Making Congress Do Stuff

Great Debates
1

I would agree with this Politico article that it seems to be that Trump’s new strategy of governance is to push the decision making back onto Congress, rather than use the traditional method of coming up with and leading on policy:

Presuming this to be true, I’m curious what result you all expect to come from this?

I’m probably leaning towards a complete logjam of the whole system. I feel like I have heard of similar situations in state governments where the Executive tries to force the Congress to do things that are too politically expensive, too unworkable, or too far against the political makeup of the congress, that the end result is that nothing happens for however many years or months.

But I can see two reasons to doubt that hypothesis (and a third one being that, simply, I haven’t analyzed the history of all state governments, so the basic premise might be faulty).

Firstly, state governments are - on average - manned by stupider, crazier politicians than the Federal government. In the case of the current Federal government, we’re looking at a lot of smart people in Congress and one really stupid man in the White House. And, not only is he stupid, but he’s a thin skinned and (likely) has a large number of legal and personal skeletons in his closet. It is conceivable that they’ll figure out a way to deal with the issue. Not to mention that, I find it likely that the RNC decided to back Trump during the primaries specifically because they believed that if and when all hell broke loose, that there were sufficient mechanisms available to control him.

Secondly, state governments generally don’t have to respond to crises in the same way that the Federal government does. Granted, in the new age of mega-hurricanes that’s not entirely true but, on the whole, if a state government is stalled out for a few years, it doesn’t matter too much in the long run so long as they pass the occasional emergency budget for major services. Since the Federal government needs to work with foreign nations, monitor wars that we’re involved in, and keep the nation from being nuked by North Korea, the ability to simply kick back and wait the moron out might not be an option, even if they do decide to try for it.

So…as said, I’m not feeling strongly for any one outcome. What do you guys think?

2

I’m not sure that the RNC backed Trump after the primaries because they believed he was controllable; I expect they mostly expected him to lose, and the optics were better for them if they appeared loyal during a defeat. Barring a loss, they didn’t have any good options other than hoping that the horse would sing.

3

I don’t see it as a strategy. I see it as a sign of Trump’s failings as a President.

Congress doesn’t take orders from the President. A President needs to use political skills to influence Congress to do what he wants.

Trump has essentially no political experience or skills so he can’t get Congress to do what he wants.

I think most mainstream Republicans didn’t want Trump. But in the end they figured the damage he would cause by his incompetence was more acceptable than the active opposition they would have gotten from Clinton.

4

Probably true on the part of Trump himself. I suspect that those around him just realized that it wasn’t a bad way to go, after he started complaining that Congress was ruining everything for him. But, the question was, how is this likely to play out?

5

I don’t think it should be described as “pushing decision making back to Congress,” since these are all concerns that have always been up to Congress to deal with.

It did occur to me that Trump might be using a rather desperate ploy, of essentially burning the house down, in order to finally force Congress to make up it’s mind on a paint scheme. Now. Will it work? Will Congress finally take action and pass meaningful, important legislation? I have no idea. I’m beginning to suspect not. At least, not until an actual voter rebellion frightens them again.

It seems to me, that the Republican Party has prided itself on, and built it’s majority on being the Party of “no, not that, anything but that.” All of their campaigns, including those going on now, have been based around preventing Democrats and various other bogeymen from enacting laws their constituents didn’t like. The closest thing they’ve had to a specific idea to originate any new legislation, has been to lower taxes on themselves and their friends, while cutting benefits and reducing tax deductions that give relief to the middle and lower classes. Everything else is all about being Anti-democrats, not about being Republicans.

I had hopes at first, that gaining control of the entire government, and with an activist President and a VERY long history of claiming that they were chomping at the bit to transform America, that these Republicans would at least pass SOME legislation. I really thought they would at least repeal the ACA as they had been pretending to do again and again while Obama was in office, and they knew he would veto them.

But then they got in, and did NOTHING. Nada. Zip. They even had to admit that despite spending almost Eight YEARS declaring that they had a better idea than the ACA, when they suddenly had the power, they admitted that they never even put a single thought in what to do instead, and were totally unprepared to even make an open proposal to each other.

Since they have been perfectly alright with letting dozens of challenges to America fester and grow worse for the last several decades, on the grounds that they believe in something like Laizes Faire approach to everything (at least where non-rich people are concerned), I am now anticipating that they will respond to Trump kicking the walls down, by having even more intensely serious public debates, and hold even more secret planning sessions, before again announcing that they don’t have the votes to actually do anything, and want to move on to the next priority in their legislative agenda.

Not sure what comes after Tax Reform is set aside.

6

Trump, while he is a complete idiot, is actually pretty good at manipulating popular opinion, no doubt learned from his years a a reality TV show host and peddling B.S. in the real estate market.

He simultaneously gets to pander to his hardcore base ("See: I did something on this issue that everyone else disagrees with us on!) and actually not do anything, so he can deny responsibility later to try to convince more moderate people he isn’t awful:

“Well, it wasn’t ME that blew up the Iran deal / ended the DACA program / took healthcare away from 30 million people, etc etc. I just asked Congress to review it to try to make things better.”

7

Well, Congress “not doing stuff” is a feature, not a bug. As has been pointed out, they do not report to the President. They are in fact there as a balance to the President, and the Courts.

Now, the downside of that is that sometimes some things do need to get done, rather than “not done”. In most cases, they do accomplish the needs, but we (the public, media, President) are more focused on the wants.