Trump can make Congress great again

Donald Trump is not a details guy — and that just may save Congress.

The legislative branch hasn’t felt all that relevant to governing under President Obama. A $30 billion carbon regulation without congressional support. Little input into our de facto wars against ISIS and Syria. In the last year for which there are figures, bureaucrats created 25 times more law than the real lawmakers produced.

{mosads}Enter an executive who is temperamentally disinclined to sweat the small stuff. He mocked his general election opponent’s policy dossiers as “a waste of paper.” His proposals tended to be unveiled in bullet points. 

Hillary Clinton’s $275 billion infrastructure plan? “At least double” it.

ISIS? “Take their oil” and “bomb the s–t out of them.”

Whatever judgment history makes about Trump’s style, it will have at least one salutary effect: It gives Congress an opportunity to be great again. And for the first time in decades, Congress’s various factions each have an incentive to rebalance power away from the president.

For constitutional conservatives, supporting renewed congressional power is a way to restore the rule of law. They’ve bemoaned the lawlessness of the Obama presidency since Democrats lost their majorities — and rightly so. 

The executive edits of ObamaCare are familiar and legion. And when Congress didn’t send Obama his desired legalization of Dreamers, or immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, he did it on his own, barely attempting to justify his actions as an exotic form of prosecutorial discretion. 

Principled members of Congress — and those aren’t only Republicans — cringe at Obama’s pen-and-phone tactics. But even those Republicans whose principles are more situational will relearn the value of passing legislation once Trump wrests the executive pen from Obama.

Obama’s policies that lived by executive order will quickly die by executive order. And those ephemeral victories for Obama should remind Republicans of all stripes why they must lock in policy gains through law while they control all of government.

Democrats naturally see the benefit of shifting power from the executive, which they no longer will control, to the legislature, in which they have a large minority. In the House, Republicans’ unruly majority led John Boehner and, on occasion, Paul Ryan to rely on Democratic votes to pass bills during their Speakerships. Smart Democrats will do the math and see some leverage in next Congress’s slimmer Republican majority.

Their Senate colleagues’ math is different but leads to the same conclusion. Next cycle, 10 Senate Democrats will be up for reelection in states Trump won. Mitch McConnell will need only eight of those Democrats to move legislation — and he’ll make it politically painful for them to balk. There will be strong pressure on Democrats up in 2018 to burnish their bipartisan credentials and participate in legislating. 

Congress should seize the opportunity Trump is handing lawmakers in his first 100 days. 

The Trump administration will try to fast-track a trillion-dollar infrastructure spending plan. For some perspective, that’s more than 15 times what Obama’s stimulus spent on roads and bridges and the like. The stimulus funded such urgent projects as the Napa Valley Wine Train, relief for the owners of the country’s third largest casino, and failed solar startup Solyndra. If Congress is going to spend a trillion of our dollars, it would be wise to tighten the rules about qualifying projects and rethink oversight.

The nameplates at the White House will change in January, but many of the regulators who populate the agencies around Washington will not. Last year alone, bureaucrats issued 43 major rules, at an annual cost of $22 billion. That’s more expensive than most legislation Congress passes, and just like legislation, regulations are legally binding unless successfully challenged in court.

Law that has such a substantial impact on our economy should be enacted through the constitutional process, not through regulation. In each of the last three Congresses, the House has passed a bill, the REINS Act, to strip regulators of the power to create rules with large economic impacts. Congress should put that bill on President Trump’s desk right away.

The Senate would help itself out by quickly confirming a Supreme Court nominee with experience in politics and an appreciation for legislative power. Among Trump’s potential nominees are a number, such as the Tenth Circuit’s Tim Tymkovich, who counseled legislators in private practice. Mike Lee, also on Trump’s list, founded the Senate’s Article I Project with the purpose of reasserting congressional prerogatives.

Trump didn’t run to “make Congress great again.” But last week’s election creates a unique opportunity to strengthen an atrophied legislature.

Congress, please don’t blow it.

Adams is president of Red Door Strategies. He previously was political director at Freedom Partners and chief of staff to Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). 

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.