News. Debate. Community. Levers for a better democracy.
MOST READ
Get some leverage.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Congress
Saul Loeb/Getty Imags
Vice President Mike Pence arrives for a Tuesday meeting with Senate Republicans.
Trump intensifies bid to disrupt the transition, and the GOP sticks with him
Nov 10 2020
The prospects for a civil and straightforward transfer of power are fading fast. A clearly decisive election result is proving unable to shield other norms of democracy from tumult orchestrated by a lame duck with 10 weeks still in power.
President Trump instructed his administration Monday night not to cooperate with emissaries from President-elect Joe Biden, hours after destabilizing American national security by firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper on suspicions of disloyalty. At the same time, Attorney General William Barr authorized his department to break with decades of precedent to investigate claims of voter fraud even before the counting is complete — prompting the Justice Department's top election crime prosecutor to quit in protest.
But Republicans who will remain in authority once Trump is gone, most notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, kept their four years of extraordinary fealty going and aligned behind the president's longshot efforts to sully if not reverse the election result.
<p>"WATCH FOR MASSIVE BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE AND, JUST LIKE THE EARLY VACCINE, REMEMBER I TOLD YOU SO!" Trump tweeted at mid-morning Tuesday in his first all-capitalized commentary of the day, followed seconds later by the more succinct but just as unsubstantiated "BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE!"</p><p>With 10 weeks until the inauguration, there is still time to allow for both a presidential cooling-off period and the necessary preparations to support Biden when he takes over as the most powerful person on the planet. But that period will not last much longer before it's time to contemplate what has been unthinkable: the record of peaceful presidential transitions will stop at 44. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"Are we 100 percent certain this doesn't soften the ground enough so that what seems almost unthinkable now becomes thinkable?" <a href="https://thebulwark.com/be-alarmed/" target="_blank">conservative author Bill Krstol wrote</a> of Trump's efforts to discredit the outcome in a Tuesday post in The Bulwark, a website run by fellow never-Trump Republicans. "A little alarmism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Complacency in the defense of democracy is no virtue."</p><p>Even after the six-week dispute over the 537 votes in Florida two decades ago, every losing candidate in modern times has conceded to the winner within hours of the election's definitive conclusion. Trump has shown no interest in doing so, whether or not his scattershot legal campaign in battleground states gains any traction.</p><p>The Electoral College <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/electoral-college-process" target="_self">is slated to formally confirm</a> the outcome Dec. 14.</p><p>The General Services Administration, which needs to make a formal finding that Biden has won in order to start the mechanics of the transition, still had not done so Tuesday afternoon. The agency has suggested it may repeat its posture from the disputed 2000 election and wait until Trump concedes or the electors cast their votes.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>On Monday evening, the White House told career government staffers they were not to start acting on transition planning unless GSA made its "ascertainment." And presidential personnel director John McEntee reportedly told political appointees they would get fired if he learned they had started looking for work.</p><p>"Our institutions are actually built for this," McConnell said in reconvening the Senate for its post-election session Monday, at which point fewer than half a dozen GOP senators had congratulated Biden as the winner. "We have the system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options."</p><p>Democratic leader Chuck Schumer countered that the refusal by GOP senators to accept the result was "extremely dangerous, extremely poisonous to our democracy."</p><p>The two senators from Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, took things a step further: They demanded their fellow Republican in charge of the state's elections, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, resign to atone for challenging Trump's unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and not doing enough to buttress those allegations. Raffensperger said he was going nowhere.</p><p>Republicans are hesitant to nudge Trump toward the exits, knowing that would infuriate his most devoted supporters — the sort who might be called on next to mobilize and write checks on behalf of the Georgia senators, who face difficult re-election runoffs in January. Both of them losing would deliver Democrats the majority.</p><p>For now, Trump has his base behind him. A poll taken after Election Day found 70 percent of Republicans not believing the election was free and fair, double who held a similar view before the election. The Politico/Morning Consult survey provides the latest evidence of the chasm of partisan understanding: About two-thirds of Republicans say the election results are unreliable, while nearly 9 of 10 Democrats say they trust the results.</p><p>On Monday, Barr authorized prosecutors across the country to probe "substantial" allegations of voter irregularities and election fraud. None have come to light so far, and in any event it's been long-standing practice that such inquiries do not start until after the results are certified. The head of the branch of the Justice Department that handles election cases, Richard Pilger, quit soon after in an email to colleagues saying he was unwilling to help carry out his boss's directive. </p><p>That Florida standoff 20 years ago concerned 537 votes separating the candidates in the single state that would decide the outcome. Now, Biden has leads of less than 1 percentage point in four different states — but the margins are between 12,000 (Georgia) and 47,000 (Pennsylvania) votes.</p>
Keep reading...
