Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump wants to hit the ground running and get all kinds of stuff going on Day 1. Of course he can sign XOs, but they have limited impact. To actually change things, he needs to get Congress to act. The sh**show last week showed that it won't be easy. The Freedom Caucusers have their own goals and agenda and it may not align all that well with Trump's on everything. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said the quiet part out loud: "It's going to be really hard in the House because they just simply don't have a working majority." Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) agrees: "If they can't manage the CR, how is he going to manage reconciliation? It's bad. It bodes badly." Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) observed that putting together complex budget reconciliation packages to secure the border, expand domestic energy production, cut taxes, cut federal spending and possibly increase the debt limit will be much tougher than passing a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.
One Republican senator who preferred to remain anonymous said: "Tax packages are always hard; all you have to do is say 'SALT.'" What he meant is that the provision to limit the deduction for state and local taxes will split the Republican conference badly. Many Republicans see the SALT deduction as a sop to rich people in blue states and oppose the deduction. The trouble is that some of those people are represented in Congress by Republicans who know their job security depends of keeping and expanding those deductions. And with the Republicans' tiny majority, those votes are essential.
Trump seems to have forgotten that although using the budget reconciliation process avoids the need for 60 votes in the Senate, it still needs a majority. He tried to repeal the ACA during Trump v1.0 but that failed because three Republican senators—Susan Collins (ME), John McCain (AZ) and Lisa Murkowski (AK)—voted against repeal. With such a small margin in the House, losing even a few votes could be fatal, especially if some faction wants to hijack every bill for its own purposes. Once members of Congress see that they can defy Trump and all they get is threats, a group of 35 or 40 of them is not going to be so scared of him anymore.
Trump has repeatedly said that he has a mandate, because he won all seven swing states. But he won them by very small margins. He did win the popular vote, but more people voted against him than for him. Having less than half the country for you is not a mandate. And although Republicans gained four Senate seats, only one was in a swing state and they lost a House seat. Trump had no coattails. With a mandate, the president has huge coattails.
Just since the election, the following things have happened:
None of these things suggest that Trump is omnipotent and can work his will merely by sending out a tweet. Furthermore, while Republicans are fairly good at getting together to say "NO," they are much less good at agreeing on things they want and getting them done, with complete unity. (V)