Yesterday marked Trump’s 55th day as president. That puts him a little over the halfway mark of his first 100 days in office. As a reminder, a couple of weeks before the election, Trump issued a “Contract With the American Voter” outlining his “100-day action plan to Make American Great Again.” Perhaps it’s time to take a look at how he’s doing.
The contract was divided into two parts. The first listed items the Trump administration would immediately pursue on his first day. This is mainly a list of executive orders he planned to sign. Some of them are meaningless – like promises to announce that he will renegotiate NAFTA. Some of them are things he’s actually done – like instituting a federal hiring freeze, nominating a Supreme Court Justice and deporting “criminal illegal immigrants.” And several of them haven’t been mentioned at all, like proposing a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress and directing the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.
The second part is introduced with this statement: “I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my administration.” In order to score this one, we can look at (1) whether a bill has actually been introduced, and (2) whether any have passed in this first half of those 100 days. Here’s the list:
- Middle Class Tax Relief and Simplification Act – not introduced
- End the Offshoring Act – not introduced
- American Energy and Infrastructure Act – not introduced
- School Choice and Education Opportunity Act – not introduced
- Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act – introduced, not passed
- Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act – not introduced
- End Illegal Immigration Act – not introduced
- Restoring Community Safety Act – not introduced
- Restoring National Security Act – not introduced
- Clean Up Corruption in Washington Act – not introduced
What we can see is that this administration is going to have to get awfully busy in the next 45 days, or they are going to fail miserably in keeping the promises made in this contract.
The truth is that this list of legislation would have been momentous for any administration to get passed by Congress in four years – much less 100 days. But then, their language gave them some wiggle room. They promised to introduce all those bills and fight for their passage in the first 100 days – not that they would actually be passed. But they’ve made precious little progress on even doing that.
