Va. professors discuss Trump’s return to Washington with unified government
Conservatives will control every branch of the federal government once newly elected Republicans take office in January.
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Va. professors discuss Trump’s return to Washington with unified government
By Aria Lovelace, VCU Capital News Service
RICHMOND, Va. – Conservatives will control every branch of the federal government once newly elected Republicans take office in January.
Republicans won the needed 218 seats to have a majority in the House of Representatives. They also have a 53-seat, simple majority in the Senate.
The U.S. Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, after President-elect Donald Trump appointed three justices during his initial term. He might have a chance to extend the court’s conservative longevity, if older justices step down to be replaced by younger conservatives.
How the Judicial Branch Influences Policy
The president has the ability to appoint judges with lifetime tenure.
Trump could potentially appoint hundreds of judges, from U.S. Court of Appeals and district court appointments to international trade courts. He appointed 245 during his first presidency. President Joe Biden has appointed 213 as of October, according to the American Constitution Society.
A president can shape policy through the courts, although historically a president's ideological leanings were not represented through their judicial appointments.
The 6-3 decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade, which returned back to states the right to regulate abortion, is an example of how the Supreme Court disregarded precedent to influence policy.
Before former President Ronald Reagan, ideology politics were not the default, according to Neal Devins, who is a Sandra Day O'Connor professor of law and government at William & Mary.
“[Reagan] inherited a federal court system where the Republicans and Democrats were not different from one another,” Devins said. “Judges have life tenure, it takes time for things to work their way through the system.”
Ideology politics have taken hold within the Supreme Court in the last 15 years. The court began to reflect this polarization as partisanship became increasingly extreme and moderates increasingly scarce, Devins said.
Unified Federal Government not so Uncommon
It is not uncommon for the federal government to be unified. Throughout history, it has been unified 48 times: 23 times under Democrats and 25 times under Republicans, since 1857. When Trump took office in 2017, there was also a Republican majority in Congress.
Continued alignment of the president's party and Congress after a midterm election cycle, however, is unlikely, and has happened once since 1969 during former President Jimmy Carter’s term, according to Pew Research Center.
The president will have an opportunity to better advance his agenda on Capitol Hill. This is a huge benefit for the Republican party, according to Larry Evans, government professor at William & Mary.
However, this process comes with challenges.
“There will be a general consensus that they want to promote Trump's agenda, but there will be a lot of disagreements about the specifics,” Evans said.
Republicans might have an advantage, but they still need support from Democrats to pass certain legislation.
The Senate still has a filibuster, which means legislation needs 60 votes to pass, instead of a simple majority. This is intended to make some bipartisan effort a necessity and empower the minority party. However, not all kinds of legislation applies to this rule. Budgetary legislation only needs to be passed by a simple majority.
Congress is able to, through a procedure called reconciliation, advance significant monetary-related legislation very quickly, with minimal amendment and no filibuster.
This means major budget-related legislation can pass without any cooperation from Democrats. Examples include 2001 tax cuts under President George W. Bush, Affordable Care Act in 2010 under President Barack Obama, the 2017 tax cuts under Trump, and President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief package.
Trump is expected to issue executive orders upon his return to the White House in January. Many orders will reverse executive orders put in place by the Biden administration. A day-one focus is immigration, that ranges from the number of refugees allowed in the country and what the asylum seeking process looks like, Evans said.
“There is a whole bunch of stuff that can be done unilaterally by the president through executive orders, I think that will come first,” Evans said.
Next would be to work through legislation, which would prove more difficult with the Senate's filibuster.
“There may be an attempt to move some immigration changes through the reconciliation process and the form of a budget bill,” Evans said. “And the question will be, can they get that by the Senate parliamentarian?”
Impact of Unified Federal Government
Historically, moderate Republicans are more likely to be effective when there is a conservative majority in Congress, according to Craig Volden public policy and politics professor and co-founder of the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia.
This differs from Democrats, whose more “liberal-winged lawmakers” are more responsible for policy, he said.
It is unlikely Congress will eliminate the filibuster, since each party understands control of the Senate could change within the next election, and its removal would diminish minority power, according to Volden.
Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on removing the filibuster, specifically to help bring back the federal reproductive health protections under Roe vs. Wade. Trump wanted to end the filibuster during his first term, but Republicans have promised to protect the institution.
If the filibuster is removed, Republicans could “basically do whatever they want,” said Alex Keena, associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Trump also promised to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, which he considers bloated.
“This particular president is particularly hostile to the federal bureaucracy and has pledged to gut entire parts of the government,” Keena said.
This will likely impact Virginia, where a large portion of the economy is tied to federal spending. The federal government employs over 144,000 state residents, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Cuts to the federal government will impact “quality of life and the employment rate in Virginia,” Keena said.
“The different vision that Trump brings to the government is going to have obvious, measurable differences on people's ordinary lives but it may not be immediate,” Keena said. “It may take a little while.”
