Trump wields executive orders he once bashed
WASHINGTON — President Trump will mark the end of his first 100 days in office with a flurry of executive orders, looking to fulfill campaign promises and rack up victories ahead of that milestone by turning to a presidential tool he once derided. But Trump’s frequent use of the executive order points to his struggles getting legislation through a Congress controlled by his own party, and few of the orders themselves appear to deliver the sweeping changes the president has promised.
White House aides said Trump will have signed 32 executive orders by Friday, the most of any president in their first 100 days since World War II. That’s a far cry from Trump’s heated campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against his predecessor’s use of executive action late in his tenure as President Barack Obama sought to maneuver around a Republican Congress. Trump argued that he, the consummate deal maker, wouldn’t need to rely on the tool.
“The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” said Trump at a town hall in South Carolina in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.”
But after taking office, Trump has learned to love the executive order.
In an email blast to reporters on Tuesday, the White House touted the sheer volume of orders as evidence for the suspect claim that “Trump has accomplished more in his 100 days than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt.” The White House has defended the use of executive orders as necessary to accomplish the speedy solutions it says the American people elected Trump to enact.
At first, the president’s West Wing advisers fashioned an onslaught of executive action to set the tone for this term, with the centerpiece of that first-week blitz being Trump’s travel ban. But that hastily drawn ban was rejected by the courts. A second replacement order also remains in judicial limbo.
Presidents frequently turn to executive orders when they struggle to advance their agendas through Congresses controlled by the opposition party. In Trump’s case, he’s struggled even though both houses of Congress are in the hands of Republicans; his health care bill never even came for a vote in the House of Representatives after it drew sharp criticism from moderate and conservative Republicans alike.
And in the Senate, Republicans need to win over some Democratic lawmakers to get the 60 votes needed for passage of a contested bill. But the Senate is generally more inclined to cut bipartisan deals than the House because senators have statewide constituencies.
“This president has found that legislating is hard work,” said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. “Executive orders are the easiest, simplest way to showcase action by the president to begin to fulfill some of the pledges made in the campaign.”
Obama signed 276 executive orders during his eight years in office, slightly less than Bush (291) and Bill Clinton (364) did in their two terms, according to data from UC Santa Barbara.