Election key: Trump turnout

 

Election key: Trump turnout

War over ballots

Gordon L. Weil

A single factor may be the key to the outcome of the midterm elections – turnout.

President Trump gets it.  He gives signs of believing that it’s better for his Republicans if fewer people vote. 

In the 2020 presidential election, he lost by 7 million votes out of the 156 million between the two main candidates.  Four years later, he won by over 2 million votes out of about 153 million.  The Democrats shed over 6 million votes.

He asserts that he won in 2020 and could conclude that a lower turnout favors Republicans.  Because most Republicans vote at the polling places on Election Day, while most Democrats prefer early voting, often by mail, that might have led him to oppose mail voting.

Republicans want to tighten access to voting.  They say they are combating election fraud though there’s little demonstrated evidence of it.  But Trump claims his loss resulted from widespread fraud.  Massive efforts to prove that point totally failed, but the claims persist and accepting them is a required mark of loyalty to Trump.

Voter fraud is a myth. While there may be rare problems, they are so minor that they cannot influence the results.  But donning the cloak of protecting democracy, the GOP can seem to be the good guys while preventing many Democrats from participating.

The Republicans try to limit voting access and question vote tabulation (only when they lose).  Making voting access more difficult, the GOP expects to deter lower income workers and the poor from making what could be a big effort to register and vote in person.  They also try to influence how votes are counted, which aims at throwing out Democratic ballots.

Trump is currently thinking about declaring a national emergency giving him the power to reduce or eliminate mail voting and to impose strict identification rules to screen out lower income and less educated voters who won’t have time or transport necessary to collect needed paperwork.  Reducing mail voting could get some help from the Postal Service.

He has fought hard to secure passage of the SAVE act that could allow him to accomplish his goals, but Congress won’t pass his bill.  Declaring a national emergency would be a shortcut, though it would be challenged.

This year, increased turnouts for midterm primaries encourage uncertain expectations of a big November turnout.  In Texas, for example, the 2.3 million Democratic votes compared with 2.2 million Republicans ballots.  Both the turnouts and the Democratic showing were unusually high, but three-quarters of eligible voters did not participate.

In November, Republicans who are disappointed with Trump could stay away.  But if the Democrats are thought to be leftwing extremists, GOP voters are unlikely to swing to their side.  That’s why there’s so much handwringing by pundits when a Democratic Socialist wins a primary.

But, even merely by staying away, a lower GOP turnout could help the Democrats. And it’s possible that high prices caused by the Iran War and uneasiness about immigration enforcement could cause some to protest by voting for Democrats.  Turnout will depend heavily on whether the elections are a referendum on Trump.

In practice, the question is whether voter suppression will work and if so, whether it will have a partisan effect. The GOP may believe that educated, affluent people will vote and remain reliable Republicans.

But, despite the focus on the Democrats losing the blue-collar vote, they are making major inroads among what once was a solid GOP vote. If women, affluent, and better educated people continue moving toward the Democrats and show up at the polls, they could upset the GOP strategy.

If Trump aims to make it easier for those groups to dominate the electorate, he may have missed that they are moving away from the GOP.  If he believes less educated voters are increasingly Republican, he may have erred in making voting access more difficult for them.  Plus, their share of the electorate is declining, while the more affluent Republicans are defecting.

In both parties, campaigns could boil down to GOTV – get out the vote.

Rarely does an issue affect turnout to the point it can determine the election outcome.  But consumer price hikes could cause results that go well beyond partisanship.  Prices rose under Biden, and Trump won by promising to reverse them quickly.  The Iran war made the situation worse, but he tells voters that small gas price increases are worth it.

Whatever politicians claim, consumer price increases have not been small.  When gasoline shoots up more than one dollar a gallon, it can fuel the kind of turnout that flips the Congress. 

Talk of a Blue Wave, a massive Democratic win, has begun to pass the straight-face test. But it may take a Blue Wave to drown the voter suppression that Trump seeks.

