We’re 24 days into the Trump Error. And there has been little legislative activity. As of the morning of the 13th, there have been two bills that he has signed. The first was a bill that waived requirements for his Secretary of Defense nominee to be the Secretary of Defense. The second is a two page technical correction bill for the Government Accountability Office to get more data. That sounds like a perfectly lovely law on the face of it but it is not a major bill.
Why does this matter?
The first 100 days is the easiest time for legislation to pass and for major structural changes to get pulled in the desired direction of a determined trifecta. After 100 days, the opposition will have gotten its act together and the mid-term election cycle has gotten started so marginal majority members won’t want to piss off too many potential groups of supporters by making choices.
At this point in Obama's 1st term, he had signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, enacted SCHIP expansion, & passed a stimulus bill in Congress. https://t.co/ydwGU1jyzv
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) February 12, 2017
The Democrats in 2009 had both a not damaged President and larger majorities in the House and Senate and they were able to address major priorities in the first month while working on Dodd-Frank and healthcare at the same time. This Congress has not been able to get anything more than a minor technical corrections act out. And given that healthcare reform is going to suck out a bit of oxygen in the room for quite a long time as Republican health policy (don’t spend any money on the sick) is quite unpopular and is running against the status quo bias of a flawed but helpful system that does spend money on the sick, things are moving slower than I feared.
We need to continue to organize, and continue to make it very clear that supporting Trump will come at a massive electoral cost for the Republican party so that we can continue to see the survival and infighting instincts slow walk everything possible. And we need to continue to applaud the Democratic Senate caucus for slow walking everything that they can not stop.
CarolDuhart2
As you said, it doesn’t get any easier-especially as members look forward to mid-terms.
I’ve been astonished and impressed at how fast and how effective our opposition has been so far-and how little real pushback it has gotten.
Trump voters have been mostly invisible in two ways-supporting their guy, and making it clear to Congress what they do want to happen.
cokane
fwiw, Dems also had 59 Senate seats and the country was in the midst of the recession, needing that stimulus bill.
frankly the smart play for Repubs is to do very little and coast on what will likely be relatively good economic times. the only policies theyre actively pursuing are deeply unpopular.
Schlemazel
One possible difference. Previous administrations were interested in building things, this one only wants to destroy. It might take them a bit longer as they can do that internally at the agencies if Congress isn’t willing to set charges.
Meanwhile, yes, keep calling and writing and fighting. Maybe we can minimize the damage and stage a comeback in ’18
OzarkHillbilly
Panic, chaos, disorder…. and Trump has just begun.
CarolDuhart2
But they aren’t smart. You are right, status quo would probably be best for them. If nothing changed except around the margins…they could hold onto their majority until at least
2020, and Trump could get another squeaker term.
But the rapturist/semi-Nazi supporters don’t want to do what is sensible. (They aren’t sensible) and thereby have activated a massive resistance. They are the right-wing equivalents of the Purity Ponies, pushing things that are dubious at best even among marginal supporters.
Baud
Obama and the Dems were so much more efficient in selling us out.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Wait, but I keep hearing from Trump supporters that he’s gotten more done in his first 3 weeks than Obama did in 8 years. Who am I supposed to believe?
Taylor
@cokane:
There is a tidal wave of unemployment due to automation coming. In December the Obama administration released a report warning of the redundancies coming from automation in the trucking industry.
Ryan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Was it reported on CNN? Because that’s fake news. Also too anything not favorable to President Bannon.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think Trump messed his own 100 days up by twittering like he was president after the election, so it’s more this is day 65.
But I think we might be missing the real point for the Right; Trump, by his sheer incompetence pisses liberals off and that’s enough for a lot of conservatives.
zach
It shouldn’t be surprising. Bush had a unified government with a larger Senate majority in the 109th Congress (2004-2006). List of major legislation is topped by the border fence and changing daylight savings time.
Weirdly, the biggest beneficiary of the 109th congress is probably Donald Trump. The only reason the wall is vaguely possible is because we already wasted the better part of a decade figuring out the logistics behind building the dumb fence.
zach
@cokane:
That would might be smart, but they’ll be greedy. Tax cuts and financial deregulation to kickstart the next bubble… from the GOP point of view, the Great Recession wasn’t so bad. Most of their friends got out before they lost all their profits from the bubble, most of them saw an outsized profit on the recovery, and the political fallout for the party lasted all of a couple years…
The Thin Black Duke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Thing is, when Trump fucks up and starts a war in the Middle East and gas prices skyrocket to five bucks a gallon, it won’t be just liberals that will be pissed off.
CarolDuhart2
@zach: But that was a second term. By that time, most of your major initiatives should have been passed or failed. This would be a continuance of what has already been done, and some enhancements.
FlipYrWhig
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
People are deeply confused about what an executive order does. One of the deeply confused people is the president.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: Remember how upset people were that Obama wouldn’t just sign an executive order about gays in the military–that he wasted everyone’s time going through the military itself and getting the laws/regs changed with their consent? But its one of those things that Trump now can’t try to overturn with an EO.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s almost like the Republicans have become disoriented by their own spin.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Thin Black Duke:
Or just is simply to pathetic to get their Social Security checks out. But I suspect they won’t understand that government by useless asshole doesn’t work until they get personally hurt.
Baud
@aimai: It’s almost as if Obama knew what he was doing.
Another Scott
Good points, but I don’t think the GOP cares. They know they can ram through stuff anytime they want (they do have the majority and almost unbreakable unity when it comes to votes that the leadership cares about) and that Donnie will sign it.
Watch what they do with taxes and the like. That’s what they really care about. The tax code is complicated, especially the business provisions that they want to mess with. It’ll take them a while to get all their ducks in a row to reward the MotU that are in the club, and do it in a way that they hav[e] talking points to argue that it’s great for the guys and gals making $8/h also too.