Show less
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Joe Biden unveiled a full slate of political reforms early in the campaign but has spent minimal time talking about these issues in recent months.
While you wait: What a Democratic sweep would mean for democracy reform
Nov 02 2020
American democracy has taken a beating over the last four years, but Election Day may set the table for historic reforms.
The severe stress test for democratic norms can be counted on to further intensify if President Trump gets re-elected. Continuation of a divided Congress would likely perpetuate gridlock on most policy fronts. But should Joe Biden win the White House, and the Senate turn Democratic as well, the new president would take office with an ambitious stack of ready-to-go democracy reform bills on his desk — all of them strongly backed by Democrats newly in control of the entire Capitol.
And those sweeping overhauls of the laws governing campaign financing, voting rights, gerrymandering, executive branch ethics, the courts and even the inner workings of Congress would all be both on the table and viable. The question would be how high they would be on a Biden priority list and how much political capital he and his congressional allies would be willing to spend to get them done.
<p>"As dispiriting as it can be how frustrated Americans have become with politics, their anger actually is a source of hope," says Rep. John Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who was the main sponsor of HR 1, the catchall election process, government ethics and money-in politics package that died in the GOP Senate right after the House passed in early 2019. "Because the fact that they're angry means they still care enough about their democracy to want to see it change and improve."</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>To Sarbanes, the voter protections and big money curbs long central to the democracy reform movement remain the most urgent, and the most likely to top Democrats' agenda in the new Congress. </p>
<p>But Trump's four-year assault on democratic norms and institutions has fueled bipartisan support for a new class of reforms aimed at ending self-dealing, cronyism, foreign collusion and other ethics abuses in the executive branch. Talk of expanding the Supreme Court and bestowing statehood on D.C. and perhaps Puerto Rico is mobilizing progressives. </p>
<p>And the Senate's legislative filibuster may also get toppled if Democrats take over and Republicans refuse to cooperate early on. That change would please those who view those supermajority rules as a relic of a Senate culture that's long gone, and as a recipe for the partisan deadlock that has fueled congressional dysfunction. It also would likely be needed to get most fix-the-system bills past GOP opposition and under a President Biden's pen.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The obstacles to changing ethics and election laws remain as formidable as ever. Even reform-minded Democrats this year embraced deep-pocketed outside groups that helped push election spending past <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a record-shattering $14 billion</a>, double what was spent on presidential and congressional contests just four years ago. Bitter lawsuits over voting this year attest to the difficulty of expanding access to the ballot. And partisan divisions tend to flare most heatedly around the rules of the political game. </p>
<p>But the depth of the nation's democracy crisis may be precisely what ushers in change. Trump's norm shredding, the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting recession, heightened reckoning with systemic racism, income inequality fueled by tax cuts and bailouts for the super rich, efforts in many states to suppress the vote this fall — all have riled up the electorate this year, and not just on the left.</p>
<p>Voters are voicing growing unease that rigged rules are keeping an out-of-touch minority in power. Republicans' rush to install Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court was the latest evidence of this cited by Democrats, and it has boosted their fundraising and Senate hopes — along with their ambitions for reform.</p>
<p>"Our political system has so clearly failed the people that the environment will be ripe for a big transformative package to make our government work for all of us," Deirdre Schifeling, campaign director for the progressive coalition Democracy For All 2021, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/28/democracy-america-trump-biden-election" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told</a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/28/democracy-america-trump-biden-election" target="_blank"> The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>Biden unveiled a full slate of political money, lobbying and ethics reforms early in the campaign and much of the consensus democracy reform agenda earned a place in the <a href="https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-07-31-Democratic-Party-Platform-For-Distribution.pdf" target="_blank">party platform</a>. But since <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/joe-biden-agenda" target="_self">ticking those boxes</a> he and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, have spent minimal time talking about these issues during the fall campaign — beyond professing their support for an election that gives Americans many options for voting and doesn't block them from the polls.Biden would face <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/democracy-reform-groups-to-biden-dont-you-forget-about-us" target="_self">considerable pressure</a> from good governance advocates to try to deliver in his first 100 days — and he could, if he decides he can do that while also potentially moving to combat the pandemic, stimulate the economy, address the health care system's shortcomings and curb climate change.<br></p>