 

 

 

 

Trump counterattacks Supreme Court

 

Trump counterattacks Supreme Court

PLUS Pundits’ mistakes

Gordon L. Weil

Trump fights the Supreme Court

Trump wants to limit birthright citizenship, mainly because he does not want the children of illegal foreigners to become citizens.  The Supreme Court has overruled Trump, finding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any person born in the country and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., (excluding children of foreign diplomats).

Justice Kavanaugh, voting with the majority, pointed out that Congress could define what is meant by being subject to American jurisdiction.  Because it had failed to do so, he agreed with the majority.  (The minority thought the Amendment applied only to Blacks and that the parents must be permanently domiciled in the U.S.)

The Kavanaugh opinion broadly hinted that the administration could have a chance to limit the scope of birthright citizenship, if it induced Congress to define “subject to the jurisdiction.”  It could draft a bill and send it to Congress, either creating a good campaign issue or getting it passed.

But that is the kind of legislative work Trump avoids.  He dislikes the time it takes and the need for dealmaking with members of Congress.

Instead, he issued new executive orders with his own definitions of who could be excluded under the jurisdiction provision.  Besides the undocumented, he wanted to exclude person who came to the U.S. for vacation childbirths (who are already denied visas).  His orders will go through a new and lengthy judicial process and will likely be suspended until a final decision is made.

Trump is launching his boldest remaining ideas and moves before he runs the risk of facing a hostile Congress.  He avoids exposing himself to the possibility of congressional rejection now, but might again use immigration to influence voters.  His support on reversing illegal immigration and expelling people has been falling, so he needs a boost.

Pushing back on the Supreme Court ruling also enables him to express his growing and openly hostile attitude toward the Court.  He believes its conservative majority betrays him, when justices he appointed fail to faithfully support his policies.  He wants to put the Court in its place, joining Congress in accepting or approving his policies. 

He expects other branches of government to support his presidency.  For him, the unitary executive should extend to other branches by dominating or ignoring them.

Pundits mislead, use anecdotes to support their prefab analyses

The November elections are either a national test of movements the MAGA and Democratic Socialist movements or a collection of the usual midterm challenges to the president.

The results could be a validation of Trump, a Blue Wave or the continuation of extremely narrow majorities in Congress.

The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are engaged in a national struggle between DS and moderates.  They could blow their chances if it prevails.  The pundits view the facts influenced by this thinking.

The main directions of analysis are that (1) the election will depend on a few swing races and will be close, (2) the Democrats are throwing away their chances and (3) prices at the pump may turn Trump supporters away from voting for Republicans.

The underlying belief is that Trump’s Iran war is making GOP candidates vulnerable, but that Democrats are failing to take advantage of the opportunity it provides.  And what’s true in Michigan is also true in Maine, because politics have been nationalized.

To support that belief, news people spread out across the country to produce anecdotal reports based on a few interviews.  Their reports are tailored to conform to the national narrative.

I won’t hazard my analysis, because, like the pundits, I don’t know enough.

But here are some questions that I think should be explored before leaping to conclusions based on a short visit.

1. What is the local media saying about state or district politics differing from national analyses?

2. What is the price at the pump in the state compared with pre-Iran?

3. What are in-state industry and commercial groups telling their members?

4. How does the state behave politically compared with national elections and why?

5. Are candidate age and demographic change relevant?

6. What are the recent indicators of conservative or liberal leanings among voters?

I don’t see questions like these addressed in the New York Times or Washington Post.

In Maine, the national media sees Troy Jackson, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, as evidence of the risky, progressive takeover of the Democratic Party.  What’s the risk in a state where Democrats favored Bernie Sanders in 2016 and which was one of only three states to approve same-sex marriage though a referendum?

The bottom line is that you are your own best pundit.  What do you think?  What about people you know?  Whatever you conclude, don’t rely on the national media to tell you about yourself.