They don’t really care about the social issues (abortion, flag burning, death panels) except as a Cleek’s Law thing. And that’s why they’ll never really totally outlaw abortion forever – if it’s gone as an issue for their voters, what will replace it? They’ll continue to chip away at it (and we can’t let them do that)…
Watch what they do with the Continuing Resolution and the Debt Ceiling, also too. Watch how they try to “repair” Obamacare and turn Medicaid into Block Grants in preparation for changing Medicare and Social Security after the mid-terms (or after 2020).
Trump’s the irrelevant shiny object to keep everyone distracted while McConnell and Ryan try to do what they want in the background.
With all that said, have to fight them every single day, because even though it looks like they’re not doing much, they’re doing lots of damage and they’re preventing sensible progress.
Cheers,
Scott.
(And that’s not even mentioning all the lurking foreign policy disasters.)
low-tech cyclist
Every new President comes into office with lots of goals in mind to (as they see it) make America better in various ways.
The difference with Trump is that all the others came into office with legislation in mind to make those changes a reality. Most of them had been thinking about the legislation they’d try to pass as President before they’d even started campaigning.
With Trump, none of this was true, and still isn’t. He doesn’t have any particular legislation in mind; he’s probably only recently realized he ought to have some. And not only is his rather small inner circle way behind on coming up with proposed legislation, but they’re fighting a ton of other battles which slows them down even more, and they have no idea if Trump will undercut their work in some random way.
This was completely obvious last fall, but both before and after the election, I figured Paul Ryan & Co. would step up into the void, starting with Obamacare repeal. But from coast to coast, their constituents have them terrified, which is a sweet thing to see.
But really, that’s the only surprise: that a fully Republican-controlled Congress isn’t passing its own legislation. Anyone should have figured that Trump didn’t have any for them.
FlipYrWhig
@low-tech cyclist: Trump clearly thinks that the president _is_ the law, and still has no idea what the other branches are even there to do. Along the lines of what Kropadope said above, I have to think that Trump took to heart the idea that Obama ruled by fiat with executive orders and “czars” (remember how much puling and moaning there was about that?), and he’s thoroughly baffled that he can’t just do what he thinks is the same thing.
low-tech cyclist
@Another Scott:
Except that they surely planned to rush their preferred legislation through before any sort of widespread opposition developed. Pass stuff through both houses of Congress by the 19th, but don’t transmit it to the White House until 1pm on January 20, just in time for a great photo-op signing session right after the inaugural speech.
Now it’s too late for all that: 4 million marchers on January 21, and the Capitol switchboard handling more calls, day after day after day, than it had ever before handled in a single day. GOP Congresscritters running scared from their town hall meetings.
Oh sure, they can still pass legislation, but they know everybody’s watching now, and are ready to jump on them with both feet if they pass the wrong stuff. When even Congresscritters in R+25 districts in deep red Utah and Idaho are getting mobbed by people who are upset at the GOP agenda, the Congresscritters in mere R+7 districts have to be shaking in their boots.
It’s way too early to say that 2018 is going to be a wave election, but they can feel that the possibility is out there. They’re scared. Right now, they’re probably wishing Hillary had won. Opposing is much easier.
low-tech cyclist
@FlipYrWhig:
I sure do remember, and yeah, to the extent Trump thought much about it, that’s surely part of it.
That’s what he gets for watching Faux News: a distorted view of the world that leaves him unprepared for the real thing.
cokane
@zach: i agree very much here, as much as i can make predictions after 2016, heh. They’ll also be greedy on social issues and security issues, as we are already seeing.
Mayur
SHHH! Don’t remind them!
ElegantFowl
Burning up the 100-day Congressional Review Act clock is key, since regulation can be overturned permanently.
AxelFoley
@aimai: Bingo. I remember Rachel Maddow was one of the main ones bitching about President Obama not using an Executive Order to overturn DADT. I guess he knew what the fuck he was doing, huh, Rachel?
zach
@CarolDuhart2:
I guess 2005 was a long time ago, but this is absolutely not how Bush & co (and the media) saw it. The 2004 result gave them a mandate and they screwed it up by treading water on social security privatization for the better part of the first year before Iraq got messy in late ’05/06.
Replace gay marriage with immigration (=contentious social issue that won’t go anywhere and distracts people) and replace social security privatization with Trump’s weird tax/tariff plan (=HUGE giveaways to the wealthy) and there’s some obvious parallels between the ’05 and ’17 legislative agendas and strategies. This time Republicans are smart enough to try to ram it through without asking for public input/dialog.
bjacques
@FlipYrWhig: No, Judge Dredd is the law!
Now I understand how that world came to be.
zach
It’s amazing we’ve forgotten that the House passed Cap and Trade. It didn’t have a chance in the Senate with so many anti-environment Democrats, but it was a pretty significant accomplishment… a lot closer than any of the legit bipartisan bills during the Bush administration.
Chip Daniels
Going to a phone banking session tonight for a local progressive candidate for Congress.
Organize, organize, organize.
father pussbucket
I have a feeling Trump expected to spend his first 100 days giving orders and then tweet and do victory laps (not that he hasn’t tried to take a few already).
Kropadope
@father pussbucket:
Well, in 2017, feelings are a perfectly acceptable substitute for fact. So, I’m certain you are right.
BBA
@ElegantFowl: There are two CRA regulation disapproval bills on the President’s desk, waiting to be signed. From what I’ve seen from this White House, I expect a lot of bills to become law without the President’s signature just because he doesn’t want to bother.
Didn’t Gov. LePage in Maine let a few bills he disapproved of become law because he forgot to veto them within 10 days?