No. of Recommendations: 15
I think that there won't be a lot of gigantic change with either candidate on most economic regulatory and federal budget matters....either long or short term. The President just doesn't control that much.
On this we disagree. Using the various tools which the Right Wing think tanks have examined and identified, there is much damage that can be done, and with a compliant Supreme Court it is unlikely that the “checks and balances” will play any part.
Last Trump term we saw Pentagon monies funneled into building the wall even after Congress refused to appropriate additional funds for it. The USSC? “It’s OK.”
I have a two relatives who work for regulatory offices in the Federal Government. One retired because of the unrelenting pressure from above, a syncophant installed as head of the agency who decided “everything would be done differently now”. She was replaced by, you should not be surprised, another acolyte who did as she was told.
The other is lower level, in the FDA, and she says she was not unscarred, as pressure to approve drugs faster with less testing and fewer resources was strong indeed. Expect more of the same.
Yes, those are only two small examples, but Irecall that in the first administration they were wholly unprepared to win, and now they’ve had eight years to put the mechanisms in place and consider how to best leverage their advantage. Again, forget the C&B of the USSC, only the legislature stands in the way, and depending how the votes tally out that might not be much of a firewall.
I’m generally in favor of policies I don’t like, so long as the population has voted for them and they don’t violate the Constitution and so on. I will complain, of course, if they gut the ACA, I’m exceptionally unhappy with the out-of-thin-air restrictions on abortion (admittedly that’s how it came to be the other way too, so…) and so on. But I see a strongman without illusion or consideration of anything else - it’s a “my way at any cost” mentality which I don’t believe I’ve seen before in my lifetime. Even Nixon, as underhanded a thug as he was, didn’t take it this far.
The President controls a lot, most of them just haven’t had the gall to ignore the provisions set in the founding documents, or try to reverse long standing policies on a whim. That is not true, at least not with this candidate, nor with his supporters in Congress.