Power of the superpowers wanes; rise of "middle powers'

Power of the superpowers on the wane

Rise of the 'middle powers'

Gordon L. Weil

The idea that the world can be dominated by superpowers is outmoded. There soon may be no superpowers left, especially as the U.S. quits aspiring to the status.

A superpower is nation that, when it says “jump,” smaller countries jump.  A superpower can influence events anywhere in the world or at least in large parts of it.   Each may use an array of measures, overt and covert, legal and illegal, to gain an advantage over another.  Most of the remaining countries are either spectators or victims.

Why does a nation want to be a superpower?  The obvious but incorrect answer is territory.  Of course, the country wants to be surrounded by a buffer of states.  From that comes the idea of a central nation and its satellites.   A country may not need to occupy others, so long as it can be assured of a sympathetic and compliant regime.

A superpower seeks to show that it produces better results than any other nation and the greatest benefit for itself and its people (or at least its ruling class).  To accomplish these goals, it must bend others to its will and make them tributaries to its success.  Its tools for domination may be military, economic or political.

At the end of World War II, analysts saw three superpowers, based mostly on the size, reach and the power of their armed forces.  Foremost was the U.S, the leader and supplier of the other two – the Soviet Union and Great Britain.

Soon, there were only two.  Britain didn’t have the economic strength to retain its role.  The U.S. could treat it like a satellite, and India and other colonial possessions could rebel and shed its rule, a pattern set by its earliest lost colony in 1776.

Later, there would be only one superpower.  The Soviet Union underwent a process similar to Britain and even faced growing discontent at home when its people began to see how well others lived.  It disintegrated and Russia, though the second nuclear power, stayed onstage but no longer a star. 

Its failure to gain a victory in Ukraine revealed that its power was overrated.  NATO worried about its potential aggression along its borders, so expanded and regrouped.  Russia was no longer the cosmic threat its had once been, and it could be deterred.

The conventional wisdom after the Soviet Union was that, dominated by a benevolent and democratic America that had no territorial designs, a kind of permanent peace could prevail with Uncle Sam as the world’s top cop.

Pax Americana was undermined by at least three forces.  One was terrorism, the ability of non-state players, to shape world events.  A superpower could seem vulnerable when others toppled its key buildings and successfully thwarted its policies. 

Another change came from China, the historical giant that was modernizing itself into a world force.  It is a military threat in its Asian neighborhood.  It wants Taiwan, and knows the U.S. won’t sacrifice American lives to protect that island.  In the South China Sea, China probably wouldn’t risk conflict by attacking American planes or ships if they are kept on station.

Then came Trump’s ego.  He focuses on his personal influence and fame and the accumulation of an ever-larger fortune.  While he uses American power, especially the U.S. military, to support his goals, he may undermine its superpower status.  His inconsistency has made America appear weak.

He launched a war on Iran.  As Russia’s Putin learned, when the limits of his arms supply were revealed, the reputation of American armed forces suffered.  Also, seeking control of the Fed, he weakened confidence in the dollar, possibly the most powerful instrument of the country’s domination.  Overreaching led to underperforming. 

Finally, there is the superpower that never happened. The creation of the European Union was meant to yield a new world economic and military power.  On the military side, the EU hired out its defense to the U.S.  It’s better at talk than action on foreign and defense issues, leaving decisions to 27 governments, each with veto power.

The EU integrated national economies, preventing the Europeans from attacking one another and launching another world war.  That worked.  Through supranationalism, Europe was supposed to become the partner of the U.S., almost its equal.  That didn’t work.  Nationalism survives; Europe’s flag and anthem are purely symbolic.  In short, it can’t get its act together.

In effect, the world is arriving at competition more than conflict among the waning superpowers.  A new model is coming from countries, like India, Saudi Arabia and Canada, that are increasingly adept in dealing with China, Russia and America.

Canada’s Prime Minister Carney issued what others have called a “declaration of independence.”  Those he labelled as “middle powers,” including European nations, may be the most influential actors in world affairs.

