Congress and Trump: When Will the Fighting Start?

Trump’s recent defense of the Congressional Ethics Committee is not an example of an outsider President hankering after ethics, but, rather, a struggle for power.

He has won the Presidency, but he has not won the party, and his party will still insist on governing. Trump needs to get his agenda passed by Congress. All the political struggles since Trump became the heir apparent must be understood in this light. Newbies in politics look on the Republican Party and Donald Trump and see a single army, strong of purpose, marching in lockstep. This is a fantasy. One piece of legislation, The Congressional Review Act, hints at the fight to come.

DIVISION STREET

The Republican White House and the Republican Congress are at odds, to a greater extent than any shared-party government within my living memory. The celebration of the Red Cap Rising covers up deep divisions between Trumpism and the conservative movement.

On the best days, even under the most cordial of relations, the Congress and the Executive do not agree one hundred percent. Our system is designed to stop them from being in perfect harmony; the natural inclinations of power and the ambitions of statesmen argue against it.

Even if everything else in the relationship is perfect—even if the Executive and the Congress share similar ideologies, go to the same parties, are from the same places, went to the same schools, speak the same language, obey the same social protocols, and were elected after normal campaigns—there is still friction. This discord is the product of purposeful design. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Madison wrote that in Federalist 51. He also wrote this:

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other — that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights

In other words: I, Jemmy Madison, like the rest of the Founders, am really, really nervous about the mob. So we’ll design this system to insure nobody can get too much power. Anyway, Congress and the Executive will never know perfect mutual peace.

Even if the victor hadn’t been Trump—even if it had been a more conventional Republican, like Rubio, or Bush, or … Cruz … disagreement would still be the case, because the current Republican Party is a broken vessel for carrying conservative water.

Party unity’s a funny thing. The Democrats will never know the untroubled calm of the monolith: infighting is part of the faction’s DNA. “I am not a member of any organized party,” said Will Rogers, “I am a Democrat.” But for Republicans, it’s different. It’s an old hope of conservativism: a single-minded alliance to fight the left. “Come ye cool cool considerate set / We’ll dance together to the same minuet / To the right, ever to the right” sings the Tory faction in the musical “1776.”

As far as the dream of GOP consensus goes, the Donald is the worst-case scenario. Trump spent more time hammering the Republicans than he did hitting Clinton, and far more brutally. Bad blood is expected between the two parties. The Democrats are designed to fight the GOP. It’s Pepsi and Coke, the University of Texas and A&M: all part of the show. But the Republican leadership, by philosophy, style, and temperament, are at odds with Trump.

TRUMP IS STILL A PROBLEM FOR PARTY UNITY

At the dawn of the Trump era, Republicans find themselves in an odd position. Consider how you’d feel if an rich dudebro who beheaded the nobles of your village came to rule over you, to represent you, to dictate to you. What would your reaction be? Even if he led you to victory, would you embrace him wholeheartedly?

You might give your support to Caesar, you might defend Caesar, you might scorn at Caesar’s enemy when Caesar asks you to, but would you love Caesar? Doubtful. And if Caesar had come to power riding roughshod over the land you’d tilled for a generation, you’d want to get him before he got you. And you’d do it sooner, rather than later, when you could still set the terms.

To quote from the movie Mean Girls:

Why should Caesar just get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, right? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody because that’s not what Rome is about! We should totally just STAB CAESAR!

At the end of the day, the GOP is only master of Congress, not of the White House. The Republican Party controls the Executive, but in name only. What makes Trump so exhilarating to his supporters, and unsettling to lots and lots of conservatives, is that he is an usurper, an up-jumped ex-Democrat from New York, and God knows what that will entail.

As the Washington Post’s James Hohmann notes,

There is palpable fear among the smartest people on the right that Trump, after he faces his big setbacks in the Oval Office, will follow the playbook that led Arnold Schwarzenegger astray in California. “The Terminator” governed initially as a conservative after winning in the 2003 recall, but then he shifted leftward and jumped the shark after voters rejected a referendum to curb union power – hiring an outspoken liberal to be his chief of staff. Jared Kushner, arguably Trump’s most influential adviser, has given more than $100,000 in contributions to Democrats. There is nothing in his background to suggest that the new president’s son-in-law will advise him to follow the more conservative course when it is politically treacherous.

There is another problem for the Republican Party, passing over the awkward will-he-won’t-he King Joffrey question. It concerns the long-term future of the movement.

