Trump inflates his success level
Some commentators called it “the weirdest cabinet meeting ever”: President Donald Trump’s leadership team gathered to deliver a litany of praise for the president.
Trump saved some of the boasting for himself, making claims that his administration has been one of historic accomplishments.
“I will say that never has there been a president — with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle — who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated,” Trump said, later adding, “We’ve achieved tremendous success.”
We’ve previously checked Trump’s claim in April that “no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days” and found that assertion to be False. But given the high-profile setting of Trump’s comment — his first formal cabinet meeting — we decided to take a look at his new statement.
Presidential and congressional scholars aren’t any more convinced than they were in April. “Trump’s boasts are empty,” said Max J. Skidmore, a University of Missouri-Kansas City political scientist who has written several books on the presidency.
Legislation signed by Trump
When we checked with the White House, they noted that in this remark Trump acknowledged exceptions such as Roosevelt. They also pointed to the statistics for the number of laws and executive orders signed by a president in 100 days — a metric that Trump fares well on.
Around the 100-day point of Trump’s presidency, we found that White House press secretary Sean Spicer was accurate on the numbers when he said that the current president has “worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since (Harry) Truman.” We noted that in the first 100 days of his first full term, Truman signed 55 bills; the president with the highest count since then is Trump with 28.
However, none of the bills Trump had signed at that point qualified as major pieces of legislation. package to combat a spiraling recession but also the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and a law expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Obama also implemented two urgent economic programs formally passed in the final weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency — the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the auto industry bailout.
Trump’s most significant legislative achievements may be his use of the Congressional Review Act — a previously littleused power that makes it easier for Congress and the president to overturn federal regulations.
“Some of these regulations are substantively and politically important,” such as the overturning of the Stream Protection Act, an environmental regulation that Trump and others said harmed coal mining, said Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political scientist.
Still, Koger added, “these definitely do not rise to the level of ‘landmark’ legislation, or even ‘major’ legislation.”
Trump’s executive orders
As president, Trump has signed some three dozen executive orders, which also places him numerically above the presidents since Franklin Roosevelt.
A number of these orders have addressed high-profile issues, and some could potentially have significant impacts. One — a visa ban for individuals from certain Muslim-majority nations — remains tied up in lawsuits and is headed to the Supreme Court. Another notable order directs the Treasury Department to stop collecting penalties related to not having health insurance. If this policy is followed and isn’t blocked by the courts, “it could cripple this aspect of the Affordable Care Act without altering the law,” said John Frendreis, a political scientist at Loyola University in Chicago.
Trump also used executive orders to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and to green-light key pipelines that had been held up by the Obama administration. And Trump also announced that the United States would be pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, though he didn’t use an executive order in that case.
These are significant policy changes — but it’s important to note some caveats about Trump’s use of executive orders.
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First, many of these orders started the ball rolling to overturn federal regulations, rather than overturning them in one fell swoop. Often, Congress needs to weigh in to change a law, or cabinet departments must undertake a lengthy administrative process before policies officially change.
And second, new presidents routinely issue orders during their first 100 days that overturn actions of their predecessors of the opposite party.
Just two days after taking office, President Bill Clinton signed orders overturning restrictions on abortion imposed during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and with equal speed, President George W. Bush overturned Clinton’s opposition to a ban on aid to international groups that participate in abortions.
“Every president uses executive orders, especially when they cannot pass legislation because of a hostile Congress,” Frendreis said. “So his actions here are typical, and not unusually impressive.”
Our rating
In his cabinet meeting, Trump said that rare is the president “who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done, between the executive orders and the jobkilling regulations that have been terminated.”
Scholars of the presidency and Congress are unconvinced that Trump’s legislative and administrative output is exceptional by historical standards. Trump has signed a relatively large number of bills so far, but comparatively few with significant impact. And while some of his executive orders have made an immediate impact, most have merely expressed his policy preferences or set in motion a process that may, or may not, change policies down the road.
We rate the statement Mostly False.