 

Fed chair alarms market; Grenada; a GOP moderate

 

Fed chair alarms market; Grenada; a GOP moderate

Brief notes of the week

 

Gordon L. Weil

New Fed chair raises alarm

The new Federal Reserve chair has lost support in financial markets in record time.  The non-financial media and the political world have not caught on, but his moves to recast the Fed’s role is causing reactions approaching alarm.  One leading expert opined that “the bond market puked on him.”

The Fed sets short-term interest rates and buys and sells federal debt to influence long-term rates.   It has huge economic clout, alongside the federal government’s spending and taxing. But Kevin Warsh wants to keep quiet about the Fed’s future thinking on interest rates and to reduce its holdings of federal debt. 

Warsh wants the market to drive the economic policies, uninfluenced by Fed forecasts.  He believes that market participants should “play the game rather than watch the referee.”

That would make the economy a playing field (between what parties?) with the Fed assuring fair play.  Meanwhile, the Fed would say less and, presumably, do less.  The Federal Open Market Committee, composed of Fed Board governors and regional Fed bank presidents, could meet less often.

The market wasted no time in reacting to Warsh’s closed-mouth policy, scolding him for not recognizing that the Fed is a major player not simply a ref.  Left unsure of the Fed’s future thinking, the market lifted interest rates.

FOMC members are independent of the chair, making it likely that his new policy lost him support.  The powerful president of the New York Fed bank quickly sketched his view of the economic future.  Other members split with Warsh on rates.

Ironically, the man Trump sent to lower interest rates finds that the president’s Iran war and his own policy shift increase rates.

Grenada or Greenland

The State Department is reportedly closing several diplomatic offices abroad, including the embassy in Grenada, a small, independent country in the Caribbean, located about 100 miles from Venezuela by sea.

The U.S. invaded it in 1983 when Ronald Reagan was president, because of fears it was coming under the influence of Cuba and Russia.  In more recent years, it has developed a two-party political system with elections resulting in peaceful change.  Grenada’s sovereign is Charles III, the King of Grenada and of the United Kingdom.  Grenada has a population of about 115,000.

Its economy depends on tourism and the export of nutmeg and other spices.  Its major economic problem is the large burden of public debt.  It is avid about the game of cricket, and China has financed a $40 million stadium there.

This year, the U.S. opened a consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.   The U.S. has an embassy in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, to which the consulate is subordinate.  Greenland’s sovereign is King Frederik X of Denmark.

The population of Greenland is about 57,000.  While it has half the population of Granada, President Trump wants to acquire it over the opposition of Greenland, Denmark, the EU and Canada.  Its area is 6,288 times greater than Grenada’s.

Trump worries about China having invested in Greenland, and wants to take overt action.  He is unconcerned about Grenada, where China has also shown interest.  Despite its potentially strategic location, Grenada is not in the running to be the 51st state.

How to be a Republican moderate

A moderate is defined in Congress as a senator or representative who sometimes splits with their party to vote with the other side.  Their vote may be especially telling if they oppose a president of the same party.

In the age of extreme partisanship, acquiring the status of a moderate requires only a handful of votes in opposition to one’s own party.

But there is one step even better, enabling the dissenter to break with the party to justify home-state claims to be a moderate without the vote making any difference.  You can vote against your party when it has enough votes to prevail without your help.

Voters in the home state are supposed to see the independence asserted by the officeholder, which gains them votes.  Party allies in Congress accept the opposing vote, aware of its help to the supposed moderate and the continued loyalty of the senator or representative. You can almost see the nod and wink.

This week, Maine Sen. Susan Collins was the sole Republican to vote with Democrats on an environmental issue.  No matter, the GOP had enough votes to defeat it.  Facing a tough reelection, Collins could add evidence to her claim to being a moderate.