<p>Those are big "ifs." But democracy advocates see an analogy to the Watergate era, which also ushered in historic reforms. If the stars align for Democrats, here's what their reform agenda would look like:</p>
<p><strong>Curb special interests. </strong>Democrats would immediately revive the "For the People Act," the other name for HR 1, the sweeping package of voting, ethics and campaign finance reforms the House passed entirely along party lines in March 2019. The bill would modernize voter registration, take aim at voter suppression and gerrymandering, strengthen ethics laws, expand lobbyist disclosure and inject new transparency, tougher limits and public money into campaign financing, among other measures.</p>
<p><strong>Restore voting rights. </strong>The afterglow of the election would spur a new push to update the <a data-linked-post="2636710625" href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting-rights-act" target="_blank">Voting Rights Act</a>. The bill the House <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting-rights-act-2641537798" target="_self">passed last year</a> has since been renamed after the late civil right icon and Georgia congressman John Lewis. The legislation would revive the racial discrimination protections enshrined in the original 1965 landmark law — by once again requiring states with histories of voter suppression to get federal permission to change any election rules. The old rules for this "<a data-linked-post="2636699867" href="https://thefulcrum.us/preclearance-voting-rights" target="_blank">preclearance</a>" were struck down seven years ago by the Supreme Court.</p>
<p><strong>End presidential abuses. </strong>In September the Democrats in charge of seven House committees unveiled the Protecting Our Democracy Act, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/democracy-reform-237909823" target="_self">their plan for curbing</a> executive branch balance-of-power abuses after Trump is gone. The measure would regulate presidential pardons, enforce bans on foreign contributions and expedite enforcement of congressional subpoenas. It echoes some of the bipartisan reforms outlined by Bob Bauer, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, and Jack Goldsmith, who served in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/trump-washington-reforms.html?referringSource=articleShare" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">in their new book</a> "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency." </p>
<p><strong>Strengthen Congress.</strong> While the rest of Congress bickered, a bipartisan Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress quietly but with <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/congress/select-committee-on-the-modernization-of-congress" target="_self">rare bipartisan unanimity</a> approved 97 ideas to make the House more efficient, transparent and responsive to voters. Key recommendations include technology and staffing upgrades, strengthening congressional committees and executive branch oversight and overhauling the budget process. Many of <a href="https://modernizecongress.house.gov/final-report" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">these ideas</a> would need to be turned into House rules or legislation next year.</p>
<p><strong>Limiting minority power. </strong>Curbing or downright ending the legislative filibuster, which allows 40 senators (almost always from the minority) to block a bill, would get intense scrutiny the first time the Senate GOP refuses to negotiate on a high-profile measure. Democrats may also decide that — in part to counterbalance the 22 Republican senators reliably elected from states with 5 percent of the population — it's time to make states out of much more Democratic and ethnically diverse D.C. and Puerto Rico. And they would frame talk of adding more seats to the Supreme Court, or limiting justices' terms, as a way to curb conservative dominance at a time the country is not so conservative.</p>
<p>And if Trump wins? Or if Republicans retain the Senate? Democracy reforms would be put off, but the impetus for them would continue to grow. History tells us that scandals tend to usher in cycles of change. As Sarbanes puts it: "It's when you reach these points of high frustration in the electorate, and a sense that things are fundamentally broken, that you have the opportunity to come in with significant reform."</p>
<p><em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em></p>
From Your Site Articles
- Democrats unveil plan to rein in the presidency in 2021 - The Fulcrum ›
- Democracy advocates plea with Biden not to downgrade reforms ... ›
