Donald Trump’s radical right-wing agenda will be stripped bare in Congress.
Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promises were bombastic, largely divorced from reality and will be de-fanged or dumped on Capitol Hill.
The president-elect has already been tripped up by what should have been an easy slam dunk — getting his cabinet appointments through the Senate.
But even Republicans couldn’t stomach Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, and have serious reservations about Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.
Other appointees, a collection of loyalists, political hacks and wealthy donors with questionable experience, will likely face tough grilling in confirmation hearings.
As embarrassing as this prelude to his presidency has been, Trump will face even more headwinds in Congress, once he takes office in January.
Donald Trump will be the emperor with no clothes once he takes office.
While Republicans control the House and Senate, the GOP majorities are so thin they will have to call on Democrats for help with many legislative proposals.
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Republicans will hold a 220 to 215 advantage in the House and an even thinner majority in the short-term with the departure of three Republican members.
In the Senate, Republicans hold a 53 to 47 majority, but with a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation, nothing will move without Democratic support.
Some hill watchers predict 90 percent of Trump’s campaign agenda will go by the wayside or be substantially modified.
On the campaign trail, Trump made 93 promises and added several more on his campaign website, at the Sep. 10 presidential debate, and in a Sept. 5 economic policy speech, according to Ron Filipkowski. who tallied the count for the MeidasTouch Network.
“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill…We’re closing the border and we’re drilling drilling drilling. After that I’m not a dictator,” he told Fox commentator Sean Hannity.
Already, many of those promises are dropping like flies.
Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine and hostilities in the Middle East within 24 hours of taking office.
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Since making those boasts, Russian state media has aired naked photos of Melania Trump, and Vladimir Putin has ridiculed Trump’s peace proposal.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already said the nation would settle for nothing less than a “just peace,” which means a Russian troop withdrawal.
Other NATO members have vowed to continue their support if Trump cuts funding or pulls out. If that were to happen, Trump, who has effectively boxed himself in, could suffer a significant foreign policy defeat early in his term.
As for education funding, Trump vowed to cut funding on “day one” for any schools that teach “critical race theory” or transgender students. None currently do.
Congress has rejected previous Trump proposals to cut grants and the Education Department’s budget. Congress holds the “power of the purse” and oversees grants “to ensure that the federal administrating agency is held accountable.”
In addition, under the “Impound Control Act of 1974,” the president is prohibited from withholding funding approved by Congress in their budget.
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Trump promised to expel millions of undocumented immigrants also on “day one” as part of the biggest deportation program in American history.
Immigrants are turning themselves into border agents to seek political asylum. (Photo: ICE)
Migrants, including those with pending asylum claims and those who have been living here for years undocumented will be taken into custody and deported immediately, according to his various statements.
Trump has threatened to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, but it only applies to males 14-years-old and older from countries at war with the United States — not immigration.
At various times during the campaign Trump vowed to completely close the border using U.S. combat troops; reinstate his remain in Mexico policy for asylum seekers; increase criminal penalties for illegal entry and reinstitute a travel ban.
But the president simply doesn’t have the power to close the border, which he learned during his first administration. The courts, including the conservative Supreme Court, rejected his executive orders to restrict immigration.
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In short, he would need Congress to make significant and complex changes to the law that will require Democratic support.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also already said she will not permit “remain in Mexico” to resume and most recently clashed with Trump over his apparently false claim that she would halt migrant caravans.
In a telling Goldman Sachs survey, 94 percent of Wall Streeters don’t believe Trump will live up to the campaign hype. They expect more people to enter the United States than leave in 2025.
Incoming migrants are expected to average between 500,000 and 1 million a year — above pre-pandemic levels — although down from the Biden administration annual average of about 1.75 million and 3 million last year.
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Deportations are likely to face lawsuits and logistical constraints, potentially causing economic upheaval from an exacerbated worker shortage the nation is already facing, according to the survey.
