I went to your link, and how it looks to me is that for nearly half the 20th century, we weren’t at war with anyone. (And that’s counting our years of making Central America safe for the United Fruit Co. as being at war.) And during the 19th, it depends on how you count our displacement of the Native Americans. If you count that as being at war, then we were at war for the entire century. If you don’t, then we were at war for maybe a decade or so.
Sorry, but I disagree that it is natural for the various agencies take over on important issues in the absence of White House decisionmaking. That may happen in some cases, but there’s quite a few issues that fall into the “shit just starts breaking down” category if no direction is provided from those who are supposed to provide the direction.
One example that’s currently in the news is the impasse over funding the government for the next year. The White House and congressional leaders cannot yet agree on how much money to increase defense spending by, or what to do with the budgets of domestic agencies. While government has not closed its doors, agencies are not able to make major decisions about many programs until these matters are settled.
This is not the first time we have seen this sort of paralysis, and I’m not laying it all on the doorstep of an incompetent President. But the gridlock and unclear direction from the top decisionmakers in Washington have real-world impacts. Let me describe a couple that I know well.
In the defense world, there are probably thousands of businesses who are waiting on contracts that can’t be signed until the budget is finalized. Similarly, there are probably something on the order of several hundred thousand Pentagon contracts that must be temporarily extended during this period, and then must be signed again when a full year’s funding becomes available. This duplication of effort costs taxpayers huge sums of money – I’d be willing to wager that just in the Pentagon it is upwards of $10 billion per year that is spent on this redundancy, perhaps even two or three times that amount. That’s money that should either be saved or used on things more useful than totally redundant work. And why is it done this way? Because agencies have to make things work in the absence of decisions, and they legally can’t just do what they would like to do in the absence of those directions.
How about another example. There are umpteen thousand versions of various regulations that the routine affairs of government would be pushing out on a regular basis. But what regulations can be moved forward as routine matters, and what regulations are things that the President might have a freak out about? In normal times, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would review regulations to make sure that they are consistent with what the Chief Executive wants. However, at current time, I guarantee you that there is almost nobody working in OMB who has a clue that the White House wants to do about particular regulations. And so, rules that would address new problems, like what to do with some particular pollutant that we just found may be a more serious health hazard than understood earlier, just get clogged up.
I could go on all day with various examples, but the problem is that these little vignettes don’t do justice to the dysfunction that I’m pretty sure every single person who works in Washington is feeling. This is most certainly not the case of, “Oh, the big boss is out to lunch, little boss will just fill in for a while.” It is more of a pervasive case of, “What the fuck are we supposed to do now? I dunno. Did you read the latest tweetstorm? Nobody is telling us what direction to march in… so how about we tentatively move in this direction of some rumor reported in the Washington Post this morning, and pray that we don’t get yelled at tomorrow…”
And I’m not saying this as a partisan thing. I’ve talked to plenty of Republicans in this town, including those who are political appointees, that are surely feeling that same sense of frustration, inaction, and helplessness. (Though they are often reluctant to share the depth of their angst, I’m pretty sure they feel it daily.)
The US adopted a Federal civil service in the late 19th Century at least partially because President Garfield was assassinated by a spoils-system office-seeker. :eek:
In endlessly attacking the civil service under the guise of the “deep state,” with civil servants slandered and even (see the State Dep’t) fired as disloyal merely because they worked under the Obama Administration (even if they also worked under Bush! :rolleyes:) or are visibly Democrats (see Trump’s Mueller/FBI invective), Trump should keep that in mind.
The budgeting issue is wasteful and awful but not the fault of the president. The congress is the one who appropriates the money with the president mostly supplicant. The current impasse is the result of the narrow majority in the Senate which allows every republican senator to hold up the process for his pet projects through brinkmanship. It is a sign of the dysfuntional government in general and not a bad president. It might be possible for a genius politician who was president to overcome the congressional obstreperousness but I doubt even a good president could in the present circumstances.
My experience with rule making is the opposite. In that the agencies are beavering away generating regulations and the president is not involved at all. Then a decree comes down once a term that a bunch of regulations on some subject need to be created because the white house has decided what it wants to do and everything else is put on the back burner until those are done and then everything goes back to normal. If the issue involved is important enough that the agency is afraid to do it without presidential approval those regulations would get put on hold but those issues are generally few and far between.
Look, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t argue with people who do know what’s going on.
And if you are going to argue, pay attention to what the other person is saying. I didn’t say the President is involved in the day-to-day of regulations. I said that’s OMB’s job. And OMB is supposed to look after the President’s priorities in their day-to-day oversight of agencies, and it’s pretty damn clear that OMB has no clue what is going on in the West Wing to enable them to do so.
How is this not Trump’s fault? He’s a Republican President in his first year of office with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court. This isn’t a situation that requires a genius-level politician. This is beginner’s level. The fact that Trump is having problems handling it just shows how incredibly incompetent he is.
Imagine an aircraft carrier with the president as the Captain.
The aircraft carrier changes course very slowly and it barely responds at all to the Captain’s twitter activity.
The main legacy of most presidents is wars and supreme court justices.
And THAT’s when we’re going to elect a woman and then comments on her appearance
Just out of curiosity while reading this thread, I looked to see if the Washington Post was still tracking appointments to offices that only the president can fill. And yes, they are (sorry I can’t seem to get a link) To date:
Of 626 key positions requiring Senate confirmation …
295–No nominee
16–Awaiting nomination
74–Formally nominated
241–Confirmed
So over half the positions in Government, the ones that should be implementing President Trumps plans, haven’t even had a nominee proposed nearly a year since Trump took office.
Now most of them are ‘minor’ or Deputies or Undersecretaries, but those are the folks that actually do the ‘dirty’ work as order from on high. For example, the position of “Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics” is a mouthful, but look at the words and it seems to me to be a moderately important job that remains unfilled.
So yeah, there is some ‘autopiloting’ going on, but a lot of it can be laid at the door of the President and Congress.
IMHO as always. YMMV.
Because passing a budget is not what the President does, it is what Congress does. Congress is supposed to pass all 12 appropriations bills by October when the fiscal year starts. The last time this happened was 1996. The last time one appropriations bill was enacted on time was 2009. The Senate went from 2009-2015 without passing a budget resolution. The problem predate Trump, it happens when Democrats are in charge, when Republicans are in charge and when control is divided.
The assertion that the budget is implemented by Congress without the Administration (President) having any part of that is ridiculously naïve.
The way the Budget process is SUPPOSED to work is that the Administration is supposed to propose the budget needed to carry out the work that is required by laws previously passed by Congress, as augmented by things like military action not specifically authorized by Congress, disasters, and expected future laws that Congress is likely to implement. Congress, if it is doing its job, then passes said budget with limited alteration, unless there is some major issue that needs to be addressed (more likely when the Congress is controlled in whole or part by the party opposite that of the President). When the President and Congress both accept their rôles in this process, budgeting gets relatively easy.
You are right that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It’s an issue with the political process in Washington, D.C. I don’t see it being solved substantially unless/until we end up with a Congress that is effectively under the complete control of the same party as the President.
At which point, God help us, most probably. :dubious:
Yeah, a Deputy Commissioner or Undersecretary is definitely an important post. For example, my boss’, boss’ boss is a Deputy Commissioner. Definitely WAY above my pay grade, but far more aware of the type of thing I and my office do than the Commissioner.
Now, these positions aren’t unfilled. Until someone gets nominated and confirmed, someone from the permanent civil service is named as “Acting.” And while they are definitely answerable to the President, they ay not be as closely aligned with him/her as someone who was handpicked. Of course, while they are Acting", their regular job does not get done as well…