President Trump doesn’t like the rules of Congress and wants to change them. His agenda has been challenged at every turn and Mr. Trump thinks he needs more power to get it through.
“It’s just a very, very bureaucratic system,” he said on Face the Nation. “I think the rules in Congress and, in particular, the rules in the Senate, are unbelievably archaic and slow-moving.”
Donald Trump is trying to approach government by using business principles, taking aim at the 60 vote threshold in the Senate for many of the key elements of his agenda.
In essence he is blaming the Constitution, which embodies the separation of powers for the cumbersome process required to get things done through Congress.
During a recent interview with Fox News to discuss his first 100 days as president, Mr. Trump denounced the constitutional system of checks and balances as “archaic.”
“It’s a very rough system. It’s an archaic system,” Trump said. “It’s really a bad thing for the country.”
Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the president is thinking about amending or even abolishing the First Amendment to stifle what they consider to be unfair media criticism. When asked by Jonathan Karl whether they had considered a constitutional amendment so that the president can sue his critics, Priebus responded: “I think it’s something that we’ve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story.”
President Obama himself often attempted to avoid dealing with Congress by using and threatening to use executive orders to get things done. In spite of that, he said in 2016, “If you disrespect the Constitution by threatening to shut down the press when it doesn’t say things you like or threaten to throw your opponent in jail or discriminate against people of different faiths. If you do that before you are elected, then what are you gonna do when you have actual power to do those things?”
President Trump, his legislative agenda largely stalled more than 100 days in office, is lamenting the “archaic” rules of Congress.
When defending why he wasn’t as productive as he promised his supporters he would be during his first 100 days, he said on Fox News that the process of getting things done in Congress is “a very rough system. It’s an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.”
“Well, I think things generally tend to go a little bit slower than you’d like them to go,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “It’s just a very, very bureaucratic system. I think the rules in Congress and, in particular, the rules in the Senate, are unbelievably archaic and slow-moving.”
Then the president zeroed in on the real issue by saying that Democrats can block him from furthering his agenda by filibustering legislation in the Senate. “All they do is obstruct,” he told CBS. “All they do is delay. Even our Supreme Court justice, as you know — who I think is going to be outstanding, Justice Gorsuch — I think that it was disgraceful the way they handled that.”
After the first 100 days in office, many of the president’s priorities, such as repealing and replacing Obamacare, tax reform and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are languishing and are uncertain to get through Congress.
President Trump is likely to go ahead to get rid of the filibuster. He recently tweeted that the GOP should consider if it can’t get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. He even threatened a government shutdown of prove his point.
“We either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good “shutdown” in September to fix [the] mess!” he said. He told Fox news, “We don’t have a lot of closers in politics, and I understand why: It’s a very rough system. It’s an archaic system.”
“You look at the rules of the Senate, even the rules of the House — but the rules of the Senate and some of the things you have to go through — it’s really a bad thing for the country, in my opinion. They’re archaic rules. And maybe at some point we’re going to have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different.”
“You can’t go through a process like this. It’s not fair. It forces you to make bad decisions. I mean, you’re really forced into doing things that you would normally not do except for these archaic rules.”
But will changing the rules be a good thing? Once President Trump leaves office, what of the next president. Things could easily go from bad to worse.
Presidents don’t like their powers limited. Donald Trump wants more power — and he wants it quickly.
If he was able to get rid of the filibuster, he would be placing a lot of power in the hands of the majority party. Getting rid of it completely would change the face of American politics for good. Yes, it would clear a major hurdle for President Trump in passing his agenda. But, what of future presidents? Whether he targets the filibuster specifically or not, his attitude toward his own power is clear: the more, the better.
Could removing or adjusting the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for one reason (i.e. making it easier to sue members of the press) set a precedent for the removal of other freedoms?
Every principle of the U.S. Constitution will be repudiated in one form or another. See Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, and page 451.