The one-man show
Having such a strong executive doesn't mean Congress can't pull its weight.
The curse of reading a lot of stuff is that I can’t always remember where something good came from.
But I recall a point was made that Congress has only passed a tiny number of bills since it was sworn in back this past January, and the writer was comparing it to the massive Congressional overhaul accomplished in the first few months when President Autopen took office four years ago.
Of course, some blame this on the narrow House majority the Republicans have, which is currently 220-213 because two Democrats have died in office. Presuming those seats hold as Democrats, that would be a 220-215 Republican majority once those special elections are held later this fall; meanwhile, the Senate is 53-47 Republican. (Technically it’s 53-45, but the two “independents” are non-closeted Democrats.)
Yet the Congress sworn in after the 2020 election was 222-213 Democrat, which is only two seats larger than the current GOP majority; meanwhile, the Senate was a 51-50 split because Kamala Harris was there to break ties. Even so, major legislation was passed.
The difference between the two parties, though, is that Democrats will work together to do things even if they don’t always agree on the specifics because they iron these things out in some backroom somewhere with future promises to deal with the temporarily ignored pet issues and vote as a bloc. On the other hand, getting the GOP to do anything is like herding cats: you have the moderate squishes like Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski who are practically closet Democrats, and you also have the libertarians Rand Paul and Thomas Massie who depart from the party line at times, too. (At least the latter pair usually have a point and principles, unlike a lot of others who stick their finger in the wind.) It’s often a case where you have the vast majority of the party backing something, but the small minority gums up the works.
On top of that, President Trump is far from a traditional Beltway Republican, which is both good and bad. I think he tried to be more traditional in term number one, which meant we had the usual early success of a tax bill (just like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had with their tax cuts) but after that, inertia. And in the case of the Swamp, inertia is really a slow drift to the left and away from freedom and limited government.
Nor is Trump truly a doctrinaire conservative, and it shows in some of his Cabinet selections this time around. (It even started before his election: J.D. Vance, who wasn’t even two years into his Senate term that was, in part, the result of being a best-selling author, was an intriguing and controversial VP selection.) Trump reached for the otherwise liberal Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to run Health and Human Services, and recent libertarian-leaning Democrat Tulsi Gabbard is now our Director of National Intelligence. His Cabinet is generally bereft of Beltway insiders this time, which provides no end of heartburn to the media and “experts.”
But it also leads to big-government ideas, such as the $5,000 baby bonus, at a time when we’re otherwise trying to get the government out of the largesse business. Another example is Trump’s insistence on only modest reforms to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid: yes, certainly eliminating the waste and fraud therein is a good measure, but how about tilling the soil for the idea of reducing dependence on the federal government in the first place? Having one side or the other in charge of benefits without reform only enriches the half in charge, not the vast majority of the whole whose wallets are being fleeced to pay for it.
(Speaking of which: can we lose the language that says the federal government has to “pay for” tax cuts? They never say that We the People have to “pay for” tax or spending increases, perhaps believing that the funding comes through magic unicorn fairy dust.)
While I know that Congress won’t touch changes that broad - and is facing a tremendous pull from the other direction from all the Swamp creatures who can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet taxpayer money: the literal definition of Money for Nothing that even Dire Straits couldn’t touch, even when they included chicks for free - they can begin by pulling back the regulatory state and taking the DOGE recommendations to heart when creating the FY2026 budget. (And, more importantly, having it wrapped by September 30 so we don’t go through the whole government shutdown drama once again. Smash that can flat so that it’s embedded into the road and pave right over it.)
Trump’s been a pretty good one-man show so far, but it’s time for the Congressional chorus to sing along and really get things done.
Endnote: After I wrote this Saturday,
came up with yet another way Congressional Republicans aren’t pulling their weight. When the Democrats strike first, you know there’s an issue.In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.