She also announced that she would vote against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney-General.  By announcing early, she could avoid direct responsibility for being the swing vote.  He would squeak by without her vote.  Maybe her vote would dim memories of her unpopular support for Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Secretary Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

Trump’s goal makes Congress irrelevant

 

Trump’s goal makes Congress irrelevant

Arc de Trump, yes; serious legislating, no

 

Gordon L. Weil

Grumbling about the failure of Congress to perform its designated role, including by me, may be wrong.

The conventional wisdom is that members of Republican majority in the House and Senate retreat before Trump’s assertion of power and his threats to their reelection.  While he has seized control of the nation’s political agenda, taking it way from the branch of government that is supposed to make policy, that’s far from the underlying reason.

Trump apparently believes he can bypass or overrule Congress at will, but a good case can be made that he simply doesn’t care.   It may not matter to him whatever Congress does or does not do.  His goal is not to leave a legislative legacy or to contribute to the betterment of the lives of Americans.

He has little need for Congress, and it has responded by slowing down.  Both the House and Senate have met in working sessions and enacted legislation far less than is normal for Congress.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), the highest expression of Trump’s agenda, is a notable example.  The pro-Trump House would almost reflexively pass his requested spending requests. Importantly, OBBB allowed the president go around the normal and cumbersome appropriation process, especially in the Senate, a less reliable part of his team. 

In the Senate, spending bills are considered by the Appropriations Committee, now under GOP control and chaired by Maine Sen. Susan Collins.  Traditionally, departmental bills would be considered individually but gradually they were adopted in packages.  If passed late, bridging funding would be adopted.

The Republicans had promised separate consideration of each bill, but Trump wanted quick success rather than a legislative process with extended negotiating.  That lightened the Senate work load, and senators got their earmarks, money for home state projects.  Collins, having lost much budget authority, could still bring home the bacon.

While the Senate appears to remain in session more than the House, it’s an illusion.  To prevent gaps allowing the president to make recess appointments to top positions, the Senate holds daily pro forma sessions with a single senator present.  Still, the Senate passes more bills than the House, thanks to a few senators breaking party ranks, but the House lets the bills die.

The House has reduced its work load by taking the longest recess in modern House history.  After it enacted Trump’s budget, Speaker Mike Johnson took any possibility of negotiating with the Senate off the table by sending the House members back home.  He sought to strongarm the Senate, though it was led by his own party. 

Johnson also called snap recesses when he could not gain agreement among Republican members to support or oppose a bill, risking action by Democrats and a few Republicans.  He fights to keep bills, like one on Epstein documents, from coming to a vote.

Both bodies have fewer bills to consider.  Members’ bills become scarcer as party discipline stifles individual initiative.  Even more important is the relative lack of presidential proposals, which would involve the president in prolonged negotiations with Congress.  He does not seek a legacy earned through conventional politics, beyond the passage of a few key bills.

In their new book “Regime Change,” Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan explain the president.  “Trump saw himself as a transformational figure in history, one who was already remaking the world in his image, something few leaders ever had the chance to do so definitively.”

Trump seeks an unforgettable place in history alongside names that have long been revered and remembered.  He does not pursue the acclaim that they had received after the adoption of their legislative programs.  As much as he has tried to show himself as a leader in great crises, like Lincoln or Roosevelt, he has had to create a mythology of comparable achievement.

And he wanted to cement his historic standing quickly, realizing that his influence would be limited to his second term.  That left him no time for Congress and he has ruled by executive orders, even if they are subject to protracted judicial challenges whose outcomes would be delayed for years.  There would no lasting legislative monuments to his leadership.

Instead, his monuments would be tangible, permanent and personal.  His name might be attached to an “Arc de Trump,” the White House East Wing, a Mount Rushmore bust, U.S. currency and passports, a reflecting pool, a D.C. football stadium, and a New York railroad station, plus a Nobel Peace Prize medal.  And personal glory could create the opportunity for personal profit.

In the end, Congress has been bypassed because it cannot contribute to his effort to gain permanent and exalted historical recognition.  While Republican majorities in both houses have bent to his will, Congress is irrelevant to his quest for lasting fame.  That helps explain its failure.

