Self-addressed Donald Trump policies keep getting stamped 'Return to Sender'
U.S. Postal Service worker Tru Wright feeds a belt for automated mail sorting in Baltimore in December 2019, another busy season for the agency. Credit: TNS / The Baltimore Sun / Jerry Jackson
The circular path of President Donald Trump's official policies continues to draw America's attention — even amid a coronavirus pandemic and an intense national campaign.
The journey seems to vary little. First Trump announces a move in his political self-interest that he lacks the independent power to carry out. Public criticism follows. With little real effort to negotiate support, Trump backs off, making defiant noises to cover the appearance of surrender.
Most recently, Trump's ally running the U.S. Postal Service moved ahead with cost-cutting plans at a particularly bad time. The president suggested that a good result of denying a request to beef up resources would be to stymie mail-in ballots, which he says without proof are fraud-prone and hurt Republicans such as himself.
Backlash ensued when Trump linked the two issues. Congress is supposed to control the funding process anyway, and it will. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said abruptly this week that he was suspending what he called "operational initiatives," although some reductions still seem to be in progress. Trump complains that the Senate will still hold hearings on the postal cuts Saturday and Monday.
And so the latest White House trip to nowhere is just about complete.
If the goal here was chaos, posturing and simulated action, then the mission was accomplished. If the goal was to improve anything, it amounted to a zero-sum waste of time.
Trump insists that deferring the federal payroll tax, which helps fund Social Security, will provide needed economic relief during the coronavirus crisis. Facing reelection, he touts tax cuts that the then-Republican-dominated Congress crafted and sent to him early in his term. More recently, few if any of the players in the GOP-run Senate or the Democratic-run House saw the urgency of the payroll tax action.
So the president signed an executive order to force the change. This is what they used to call a dead letter. This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens of industry groups described Trump's "executive action" as "unworkable," saying it wouldn't benefit their employees as advertised. They'll decline to carry out the deferral while Trump seeks to defend his inert proposal.
A pattern reveals itself.
As of three weeks ago, the nation's Southern border barrier had been extended a mere 5 miles since the last administration, according to federal security officials. Congress never funded the project even after Trump shut a quarter of the federal government for 35 days in late 2018 and early 2019. He allocated other funds. Any impact of the work on illegal immigration is difficult to gauge.
Last fall, Trump announced he would host the next G-7 summit at his Doral resort in Florida. Because this could ultimately benefit him financially, even some allies warned it would violate the Constitution's emoluments clause, which Trump called "phony." Days later, the president caved while, on Twitter, bemoaning "media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility.”
Earlier on, Trump was forced to run away from his administration's policy of separating families in the country illegally at the border. He attempted to blame the policy of holding kids in fenced-in areas on his predecessors. His efforts to prod Ukraine to smear U.S. Democrats also won him nothing but scandal.
All of which suggests that if Trump should lose this election, and refuse to accept the results, you cannot rely on him doing anything about it, given his past governmental performance. His strategies have a way of sending him back to the starting point.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