- Democratic ticket hasn't pushed the reform agenda - The Fulcrum ›
- Biden unveils his democracy reform agenda - The Fulcrum ›
- Puerto Rico votes for statehood - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
Mandel Ngan/Getty Images
Three ways a conservative finds Trump overstepping his bounds amid pandemic
Oct 21 2020
Griffith is a research fellow specializing in financial regulations at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
<p>Stalemate continues in Congress over how to next mitigate the lingering economic pain inflicted by the coronavirus shutdown. Nearly all House members and senators publicly agree on the need to provide assistance to those impacted by this economic crisis. Yet, despite almost six months of discussion, legislation remains elusive.</p><p>President Trump has identified similar concerns and repeatedly expressed support for additional aid. And because of the lack of congressional action, he has aggressively explored an array of possible executive actions linked to existing statutory authority. </p><p>Much of this authority granted by Congress is either expansive or vaguely defined. Since our nation's founding, presidents have tested its outer limits. In response, Congress has often shirked its constitutional mandate to check the president from exceeding these limits. In addition, over the decades Congress has proactively ceded large swaths of its responsibilities to the executive branch. As a result, the executive branch wields power unimagined by the Founders. </p><p>Recent executive orders on payroll tax deferments, unemployment compensation and eviction moratoriums highlight the importance of restoring the balance of power envisioned by our founders. Our Constitution gives Congress the ultimate power to levy taxes, allocate spending and create law. The executive branch, headed by the president, bears the responsibility of faithfully executing those laws.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/deferral-of-employment-tax-deposits-and-payments-through-december-31-2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Congress granted businesses leeway</a> to defer until the end of 2022 the employer portion of the Social Security tax owed on the remainder of this year's wages. However, Congress chose not to defer the taxes for the employee portion. So Trump issued an executive order suspending collection of the employee portion for the rest of the year.</p><p>Regardless of desired economic outcome, the president <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/08/10/payroll-tax-suspension-executive-order-is-legally-dubious-economically-unnecessary/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lacks clear statutory authority</a> to suspend collection of the tax in this manner.</p><p>Furthermore, most businesses are hesitant to transmit deferred taxes to employees. After all, employers still must remit these taxes, albeit at a delayed date. When the IRS bill comes due, they will be forced to withhold these deferred taxes from the paychecks of their workers.</p><p>The attempt to alter tax policy through executive order has frustrated the administration's desire to provide workers with a boost in take-home pay during the economic uncertainty.</p><p>Next, consider the state of federal unemployment benefits. The end of July marked the expiration of a weekly boost of $600 that had been provided since March under the last recovery package, known as the CARES Act. Ever since, Congress has failed to enact additional aid to the more than 11 million made jobless during the pandemic.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>To lessen the blow, Trump issued an executive order directing that as much as $44 billion in the disaster aid reserves of the Federal Emergency Management Agency be used to provide $300 weekly in benefits (matched with $100 state payments) to anyone eligible for jobless insurance under the CARES Act. <a href="https://www.twc.texas.gov/news/fema-ends-lost-wages-assistance-program-state-unemployment-benefits-continue#:~:text=The%20Lost%20Wages%20Assistance%20Program%20was%20a%20temporary%20provision%20established,expire%20until%20December%2026%2C%202020." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">These funds were depleted</a> in less than two months. </p><p>The president only embarked on this novel approach following Congress's failure to find a legislative solution. Unfortunately, the executive order sets a precedent of unilaterally declaring a federal emergency and then using that emergency to redirect appropriations.</p><p>Trump's third big move was on eviction moratoriums. He issued an <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19654/temporary-halt-in-residential-evictions-to-prevent-the-further-spread-of-covid-19" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">executive order</a> protecting all residents of rental properties until the end of the year. This order was predicated on the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/42/264?type=usc&year=mostrecent&link-type=html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Public Health Services Act</a> , which authorizes regulations "necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the states or possessions, or from one state or possession into any other." Examples listed in the law include "inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures." </p><p>So what legal rationale links an eviction moratorium to this authority? The clearest connection seems to be <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19654/temporary-halt-in-residential-evictions-to-prevent-the-further-spread-of-covid-19" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this part of the order</a>: "Eviction moratoria — like quarantine, isolation, and social distancing — can be an effective public health measure utilized to prevent the spread of communicable disease."