At last week's CPAC conference, Donald Trump and his minions spent a lot of time bragging about how they get up and "hit his agenda, every single day."
"I’m keeping my promises to the American people," Trump declared from the stage Friday morning.
Trump’s 70-year winning streak continues! Okay, now back to reality. While it is true that Trump’s taken steps to advance his racist/nativist agenda, when you compare what he's actually "accomplished" against what he promised in his 100-day "Contract with the American Voter," all that supposed forward progress falls apart. Glenn Kessler writes:
What is striking is that despite the drama of Trump’s first month in office, he has actually made little or no progress on many of his promises. Only six promises are listed as “kept,” while 45 have seen no action. We also list seven as “launched,” one as “stuck” and one as “broken.”
Washington Post has a tracker here, but there’s a quick summation of his biggies:
- The Muslim ban—stalled
- Repeal/Replace the Affordable Care Act—not even launched
- Making Mexico pay for his border wall—broken
- Imposing a five-year ban on White House/congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the government—broken
And here's a look at Trump’s lesser known promises that have seen no action:
- Directing the treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator.
- Enacting new ethics rules to reduce the “corrupting influence of special interests.”
- Passing a law to protect vital infrastructure from cyberattacks.
- Reforming visa rules to ensure open jobs are offered to Americans first.
- Canceling billions in payments to the United Nations’ climate change programs and directing the money to fixing the U.S. infrastructure.
- Providing incentives to employers to provide on-site child-care services.
- Proposing a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
- Passing a tax law that would simplify tax rates and give the biggest tax reductions to the middle class, including a 35 percent tax cut to a middle-class family with two children. (Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has indicated the goal is passage by August.)
So what has he done? The stuff that's rather simple or even symbolic.
Most of the promises that have been kept were easy to carry out, with action shortly after Trump took the oath of office. Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the pan-Asian agreement that had been a signature effort of the previous administration. But Trump’s announcement was largely symbolic because the trade deal was already dead in Congress.
Trump also imposed a hiring freeze across the federal government, selected a Supreme Court replacement for the late Antonin Scalia, lifted roadblocks to the Keystone XL pipeline and issued a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two regulations must be eliminated.
It's not even clear that last one concerning regulations will stand since some experts think it's illegal and scrapping regulations requires a dedicated process that includes help from Congress. Trump isn't much on the long game or collaboration, for that matter.
So yeah, there's been a lot of action, but in terms of actual movement, not so much.