Claiming mandate, GOP Congress lays plans to propel sweeping conservative agendaWashington Post, Jan 1, 2017, David Weigel
<snip>
When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than a Democratic president standing in the way, a soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump seems ready to sign much of it into law.
The dynamic reflects just how ready Congress is to push through a conservative makeover of government, and how little Trump’s unpredictable, attention-grabbing style matters to the Republican game plan.
That plan was long in the making.
Almost the entire agenda has already been vetted, promoted and worked over by Republicans and think tanks that look at the White House less for leadership and more for signing ceremonies.
<snip>
The irony, as Democrats realized after the election, was that congressional Republicans were poised to have more influence over the national agenda in 2017 than congressional Democrats did after the 2008 election that put Obama in the White House with his party in control on Capitol Hill.
While the Democratic majority in 2009 was larger than the GOP advantage this year, the Democrats were hamstrung in ways they came to regret.
Responding to the Great Recession, they spent the transition and first month of 2009 on a $831 billion stimulus package, with Obama aides openly hoping that they could pass it with bipartisan supermajorities. Every House Republican and all but three Senate Republicans opposed it, and within 20 days of inauguration, the first tea party protests had broken out against it. Protesters twinned their opposition to the stimulus with opposition to the bank bailouts, which had bipartisan backing.
Since November, Republicans have preempted any problems like this by making no attempt to frame their agenda as bipartisan.
<snip>
In the short term, Democrats are focused more on Trump’s Cabinet picks and the looming Supreme Court nomination. In 2009, 59 Democratic senators were occasionally bogged down in getting the 60th vote to confirm lower-level Obama appointees such as Tom Perez as an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department and Harold Koh as a legal adviser at State.
In 2017, thanks to Democrats’ change of the filibuster, Republicans no longer need to get 60 votes for cloture on nominees; they need a simple majority for any administration position or any judicial opening lower than the Supreme Court. This, Democrats admit, will give Republicans more running room and more floor time to pass bills. Shellshocked after being defeated in an election few people expected they could lose, some concede that Trump’s ability to command media attention will make it harder to turn their losing congressional battles into headlines.
Read more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/claiming-mandate-gop-congress-lays-plans-to-propel-sweeping-conservative-agenda/2017/01/01/9840338a-ceee-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.56dd43f74410