 

Trump’s personal theory of war

Trump’s personal theory of war

It’s a negotiating tool

 

Gordon L. Weil

 “He kept us out of war.”

That was President Woodrow Wilson’s winning slogan in the 1916 campaign.  Within five months of his reelection, the U.S. entered World War I.

In his first term, President Trump sought to send the same message as Wilson.  While not quite promising the U.S. would never go to war, he asserted that the combination of his personality and the strongest armed forces in the world would serve as a deterrent, eliminating the need to resort to war.  There would be no more extended conflicts.

He touted his skill as a negotiator.  Based on his view of his own business experience, he believed he could pressure or convince others to back away from confrontation.  It would mainly be a matter of identifying the weaker party and inducing it to accept his deal.  The vanquished might receive American investment.

Trump’s peacemaking might include this economic development element, likely thanks to his viewing negotiations as real estate transactions.  A country’s losses or concessions might be cushioned by providing it with increased outside investment.  The new economic stimulus would also benefit American investors, especially Trump family operations.  Peace for profit.

Aside from diverting conflict into a business opportunity, Trump has also measured his success in avoiding war by reducing or eliminating the loss of life.  American involvement in conflict situations may take on a cost he clearly dislikes if the lives of U.S. service personnel and others are lost.  Easy victories are best.

The world’s leading thinker about war, Carl von Clausewitz, had written: “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.”  This might be interpreted as favoring negotiations before resorting to war, embodied in a quotation mistakenly attributed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – “jaw, jaw is better than war, war.”  

For Trump, war is an integral part of policy, not left to serve as the last resort. 

Traditionally, peace negotiations bring the parties together because both agree that they want to find an end to a conflict.  Entering talks implies a mutual understanding that compromise is better than an armed confrontation.  Each side knows that it must make concessions.  The negotiations give them the chance to get the best deal for their constituents.

Trump departs from this tradition.   He creates situations, possibly involving the threat of armed conflict, and expects his opponent to offer proposals revealing how far it will go to meet his terms.  If they fail to satisfy him or if their response suggests weakness and the possibility of more concessions, he rejects their response.

If his gambit works, he attributes success to his personal attributes.  If it does not work, he steps up military pressure in hopes of forcing the other side to accept his terms.  His negotiating position, the demands he makes, don’t change, while he increases his saber rattling or the actual use of force.

Venezuela encouraged Trump to believe his methods are correct.  Failing to gain concessions from President Maduro, he invaded, seized the president and intimidated the leadership without the loss of American lives.  An act of war appeared to have paid off.

His tariff policy worked the same way.  He raised duties and expected other countries to make unspecified concessions to get them lowered, and most did.

He apparently believed that the same formula would work in Iran, especially with the support of dissidents there who oppose the Islamic regime.  He failed to get Iranian concessions, but he assumed new leaders, responsive to street demonstrations, would reach a deal on nuclear and other issues.   

The U.S. and Israel could force regime change, possibly in just a few days.  If not, a major display of American power would force acceptance of U.S. demands.  Iran would fold.  War would be the critical element of the negotiation process.   Yet, until now, the war has accomplished nothing positive and has entered its sixth month.

Alliances bolster defense according to Clausewitz, and most NATO members agree.  With U.S. armed forces stretched, Trump was angered by allies’ reluctance to support his offensive war against Iran.   But Trump had already undermined the alliance by proposing to occupy Greenland, the territory of one of his NATO partners, by force. 

American foreign and military policies project Trump’s preferences and prejudices.  His Ukraine policy is influenced by his relationships with Russia’s Putin and Ukraine’s Zelenskyy.  He disrespects his NATO partners, considering them dependent and informing them that Ukraine holds little interest for the U.S.

Trump’s actions express powerful feelings derived from his “morality.”  The Iran war reflects his long-held dislike of its Islamic rule, while his fluctuating policy reveals the lack of a negotiating strategy going beyond the use of force.

Clausewitz wrote: “Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them.”   Trump misses the point.