Donald Trump came to power through populism. and the right, like Madison, is skeptical and worried about the mob. Conservatism has an uneasy alliance with populism, using it to get what it wants. Behind the co-opting of widespread Middle American discontent lurks the possibility that the crowd might want more; perhaps an end to economic inequality. The neoliberal order, which benefits the leadership of both parties, might come crashing down.

This does not sit well with the toppermost. Trump does not have a mandate, but he scares them all the same: he represents a source of might which is beyond their control. More importantly, the Donald has shown you don’t need to go through the approval process to get power, which is deadly to the conservative movement.

For years, achieving office under the GOP’s banner has required noted anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist’s go-ahead and blessing. Republican aspirants had to sign a pledge saying that they would never raise taxes. That’s just one example: there are many more. Vetting processes in America’s pretend meritocracy are never as vulgar and obvious as movies would have you believe. The vetting process is a subtle affair. People who want to run for office, especially in the Republican Party, go through many tests, unspoken and spoken, before they are blessed from on high. Much the same as dating, it’s not so much a matter of being perfect as it is not failing any of the basic benchmarks.

A thousand little checks of approval were required to headline at the Party of Lincoln. Money is only the most blatant example. Such filtering was how the right maintained power. Now, however, we are in a new era, one where the old systems of control within the party may be collapsing. The GOP must act now to avoid being taken fully, irreparably taken over by whatever Trump represents.

The time has come for the Republicans to offer Trump a razor dipped in sugar: the Congressional Review Act.

THE CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT

The Congressional Review Act. I realize how thrilling that last sentence reads: four words which are dull beyond the dream of C-SPAN. But stay with me here.

The CRA was passed during the salad days of the Gingrich Speakership when the GOP was eager to defang any potential regulation passed down by the Clinton Administration. Essentially, if Congress doesn’t like a piece of federal regulation put forth by the White House, then Congress can kill it within sixty days through a fast de-validation process. Naturally, they have to get the President’s approval or override his veto. But these are small matters, when weighed against the power to strike down the power of the Executive.

Hohmann again:

The Congressional Review Act is such an incredibly powerful tool that it has only been used once in the two decades it has been on the books. In the next couple months, it will probably be used about half a dozen times.

The Congressional Review Act is another step in the eternal struggle between the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Federal Government. George Martin described the Lennon-McCartney partnership as “Imagine two people pulling on a rope, smiling at each other and pulling all the time with all their might.” That’s Congress and the President. Except they alternate between smiling, screaming, and kissing. And they’re in the middle of a Fight Club where people in expensive suits are throwing money at the person who’s winning. Oh, and the rope’s on fire.

As explained above, the GOP wouldn’t favor using it with a Republican President. But, again, here’s the trouble with Trump. He articulates two opposed positions; which ones are the Republican bigwigs supposed to put faith in? Do they listen to him when he says there’s too much red tape, or do they pay attention to Trump when he tells the crowd he’s going to go after abusive businesses? Which Trump do you believe? The GOP doesn’t know either.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN

Ostensibly, the CRA will be deployed in the first months of the Trump Administration. The CRA will probably be used to strike back Executive mandates on the highly profitable fields of petroleum and natural gas.

“Cutting regulation” is what Congress will tell Trump the CRA is used for. Trump might even believe it. He believes most of the things people tell him. But the CRA, if it comes into regular use, portends so much more. It opens the door to Congress chaining the Executive’s hands in future matters.

Scenarios are easy to image. Suppose that in February, Congress decides to cut those overtime regulations installed by Obama. Suppose that in April, Trump decides he wants to move against The Hill. Maybe he decides workers need more cash, or maybe he wants to buy cred from the base. For whatever reason, he decides to put the overtime rules back.

Trouble is, he can’t. Once the Legislative Branch has moved, the Executive can’t act solo inside its own territory: Congress has already invoked the CRA. Now, Trump has to go back to Congress and ask them to pass a new overtime bill. That’s the power of the Review Act, if assertively used. Using the Act, Congress achieves the following:

1) They increase the power of the Legislative Branch.
2) They get credit from their backers, who want the regulation sunk.
3) They make it hard for future Presidents to regulate private interests.

Like falling asleep in the chocolate factory, it’s a no-lose situation for The Hill. If Trump is as right-wing as the Left fears? Well then, no foul, no harm: the CRA doesn’t have to be used. If Trump is a secret lib, Congress can still block him. And if Trump is neither fish nor fowl but a third, horrifying creature, a “fiswl,” then Congress has still increased their own sway. They either get an ally, or a bargaining chip. The rise of an Orange Sun throws all of the possible choices into sharp relief. The throne has been won, but the game is still on.