The Role of the 116th Congress: Legislation or Litigation?

Good news!  After returning from a luxurious, two-week vacation, it looked like members of Congress might have finally developed a desire to do their job: legislating.  So far, the 116^th Congress has accomplished little in actual legislative accomplishment; besides virtue-signaling measures such as the condemnation of bigotry that failed to call out the anti-Semitic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar directly and the attempt to override President Trump’s national emergency declaration. 

While it should not come as a surprise that the Democratic-controlled House has failed to pass meaningful legislation into law, even the Republican Senate has seemed unable to do its job: confirming people.  Four Republican Senators came out against the nomination of Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve board, including his formal rival Mitt Romney. Cain ultimately withdrew his nomination after left-wing heroine and fair-weather feminist Gloria Allred threatened to humiliate Cain if he did not bow to the will of the progressive left by taking himself out of the running for a spot at the Fed. Another one of President Trump’s nominees for the Fed, Stephen Moore, withdrew his nomination after Senate Majority Whip John Thune expressed his doubt that enough Senators would vote to confirm him after Senators Joni Ernst and Lindsey Graham, not usually among the GOP Senators scared of their own shadows, expressed their hesitations about supporting Moore. Once again, most of the criticism surrounding Moore had to do with issues of character as opposed to his actual policy platform.  Although, it probably didn’t help that both Cain and Moore did not tow the Washington establishment’s preferred line when it comes to monetary policy.

In addition, nearly five dozen judges nominated by President Trump to serve on the US District Courts  have yet to receive a confirmation vote in the full Senate.  If the Senate fails to make significant progress when it comes to confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should definitely do what he did last year and cancel the August recess to focus exclusively on making the judicial branch great again. 

It looks like the inaction that has come to define the first 100 days of the 116^th Congress may soon come to an end.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged optimistic from a meeting with the President at the White House last week, a stark contrast to their previous, highly publicized meeting with the Commander-in-Chief over immigration at the end of the last Congress.  This particular meeting focused on infrastructure, one of very few areas of at least some bipartisan agreement in Washington.  Schumer claimed that the President decided that the infrastructure project would ultimately cost $2 trillion.  The media who greeted the Democratic leaders had little interest in the discussion that took place on infrastructure.  The first reporter asked “how hard is it to work with this President on infrastructure when he is stonewalling you on investigations?”  For once, Pelosi actually had the correct answer, telling the reporter “we cannot ignore the needs of the American people as we go forward.” The second reporter asked if the topic of Congressional investigations came up during the Democratic leadership’s conference with the President.  Only one of the reporters actually asked a question related exclusively to infrastructure and not on the never-ending Congressional investigations.

President Trump has pitched an infrastructure project as part of his America First agenda.  He has repeatedly compared American airports to third-world countries and complained that if not for America’s adventures in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice.  The high-cost infrastructure project will likely draw the ire of the deficit hawks in the Republican Party.  With that in mind, President Trump should do his best to prevent the Democrats from hoodwinking him when it comes to the battle over how to fund the infrastructure project.

Let’s start with how not to fund it: a gas tax.  Reports surfaced that the administration had looked into possibly raising the federal gas tax in an effort to pay for the infrastructure spending. At the very least, the first member of Congress to endorse President Trump in 2016, New York Congressman Chris Collins, has actually suggested doubling the gas tax and airline fees in order to pay for the infrastructure project.  Does this guy want to lose re-election in the reddest district in the Empire State?  He almost did in 2018, after he faced charges of insider trading.  He initially dropped out of the race but re-entered after the eight Republican county chairs in his district failed to unite around a replacement.  Collins managed to emerge victorious in the general election, defeating his Democratic challenger by a measly margin of one percentage point in a district that President Trump carried by nearly 25 points. Between the black cloud that hangs over him because of the FBI investigation and now his idiotic comments on the gas tax, it might make sense for Collins to step aside and prevent himself from going down in humiliating defeat.

To those who missed it, an effort to repeal a gas tax in California failed last year but it passed in the areas of the state that President Trump carried.  In other words, Republican voters don’t like gas taxes or taxes in general for that matter. After all, Republicans dominate in the rural areas that do not have the luxury of public transportation. Americans living in these parts of the country feel the proverbial “pain at the pump” and will not look kindly on politicians who make filling up more of a hassle. For those interested in a historical case study as to what happens to Republican Presidents who raise taxes, look at what happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992. 

