A week from Monday, when the post-inauguration revelries, which include a "Deplorables Ball", are no more, Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, will for the first time become fully aware of the 115th Congress of the United States of America. Although he has met many of its members, he has not confronted the body as a whole. When he does, he might change his opinion of the Founding Fathers, who in their wisdom devised the Electoral College system that shields us from the tyranny of a few large states, and delivered the presidency to Mr. Trump despite his failure to obtain the votes of a majority of Americans.
Now he will be introduced to another of the Founders' wise inventions, a system of checks and balances that operates to prevent any president from having everything his heart might desire. Only the House of Representatives can originate a bill that involves taxation or spending; the Senate has final say on treaties and Supreme Court appointments, among other things. Various presidents have eroded the power of an often supine Congress, but enough of it remains to teach our new president that even the most powerful man on the planet cannot push through his program without the broad consent of the Congress. In this case, a Congress populated by politicians who have no reason to do the president any favors.
Several have carried their states or districts by wider margins than did Trump. Some bear the scars of his rather rough treatment of them during the campaign season. In the Senate, the votes of three Republican defectors, added to those of a united Democratic opposition, can scupper any Trump program. Reviewing the new president's proposals will be some of the Republican senator attacked by Trump:
John McCain, "Last in his class at Annapolis …. I like people who weren't captured",
Lindsey Graham, "What a stiff. In the private sector he couldn't get a job,
Marco Rubio, "Little Marco … He's got nothing…. I've never seen a young guy sweat so much",
Rand Paul, "The people of Kentucky should not allow him the privilege of remaining their senator…"
These senators and others owe Trump little except revenge. So, too, Paul Ryan, the House speaker and the man who will decide which of Trump's proposals come to a vote. He handily survived Trump's refusal to support his reelection bid and retained his hold on the speakership despite a Trump threat to back an insurgent. I am told by old Washington hands that the absence of a reservoir of goodwill on which Trump can draw means a rather short honeymoon for the man who will be president just days from now—two months at the most—which has important implications for the course of events in the coming year.
On the president's first working day he will be able to redeem some important campaign promises. He will use what Obama called the presidential pen to repeal several regulations his predecessor put in place by executive order, without consulting Congress. He will set in train the procedures that must be followed in order to reverse other Obama executive orders. My guess is that the Paris environmental accord is for the chop, as are many regulations on the use of fossil fuels and oil and gas drilling. He will roll back some workplace changes decreed by Obama, including one that broadens the application of the overtime-pay requirement. There will be others, some of which will face court challenges by unions, Democratic governors, and environmental groups. Then the serious work begins.
Trump will want to announce various protectionist measures, and this is one area in which the president has some freedom to make some changes to the current regime off his own bat, probably enough to give him ammunition for a few early-morning triumphant tweets. That should satisfy a man who is, after all, a gesture rather than a conviction politician.
But his power is not unlimited. For one thing, he cannot even count on support for protectionism from states that ended up in his column on Election Day. Texas, which gave 52 percent of its votes to Trump—a smaller portion than Republicans usually claim—is the nation's largest exporter of goods, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Mexico is its largest market, and some 382,000 jobs in the state depend on sales to its southern neighbor. Texans have little enthusiasm for repeal of NAFTA, which Trump has criticized as "one of the worst [trade] deals ever made." For another, it is not clear that a president has the legal authority to target a single company, should one stand up to his pressure. Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute believes Trump would need "new legislation to carry out the threat."
Most important, Ryan is a traditional Republican free trader, and not about to support the new president's effort to convert the Republican party to protectionism. He told an interviewer, "We're not going to be raising tariffs. We think tax reform is the better way of addressing imbalances, levelling the playing field without starting trade wars, without having the adverse effects that you get with protectionism or trade wars." Trump can't threaten Ryan, who won 85 percent of the votes in the primary in his Wisconsin constituency, and 65 percent in the general election, while Trump lost that state's primary to Ted Cruz, and beat Hillary Clinton in the general election by a mere eight-tenths-of-one percent.
A similar problem revolves around the federal budget for the coming fiscal year that begins October 1. Trump wants large cuts in corporate taxes, says he won't cut Social Security or Medicare, and has promised major increases in military and infrastructure spending. That means adding to a budget deficit that will already be swollen by the increased interest payments on the national debt resulting from rising interest rates. Conservatives in the House won't go along with that, and are already taking the initiative in setting spending and taxing priorities.
Trump campaigned in 140-word tweets but now must govern in multi-volume legislative proposals. He writes in The Art of the Deal, "You're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish." He's undertaken to make America great again. Accomplishment to follow.
Or not. Much depends on a so-far overlooked Congress.