Trump’s Rubber Meets the Congressional Road

President-Elect Trump has not entered office yet, but as he continues to make appointments to his cabinet, he and his aides are gearing up to face Congress in the new year to figure out which bills and proposals will be worked on immediately versus which will need to undergo negotiations.

While it’s true that the Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress, that doesn’t guarantee immediate passage of all of the legislative priorities Trump has outlined in the last year. In fact, it’s become increasingly clear that Trump and members of Congress — particularly the more conservative ones — see eye to eye only on a limited number of issues.

Recently, Republican Representative Bill Flores of Texas said that Congress would be eager to work with Trump on repealing and replacing Obamacare, bolstering border security, strengthening America’s military, rebuilding U.S. infrastructure and reforming the nation’s tax code.

After those priorities, “we’ll figure out the rest in the next six months,” said Flores. However, according to political blogger Mickey Kraus, “once Trump signs their bills, what do they need him for? His leverage is [then] cut in half.”

Kraus has a point. Veteran politicians know that passage of legislative priorities is a two-way street, and the give-and-take of Washington bargaining may as of yet be unfamiliar to Trump, who might be more used to getting his way as a high-powered donor to both parties from his days of working in New York real estate.

On the other hand, Trump has had experience in dealing with politicians on both sides of the aisle, and the process of negotiation is not unknown to him. It’s just that the “art of the Washington deal” may be slightly different than what he’s used to in the Big Apple (where he will still likely be residing part-time).

Flores tried to give the impression that if Congress took the lead in terms of enacting the above priorities, Trump would be less likely to threaten existing government agencies and regulations. As Flores put it, the conservative Congressional leadership will “just tell him, ‘Hey, we’ll take the lead on this, and we will give you the legislative and constitutional support to go forward,’ and that way, he’s not inclined to use a pen, to try to follow the Obama model.” By this, Flores means executive orders.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan — who in the past Trump has derided as “very weak and ineffective” — has already indicated that there’s likely to be Congressional pushback on Trump’s immigration priorities, such as funding the building of a wall along the U.S.’s southern border. But as it turns out, there’s only so much Congress will be able to do if Trump indeed decides to turn to executive orders to implement his priorities, as President Obama frequently did during his tenure.

Trump could start criminal investigations into companies that consistently hire illegal immigrants, for example, or he could put a stop to the catch-and-release policy Obama had instituted for Central American refugees. He could also reduce guest-worker programs, which allow companies to shrink salaries for legitimate workers.

All of these actions are separate from “border security” — which also is a separate issue from building a border wall. Many of the GOP’s business donors oppose Trump’s immigration reforms because they could impact as much as $500 billion per year in corporate profits. Wall Street also would see ripple effects from these actions.

Right now, Obama’s government annually lets in more than a million legal immigrants in addition to one million temporary guest workers. Along with roughly eight million illegal immigrants that are already in jobs, that can mean ten immigrants competing against every four young Americans for the same open positions. Wage reductions resulting from this add up to the previously mentioned half trillion dollars per year. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that immigration reform is a very touchy subject for Congress that’s entirely separate from border security.

Despite his public rhetoric, Paul Ryan’s agenda may not be too different from what Representative Flores has outlined. On CBS’ 60 Minutes, Ryan talked through what he saw as Congress’ six top priorities. According to Ryan, those are fixing U.S. infrastructure, boosting border security, strengthening the military, reforming the tax code, fixing regulations to add jobs to the economy and repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Both Ryan and Flores know that working on U.S. infrastructure could be a legislative quagmire that could keep Trump hung up for months in terms of sorting out priorities for new buildings, airports and roads. As a builder, these items may be hard for Trump to let go of, even if it meant more attention being paid to immigration reforms.

Congress is quite familiar with negotiation tactics and is still likely less than amused after a November 5th press conference wherein Obama suggested Congress should pass his legislative priorities without his committing to a quid pro quo for the corresponding desires of lawmakers. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell later tried to pull the same stunt and met with the same lack of success.

At some point, Trump will have to come to terms with the fact that a number of his policy positions go against the grain of traditional Republican orthodoxy. At the same time, Trump’s initial meetings with both Ryan and McConnell have gone over well, with no outward signs of friction.

After they met at the Capitol, Ryan told reporters, “We are now talking about how to hit the ground running and make sure we get this country turned around and make America great again.” For his part, McConnell declared his confab with Trump “a first-class meeting.”

There’s also the matter of Supreme Court picks. As it stands, the Scalia vacancy is still left over from Obama’s term that Trump will likely choose a different person for, instead of Obama’s nonstarter Merrick Garland. Some political pundits have stated that there are obscure Senate rules that may allow Senate Democrats to install Garland regardless, at least temporarily, on January 3rd when Senate terms officially end, but the chances of this coming to pass are extremely slim (it’s likely the Republicans would retaliate in a major way).

And, of course, this is just speaking about the Republican side of both Congressional houses. The Democratic minority will almost certainly stymie efforts by Trump to pass his initiatives, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans have only a two-seat majority — not enough to meet the 60-vote threshold required to pass most legislation. That means that for particularly partisan initiatives, Trump-backed bills could face repeated filibusters.

A familiar face to Trump could end up being Democratic New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who will become the Senate Minority Leader in the New Year. “It’s time for the country to come together and heal the bitter wounds from this [presidential] campaign,” Schumer stated. “Senate Democrats will spend the coming days and weeks reflecting on results.”

Schumer will push Trump on issues championed by hard-left members of the Senate such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. But working in Trump’s favor will be the fact that he won five solid “heartland” states that nonetheless have Democratic senators — North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Indiana and West Virginia.

Already, some Democratic Senators are telling their party not to keep pushing so hard from the left. “If the instinct of the party is to fight Donald Trump, then that’s the stupidest thing that could happen,” stated Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. “I will denounce my party and chastise them if they play that game. The bottom line is you can’t govern from [the left] wing of the party. And if Chuck Schumer or the national Democratic Party ever wants to be a majority, they have to go to the middle.” In areas in which Trump and Democrats may see eye-to-eye — on infrastructure spending, for instance — Trump may face more opposition from conservative Congressional Republicans than from Democrats.

In the House, Nancy Pelosi’s re-election as the House Minority Leader will likely pose more of a challenge for Trump than the Senate will. There’s currently infighting among the Democrats between those who see party elders such as Pelosi as too old and out-of-touch and those who are more eager for younger leadership.

One area where those siding with Pelosi have been shown to be weak is support from working-class Americans. House Democrats may have to alter some of their positions if they hope to retain seats in the midterm elections of 2018.

On trade, there’s pressure building from both parties to enact some kind of replacement for the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), which all parties agree is finished politically.

Trump clearly has his work cut out for him with the Congressional session starting in the New Year. But if Trump’s success at building support for his cabinet appointees is anything to go by, he may just be able to persuade enough members of Congress to “make America great again” in the way that he envisions.


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