Surely, the Democrats will also try to roll back the provisions of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act in an effort to pay for the infrastructure package.  The Democrats continue to poo-poo the effects of the legislation, despite the fact that 82 percent of Americans received a tax cut.  Ironically, many of the 18 percent of Americans who probably did not benefit from a tax cut live in either Pelosi or Schumer’s state.  The Democrats and their allies in the media know that President Trump can play the economy as one of his strongest cards in the 2020 Presidential Election and they desperately want to take that away from him.  Don’t just take my word for it.  Bill Maher said that he hoped for a recession because he described it as “one way you get rid of Trump.”  Raising taxes may slow the GDP growth that has put a feather in President Trump’s cap. 

As for how to actually spend the $2 trillion, lawmakers should do their best to make transparency a top priority.  In Rhode Island, blue and green signs all over the state keep residents up to date on the progress of improvements to roads and bridges; letting voters know the cost, status, and progress of the projects.  The blue and green signs in Rhode Island raise another interesting point: the role of the states in infrastructure projects.  State governments seem like natural habitats for infrastructure projects.  After all, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.”  Infrastructure definitely falls into that category.  It would make sense for the states to pick up at least some of the tab for the infrastructure project since the Federal government has little spare change, to put it mildly.  President Trump and Congressional leadership have a lot of questions to ponder when putting together an infrastructure package, such as the role of public-private partnerships and the role of the Federal government in overseeing how states spend Federal tax dollars on infrastructure.  Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy proposed block-granting Medicaid money to the states as part of an Obamacare repeal and it might make sense to do the same thing with healthcare. With that in mind, all federal money earmarked for an infrastructure project should have strings attached to it, since liberals seem to have a different definition of the word “infrastructure.” 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy mentioned a more logical method for paying for an infrastructure package during a press conference. The GAIIN Act, supported by both the House Freedom Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, would auction off excess government property and use the generated revenue to kill two birds with one stone: pay down the national debt and fund infrastructure projects in the 100 poorest communities across the country. A 2011 report found that “underutilized and obsolete facilities” cause a “$1.6 billion drain on (the) Federal budget.”  The report estimated the number of “excess and underutilized facilities” at 45,000.  According to a press release announcing the legislation, the proposal to sell off excess government property and assets would incorporate the “various provisions” of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986, which required “specified federal agencies to sell certain outstanding loans.” Like most common sense ideas in Washington, the GAAIN Act failed to get off the ground in the 115^th Congress.  Fortunately, every single cosponsor of the bill remains in Washington for the 116^th Congress; meaning that they can easily introduce it again.  The bill, introduced by Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly, attracted an equal number of cosponsors from both parties. Republicans Ted Budd, Alex Mooney, and Warren Davidson signed on as cosponsors, as did Democrats William Lacy Clay, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Frederica Wilson; all members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  If such an idea can attract the support of lawmakers such as Wilson, who had a well-publicized spat with President Trump, then surely it will enjoy broad bipartisan support in the full House and Senate.

Besides passing the GAAIN Act, only spending cuts will enable an infrastructure project to go forward without dramatically adding to the debt.  As long as Democrats remain in control of one House of Congress, such a prospect seems unlikely.  While some cause for optimism existed following the meeting between President Trump and Congressional Democrats, it now looks like the next 100 days of the 116^th Congress will have just as much legislative inactivity as the first 100 days.

Sadly, it looks like a standoff with the executive branch over the Russia witch hunt will dominate Congress’s time and energy for the remainder of the 116^th Congress.  The House Judiciary Committee threatened to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress if he refused to hand over the full, unredacted Mueller report; even though doing so would violate the law because it contains grand jury testimony.  Nonetheless, all 24 of the “angry Democrats” on the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt. 

If Congress continues to try to re-litigate the 2016 Presidential Election in addition to pursuing a “re-do” of the Mueller investigation, then legislation such as the GAIIN Act will inevitably end up on the back burner.  If such a scenario plays out, the American people will emerge as the biggest losers of the 116^th Congress.