</p><p>But is a ban on evictions related to preventing the international or interstate spread of communicable diseases? Here are the facts: Total relocations in a typical year far exceed the number of evictions experienced even in the depths of the Great Recession at the end of the last decade. Then, the number of evictions failed to top <a href="https://evictionlab.org/national-estimates/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1 million households annually</a> — or fewer than 2.5 million individuals. In contrast, <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2019/demo/geographic-mobility/cps-2019.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than 30 million Americans moved</a> from one location to another last year in a healthy economy. </p><p>A blanket moratorium that fails to target a tenant's underlying health condition or coronavirus symptoms strays far from the express intent of the law Trump cited. Even the order itself hints the ban is meant as an economic relief measure, not a tool to protect the public from the spread of disease. For instance, the moratorium excludes people not in poverty or otherwise able to pay their rent.</p><p>In the midst of the current economic storm, the president's desire to help revive the economy and give relief to Americans who continue to suffer is understandable. And given the lack of action by a dysfunctional and politically divided Congress, it's understandable Trump is pursuing alternative approaches to alleviate the economic pain.</p><p>But our system of government, including enumerated powers and separation of powers, requires each branch to stay in its assigned lane. Creating economic policy through executive order threatens a further encroachment of the executive branch upon the legislative branch. </p>
<div></div><p>Reversing this long-term trend requires Congress to reassert its responsibility to legislate — and for the executive branch to once again focus on executing the law as written.</p>
From Your Site Articles
- Trump's fight to count citizens and non-citizens: 5 questions answered ›
- Trump is dissolving Congress in plain sight - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact-checking Trump's executive order on social media - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact checking legality of Trump's Covid-19 executive orders - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
Pool/Getty Images
Rep. Donna Shalala was one of two lawmakers recognized by the Congressional Management Foundation for fostering a healthy workplace environment.
Eight members of Congress cited for doing the legislative branch proud
Oct 06 2020
Four lawmakers from each party were honored Tuesday for being good members of Congress. But they were cited for behavior that has nothing to do with their ideologies, legislative skill or rhetorical flair. Instead, they were singled out for running decent modern workplaces and taking care of their constituents.
The awards were the third annual set handed out by the Congressional Management Foundation, one of the most prominent nonprofits advocating the view that a more smoothly operating legislative branch is one of the main cures for democracy's ills.
<p>The winners were culled from <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/congress/democracy-awards" target="_self">a roster of 26 finalists</a> unveiled in the spring that was notable for the disproportionate share of women (seven) and first-term lawmakers (nine). In the end, three women were honored, two of them Democratic newcomers to the House: Donna Shalala of Miami, who was Health and Human Services secretary in the Clinton administration, and Chrissy Houlahan of suburban Philadelphia, a former Air Force captain.</p><p>"Americans usually only hear about Congress when something goes wrong," noted the group's CEO, Brad Fitch, and it's important to "shine a light on Congress when it does something right."</p><p>Shalala and GOP Rep. Adrian Smith of Nebraska were cited for fostering a healthy workplace environment. Houlahan and GOP Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas got awards for running a transparent and accountable office.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>For constituent service, the awardees were Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. Singled out for their innovative and modernized operations were Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas and Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California.</p>
From Your Site Articles
- Six lauded for running Capitol Hill offices that work even when ... ›
- Judy Schneider's Lessons on How to Succeed in Congress - The ... ›
- Ocasio-Cortez, Shalala lead freshman finalists for awards - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less