 

 

  

How Congress could control the president

How Congress could control the president

Fixing slippage in the system

 

Gordon L. Weil

The federal government has changed a lot recently.  Most of the reason for the almost revolutionary change has come from within the system itself.

Congress is heavily responsible.  It is supposed to set national policy.  The president is supposed to execute that policy.  That was the idea behind the Constitution, but it didn’t work for long.  Constitutional amendments were expected to meet change, but they haven’t worked.

The world is far more complicated than it was two centuries ago. Time brings change and change creates complexity.  While it continues to try to set national policy, Congress has increasingly asked the executive branch to fill in the details.  You know, the place where the devil lives.

While policy is set in broad terms, it is reshaped when applied to concrete situations.  Because of emergencies or their enjoyment of exercising power, presidents have increasingly become legislators, often using executive orders to substitute for acts of Congress.

The current Supreme Court has added a new twist on how the government should work.  It has ruled that if a federal power is not clearly defined as legislative or judicial, it belongs to the executive.  Their theory of the unitary presidency leads to the concentration of power.  Though presidents are elected, they have unchecked, regal authority during their term. 

Congress has created independent agencies to regulate private action, maintaining uniform and expert application of the law.   Such agencies exercise delegated legislative power and are kept relatively free of short-term political demands, even when made by the president.

The Supreme Court has ruled that such agencies are subject to the will of the chief executive. Presidents may use the power of appointment and removal of regulators to reshape the law.   Congress has lost its powers; I have previously proposed how they might be recovered.

Congress could counter the centralization of power under the president.  It determines the scope of its delegation of authority.  It has the power of the purse, enabling it to direct if and how the executive spends federal funds.

All presidents, including Trump, have acknowledged these congressional powers, though they may try to stretch the scope of the authority granted to them under law.  The Supreme Court has refrained in recent years from restraining Trump and encouraged the expansion of executive power. 

A president can enjoy the powers of office achieved by election while Congress could recover its inherent ability to set the limits on most forms of executive power.  Two tools – legislative authorization and the exclusive power to authorize federal spending – can do the job.

Congress should always approve any presidential authority subject to a sunset clause.  Every relevant Act of Congress should include a provision terminating the authority it grants without new congressional action.   For existing executive branch authority, Congress should enact an across-the-board sunset clause.

This week, Trump showed why Congress needs to recapture its authority.  He relied on a never-used provision of the ultra-protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 to impose 50 percent tariffs on Canadian exports.  The provision had been unused because the act was a major contributor to the Great Depression and abandoned. 

The provision, almost a century old, had been deemed dead.  Yet nobody had killed it.  Trump unearthed.  Sunsetting would finally have ended it long ago.

It allowed Trump to decide that Canada’s trade measures are discriminatory for which it could be punished.  Because the Canadian tariffs in question were retaliation against Trump’s prior tariff increases, his move amounted to declaring a trade war.

Under a sunset policy, presidents could still have their policies adopted by a friendly Congress, subject to sunsetting during the next presidential term.  An intervening presidential campaign could allow for public debate on the policy.  When renewal time came, it could be the subject of renewed political negotiations.

Another way for Congress to control the executive is through authorizing or denying appropriations, a power that it alone can exercise.  It can refuse to fund proposed presidential initiatives.  It can mandate that funds must be used for specific purposes; Trump should not have been able to eliminate the Agency for International Development by cutting its funds.

The problem arises of what sanction Congress can use, aside from impeachment and conviction, if it is defied on spending by the president.  One obvious option is to block other presidential requests, though that can open new political issues.

The president controls executive office operations funded at more than half-billion dollars annually.  Congress might consider enacting an automatic 10 percent reduction each time required spending is halted by the president.  This, too, might be accomplished by across-the-board legislation.

These changes would require action by Congress and approval by the president.

If Congress does not defend its constitutional powers, then, like the Supreme Court, it is little more than a presidential adornment.  Is that what Americans want?