Republicans: Finish Enacting Your Agenda

The Thousand Islands is one of the most notable tourist attractions in Upstate New York.  Located on the border with Canada along the St. Lawrence River, the site draws thousands of visitors each year. Those who participate in the boat tours have the opportunity to tour Boldt Castle.  Boldt Castle’s first floor is completely finished, decorated with ornate furniture reflective of the time period when its construction first began.  George Boldt, the castle’s namesake, intended to build the castle as a present for his wife.  After his wife died, Boldt ordered the construction workers to stop working on the castle. To this day, Boldt Castle’s upper floors remain unfinished.   

 

Unfortunately, Boldt Castle serves as a perfect metaphor for the Republican agenda in Washington.  The finished parts of Boldt Castle represent the Neil Gorsuch appointment to the Supreme Court, by far the biggest success of the GOP-held Senate this year.  The upper, unfinished floors represent the parts of the Republican agenda that have failed to gain traction, especially Obamacare repeal and construction on the wall.  Maybe Republicans like leaving those floors unfinished so they can go home and tell their constituents that they will work on those legislative initiatives should they re-elect them.  But haven’t they already done that?  In my opinion, constituents would much rather hear their elected representatives brag about all the things they did while serving in Congress as opposed to hearing about what they plan to do.    

 

President Trump, who moves at the speed of light compared to the snails in the swamp, plans on visiting several states to push for tax reform.  He has already visited Missouri and North Dakota, two states where Democratic Senators have to face re-election next year.  The fact that President Trump won both of those states by double-digit margins makes their re-election bids more challenging.  He hopes that his visits to these states will put pressure on the Democratic Senators representing them in Congress to support his tax reform effort. Some of the main goals of tax reform include reducing the number of brackets from seven to three and reducing the corporate tax rate.  The President seems eager to accomplish this legislative goal as soon as possible.  However, Congressional leaders do not seem to have the same sense of urgency.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that tax reform may have to wait until 2018.     

 

 

In an interview with Sean Hannity on the day of his selection as President Trump’s running mate, Vice President Mike Pence said “We’ve drifted off course from the ideals of Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Republican agenda into big government Republicanism…I always used to say, you know, if we keep spending money like the Democrats, voters are eventually going to go with the professionals.  And in 2006, they did.  They turned us out.”  Congressional Republicans should heed the Vice President’s warning.  What happened in 2006 could very well happen again if Republicans do not provide a sharp contrast between themselves and the Democrats.  As I stated in one of my columns last week, the voters have had it with the uni-party.  Sometimes I actually wonder if Republicans prefer being in the minority on Capitol Hill.  That allows them to skirt responsibility for all the chaos that takes place in DC.   

 

 

Should the Democrats manage to win back control of Congress as a result of perpetual Republican inaction, they will probably begin proposing a series of legislative proposals along the lines of the sanctuary state bill in California, the radical abortion bill in Oregon, and the recently-passed law in College Park, Maryland that allows non-citizens to vote.  Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats never get cold feet when it comes to passing their agenda.

 

Speaking of cold feet, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement after meeting with President Trump on Wednesday, saying “We had a very productive meeting at the White House with the President.  The discussion focused on DACA.  We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, that’s acceptable to both sides.”    Excluding the wall ?!?  What kind of a deal is that? Nothing would demoralize the Trump base more than failure to keep the promise on the wall. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) put it this way on Twitter: “If AP is correct, Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable and damaged beyond repair.”  For the record, when the Democratic leaders said “acceptable to both sides” they really meant “acceptable to Democrats.” While some people have begun the process of burning their MAGA hats in response to Pelosi and Schumer’s statement, I find that a little premature.  President Trump made a few statements of his own on Thursday morning, saying that he was “close” on a deal with DACA and indicated that building the wall remained a top priority.  I sure hope Pelosi and Schumer’s statement was “fake news.”   It’s pretty sad that POTUS feels that he has to make deals with his not-so-loyal opposition because Republicans have proven themselves incapable of governing. 

 

Right now, only small segments of the southern border with Mexico have any type of barrier in place.  Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke recently wrote a piece in USA Today where she illustrated how the presence of a border wall in Yuma, Arizona has proven quite successful at reducing crime and the flow of “drugs and humans that quickly crossed a vanishing point and dispersed into all communities across the country.”  Duke ends her article by saying “The lessons of the Yuma sector are clear and obvious, and we should apply them to the rest of the border.”  Unfortunately, Congress does not have the same sense of urgency as Ms. Duke when it comes to building the wall; despite the fact that nearly all of the Senate and an overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives supported the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of fencing across the southern border.          

 

Simply put, if Democrats have their way, traditional America will only exist in a museum, like Boldt Castle.  America will become Western Europe.  Everything the secular progressives ever dreamed of will become law.  The thought police will become more powerful than the actual police.  They will have the ability to claim a complete and total victory in the culture war.  The demise of America will only accelerate if the wall fails to get built.  It’s a shame that Republicans act as if they’re on the brink of declaring an unconditional surrender despite the fact that their voters just gave them a mandate to keep fighting. 

 

While Boldt Castle will likely remain unfinished for the foreseeable future, Republicans on Capitol Hill still have time to fulfill their campaign promises by passing their agenda into law.  If they fail to do so, President Trump may have to court moderate Democrats to help him pass his agenda.  If that happens, Establishment Congressional Republicans will become isolated; like one of the 1,864 islands that make up the Thousand Islands.