Whether President Trump and his team recognize it and make a bold stand for his agenda, or whether they choose to try to spin their way past it, the success or failure of the president’s first 100 days will be defined by what’s in or out of the continuing resolution soon to be before the House of Representatives.
Unfortunately for President Trump, as things stand right now, everything candidate Donald Trump campaigned against, and everything that his voters expected him to protect them from, is in the budget and about to be funded for the rest of the year.
And almost nothing that the president promised he would do is in the budget and set to be funded and implemented in this fiscal year.
- Sanctuary cites? Funded.
- Obamacare? Funded.
- Massive “refugee” resettlement in America? Funded.
- Planned Parenthood? Funded.
- The Border Wall? Not funded.
- More border security and Border Patrol Agents? Not funded.
- The promised military build-up? Not funded.
It’s as if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still in charge on Capitol Hill.
And in a sense they are, because their liberal policy goals and their Big Government, Big Spending ways are the defining precepts of Capitol Hill’s Democratic and Republican establishments, and hence the real bipartisan majority in Congress.
What the president has not yet grasped, and the Capitol Hill insiders on his team aren’t telling him, is that the Democrats will threaten to filibuster everything the President wants—and the Capitol Hill Republican establishment will go along with it because, when it comes to the President’s conservative—populist agenda, they are on the same side as the Democrats.
That is why the purported attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare was such a spectacular failure.
From a strictly policy perspective, Ryan and the House “leadership” had zero interest in repealing the Obamacare cost-drivers that have wrecked the private insurance market.
They want responsible working adults to subsidize healthcare insurance for snowflakes who live in their parents’ basement and refuse to work, and they have no intention of allowing healthy young working people to escape subsidizing health insurance for older adults with chronic lifestyle health conditions brought on by smoking and obesity.
As the president surveys the wreckage of his first 100 days’ legislative agenda he would do well to review who, exactly, opposed his agenda before and during the campaign.
True, as expected, Democrats opposed it, and they will continue to oppose it no matter how much the President “reaches across the aisle.”
But so did Speaker Paul Ryan—and quite vociferously we might add.
Trump’s opposition to Syrian “refugee” resettlement?
“That’s not us,” said Ryan.
Defunding Planned Parenthood? Ryan has squelched that every time it has come up.
The Border Wall?
As our friend Cheryl Chumley of WND reported back in 2015, soon after Ryan was elected Speaker a border wall, complete with a security patrol, went up around his private home in Wisconsin, but funding for the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which would have put a double-layer fence along a 700-mile stretch of U.S. border property, was dropped from the Omnibus spending bill Ryan rammed through the House.
As President Trump’s 100-day mark approaches for once the judgements of the establishment media and his supporters will be in alignment—without funding for the Border Wall and his other priorities, and with the continued funding of the many Obama—Clinton policies he campaigned against—the President’s first 100 days will be judged a failure.
And these policy failures are indicators of a more fundamental failure on the part of the president. As well-intentioned and committed to his agenda as he may be, he has failed to grasp that Paul Ryan is the author of these failures not because he is an inept Speaker, but because he is on the other side.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle and as spokesman for now-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mac Thornberry. He has served as a staff member or consultant to some of America’s most-recognized conservative political figures. He is a member of American MENSA and studied international relations at Worcester College, Oxford.
This article was originally published at ConservativeHQ.com. Used with permission.
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