Is it China? Is it Iran? Is it North Korea? Is it Putin? Is it Barack Obama, who’s decided to stick around Washington, rather than head back home, as most former presidents do? No. It’s none of these obvious challenges to President Trump. His greatest challenge will be none other than – the United States Senate.
But, you say, the Senate is still under Republican control. Unfortunately, not really. There may be more Republican Senators than Democrats, 52 to 48, but in order to actually bring anything up for a vote, it takes 60 of the 100 Senators to do it. That means that under the Senate’s current rules, even if all 52 Republicans favor passing something, they’ll need 8 Democrats to ever vote on it.
There are a couple of exceptions to this. A few years back, when Democrats were in the majority in the Senate, Harry Reid got frustrated with Republicans blocking Obama appointments to various positions, including to federal judgeships. So Harry Reid just changed the rules, by a simple majority vote, for such appointments. So now, Republicans can and will do the same.
NERD ALERT! I’m going to get into the weeds here. The other exception is through a process called “reconciliation.” Once Congress passes a budget, it can pass a bill with only 51 votes, and “reconcile” that bill with the budget. This is how the Republican Congress plans on repealing Obamacare, even though they’ll never get 8 Senate Democrat votes to do it. However, anything done to “replace” pieces of Obamacare, will require 60 votes (and therefore Democrats can torpedo any replacement if they want to), and in my view, they’ll probably want to, and try to blame it on Republicans.
One other point on reconciliation. We all know you’re not supposed to reward bad behavior. But Congress just might get rewarded for its bad behavior last year. For the first time since Republicans took back the Congress, we failed to pass a budget last year. That means that this year, we can pass two budgets, and reconcile a different piece of legislation with each budget. One will be used to repeal Obamacare, the other will probably be used to pass the Trump tax reform plan (without Democrat votes.)
However, everything else on Trump’s agenda: building a wall, cutting regulations and red tape, beefing up our hollowed-out military, etc. will require 60 votes to get any of it voted on and passed into law. And if the Democrats in the Senate won’t play ball, nothing gets done. So the Democrats in the Senate are the greatest threat to President Trump getting his agenda for Making America Great Again done.
Is there anything that can be done? Yes, there are a few things. First, Republicans in the Senate, by a simple majority vote, could change the Senate rules, and no longer require 60 votes to bring something up for a vote. Should they do this? In my opinion, yes. Will they do it? In my opinion, no. Why? Because Republicans in the Senate say they will be in the minority again someday, and it would make it harder to stop future Democrat Senates from passing liberal stuff.
Another thing which can be done. A lot of the Obama agenda was not actually passed by Congress. Obama did it by signing executive orders (remember his pen and phone?) Trump can undo these things by signing his own executive orders, thus undoing Obama’s actions. (When you live by the sword, you die by the sword.)
And finally, President Trump may try to win over some Democrat Senate support by dealing with Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid’s replacement as Democratic Leader in the Senate, who is, after all, a fellow New Yorker, and a recipient of Trump’s financial support over the years. In addition, there are a bunch of vulnerable Democratic Senators up for reelection the next time around, many of whom are in red states (one’s Trump won.) Trump may be able to go after them in their own state if they are too obstructionist. We’ll see how effective that is.
Sorry if we wandered into the weeds a bit this week. But as Joe Biden would say, this is a big _______ deal! (And no one in the mainstream press is talking about it.)