“Our forecast is only moderately below the pre-pandemic trend because there are legal and logistical limits to executive action,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote.
On day one, the Trump administration more likely will only begin deporting illegal immigrants already in custody in state, local and federal jails awaiting deportation. But they number in the thousands, not millions.
Meanwhile, the one-time, mass deportation of the estimated 2.3 million immigrants who entered the U.S. in the last year would cost at least $315 billion, according to the American Immigration Council.
The “ultimate cost” would average out to $88 billion annually, or $967.9 billion over the next decade, it reported, calling the expense “devastating.”
In fact, given budget constraints, many of his promises are ludicrous on their face.
On the fiscal front, Trump promised no taxes on tips, Social Security payments or overtime pay, while car loan interest and state and local taxes would be deductible.
He also promised an across-the-board income tax cut for taxpayers, new cuts in the corporate tax rate and extension of Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut.
Social Security and Medicare would be off limits including any increase in the retirement age.
In all, they would cost as much as $9.75 trillion over ten years, according to analysts.
Most of that cost will be layered on top the current $35 trillion national debt, which Trump increased by 25 percent during his first administration.
Trump plans to raise revenues through hefty tariffs on imported goods — effectively a sales tax on U.S. consumers. But at best, the tariffs he envisions would raise only $2.8 trillion over 10 years, if he levies a 10 percent tariff across-the-board and 60 percent on Chinese goods, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Tariffs also lead to other negative effects. The Federal Reserve could raise interest rates to offset price increases and quell inflation, and US corporate profits would fall along with household incomes.
Lower projected corporate and individual tax revenues would offset nearly $1 trillion of increased tariff revenue, according to estimates.
To raise revenue, Trump also proposed cutting 33 percent of the federal budget by laying off thousands of workers. He’s named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a special non-governmental commission to identify the cuts.
But on Capitol Hill, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is already being dismissed out of hand.
Without touching entitlement programs like Social Security, cutting defense spending or eating into interest payments, Musk’s goal of cutting $2 trillion is unattainable, according to experts.
“It’s just mathematically impossible to find $2 trillion,” Glenn Hubbard, a former economic adviser to George W. Bush and former dean of Columbia University’s Business School, told the Economic Club of New York.
On Wall Street, 42 percent of investors said they expected insignificant or very modest spending cuts, according to the Goldman survey.
Trump won’t be in a position to rubber stamp any of Musk’s proposals. They would first have to go through Congress, which is loath to cut programs affecting constituents.
Even, long-time conservative columnist George F. Will brushed off Musk’s impact
“They are an advisory committee with no formal power. My column periodically advocates cutting certain items from the budget. My column has as much power as that committee is going to have,” Will said in a recent television interview.
Trump’s promises to lower oil prices by half during his first year in office are also already being discounted.
Trump might be able to incrementally lower the price by cutting regulations or opening up federal lands to drilling, energy analyst Patrick De Haan said in an NPR interview.
But because oil is a global commodity traded on world markets, “countries outside of the U.S. – like OPEC countries, Russia, Saudi Arabia – would likely offset any increase in U.S. production by cutting their own,” he said.
“Nobody’s going to be profitable at $35 a barrel, which is roughly half of where oil prices stand today,” De Haan said.
Saudi Arabia and OPEC members are already struggling to deal with a looming supply glut that has pushed oil prices below $70 a barrel for weeks.
The list of promises goes on and on, and many are budget busting.
He’s called for building an Iron Dome missile defense shield for the entire nation, record defense spending, a $10,000 per child tax credit for home schooling. federal funding for faith-based drug treatment centers, housing for 33,000 homeless veterans. sending astronauts to the moon and Mars, and the construction of 10 new “Freedom Cities” among others.
Given Trump’s long history of double-dealing and outright lies, the nation is in for a harsh reality check. Most of those promises will vaporize into thin air now that the election is over.