification of 14 Obama rules under the Congressional review procedure IS a significant “accomplishment”. It is an accomplishment that serves only extremely narrow special interests as you say. It also harms our incompetence white electorate, but this is of no consequence to Trumper, and certainly not to them. (They are happy to be able to plunder helpless wildlife, so that one was a clear benefit.) There’s no reason any longer to visit West Va, although it once was very beautiful. A strong majority of them appear delighted to have plutocrats shit their nest, and if they don’t care about their land, it’s hard to see why anyone else should. Cut off your noses to spite your faces to your heart’s delight! So far, Trumpites seem to think their beloved Trumper is doing fantastically well. Too much winning!
Let’s also not forget Trumper’s reversal of Obama’s Clean Coal order and his recent withdrawal from the Paris Accords, which Trumpites also cheer. These reversals needed no help from the Repub Congress as they were prez orders not admin rules, although Repubs would have been delighted to vote in favor of both repeals. I’m kind of surprised there hasn’t been a “sense of the senate” doing just that. The destruction of the environment will be another accomplishment of Trumper and the Repub Congress over the next 4 years, again to the delight of 99% of Trump voters and probably a majority of American voters overall.
Of course the Repub Congress, as a creature of the “conservative” movement, cannot legislate in the sense of passing “positive” legislation—i.e. legislation that does anything other than repeal existing laws and efforts at solving problems. To Repubs, the only “problem” is a functioning central gub’mint, so the only motivating factor for them is “what will wreck the federal gub’mint most effectively?” Gub’mint is the “true” enemy.
So driving out the government’s civil service experts and bureaucrats, ruining its finances and basically turning its deliberations and procedures into a contemptible farce are the principal goals of “conservatism”. Repubs will pass more finance-destroying tax cuts with certainty; “tax reform” was just the fig leaf for tax cuts and isn’t necessary to the plutocrats in any event. MAGA is simply a new slogan for the New Gilded Age.
The plutocrat masters want their profits intact and government power paralyzed. Those goals will be achieved by the Repub majority which they have bought through our various “campaign finance” bribery schemes/mechanisms. Repubs have the “skill set” for that, ha-ha!
Oops, should be “Obama’s Clean Power Plan” which Trumper ordered the monster Pruitt to withdraw and (slowly) rewrite to aid coal over the course of the next 4 years. My apologies for the error. The important point is that Trumper has ensured that no national progress along these lines can made.
I am interested in hearing more about the pros and cons of placing air traffic control services into a nonprofit pseudo-government entity (which sounds somewhat different than “privatizing” those services). From the links, it sound like Canada at least has done this with success, although the same article mentions that the American system has much more air traffic to contend with. It’s funny, in a sad way, that some union members support such a plan because constant Republican-imposed budget crises have harmed their ability to do their work, and it is hoped that a nonprofit entity would have much less funding disruption.
Anyway, it seems to me that Trump’s infrastructure proposals are about as vote-challenged as all of his other measures.
Maybe the Clinton foundation can run it. Or Charles Koch’s foundation.
It’s not like those people truly have no idea how to legislate either: Hatch, Cochran, Grassley and many other of the older ones have done it before. And you can’t tell me Trump would refuse to sign a bill just because Democrats voted for it. His only criterion is “Am I the winner?” He doesn’t even want to know what the content is. So it’s not pure incompetence, it’s a widespread willingness to see government built down to nothing before demography makes it too late.
“That Trump can’t move anything is a result of his decision to govern as a hard right nativist dependent entirely on conservatives for support.”
Once again, the same point I always doggedly make: there was no “decision.” If you said that to him, even in simple and patient language, you wouldn’t get any kind of agreement or disagreement or comprehension.
He is far, far stupider than even his harshest critics are willing to acknowledge. Institutional inertia; pattern recognition; wishful thinking; propriety.
While You Obsessed Over Trump’s Scandals, He’s Fundamentally Changed The Country