Once he’s in office, Trump will face sharp reality check
Running for president, Donald Trump promised an immediate revolution — to quickly rebuild America’s cities, overhaul the tax code and deport millions of illegal immigrants.
Just last week, Trump vowed to get started right away on building a wall at the border with Mexico and repealing and replacing President Barack Obama’s health care law.
But ahead of his swearing-in Friday, the high expectations that Trump has set are running into the logjam known as American democracy.
Trump imagines a presidency of vision and velocity, but his big-ticket items cannot be done by presidential edict. They will require consensus on
Capitol Hill, emerging from a deliberative process that takes time and the navigation of a labyrinth of constituencies and special interests.
Trump’s team has devised a full legislative calendar with congressional leaders that begins with health care, but already Trump’s ambitions have been slowed somewhat.
The Republican majorities in both chambers are moving swiftly to dismantle parts of current law but are still discussing how to replace it.
A House vote Friday on a budget measure, which included steps to begin repeal of the health law, was preceded by hours of skittishness among conservative and moderate members about whether Republicans were moving too fast, too soon. The vote passed 227-198. Similarly, a spending package to rebuild roads, bridges and airports — a priority for leaders of both political parties — could get bogged down by squabbles over disbursement.
“I don’t think the government was built for speed,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Several Trump advisers acknowledge that congressional procedures dictate that “the wheels of change move slowly,” as one put it.
But Kellyanne Conway, the incoming counselor to the president, said that she was confident that Trump’s agenda will gain momentum.
“The Trump effect on Washington, D.C., is not going to be a fresh coat of paint on a rusty structure,” she said. “It’s going to be more of a gut renovation.”
Still, for a man who has spent his career as his own boss, the art of the deal may soon have to yield to the art of patience.
“He’s never had a boss in his whole life. It will be a sobering reality to have 535 bosses here — and more to the point, more than 200 million bosses scattered across the country,” Rep. Mark Sanford, RS.C., said.
The tempo is sure to frustrate Trump.
It also risks making him appear to be ineffective to the masses of voters who bought into his campaign persona as a successful deal maker and strongman who could blow up the Washington establishment and — seemingly overnight — better the lives of everyday Americans.
Members of Trump’s inner circle are grappling with how to manage expectations and are looking for ways to demonstrate quick action and claim early victories.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence — who spent 12 years in the House before being elected Indiana’s governor and is intimately familiar with the unpredictable volatility of Congress — has been central in those talks, according to senior transition officials.
There are areas where Trump’s administration sees opportunity to act unilaterally, such as negotiating trade deals or lifting Obama-era regulations. Trump plans a series of executive actions on a range of topics in his first days in office.
He also plans to announce his pick for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
The nomination is expected to consume partisans on both sides and could take several months to reach confirmation.
Another roadblock: public resistance and protests, in particular on immigration, as well as potential resistance among more mainstream Republicans — including House Speaker Paul Ryan — to Trump’s most controversial proposals, such as a federal deportation force.
“That’s not happening,” Ryan, R-Wis., said last week when asked about such a force during a CNN town hall forum.
A victim of Trump’s rapid-fire approach to legislating, Democrats say, could be bipartisanship.
“The approach they are taking seems to be explicitly partisan and to try to run as fast as they can,” said Phil Schiliro, who served as White House legislative affairs director during President Obama’s first term. “But I think there will probably be brakes on the system. It’s just the nature of legislation, the way House and Senate legislators work.”
In pushing to move as fast as possible, the Republicans also will run the risk of being accused of hypocrisy.
Republicans criticized Obama for moving too rapidly to pass the 2010 health care law, which was the subject of 14 months of debate as Democrats tried, and failed, to attract GOP support.
The Senate held 100 days of hearings on the matter, and the House held 79, Schiliro said.
Nevertheless, rank-andfile Republicans like what they are hearing from Trump.
“He’s trying to exhort a molasses-like institution to act more quickly,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala. “When you’re the coach of the team, you always emphasize speed. But how fast the players go is how fast the players go.
“The coach can only do so much.”