It appears the president is getting his own way on many fronts, but a storm is brewing in Congress which may derail his momentum.
It appears the president is getting his own way on many fronts, but a storm is brewing in Congress which may derail his momentum.
Opinion
Bruce Wolpe
Senior fellow at the US Studies Centre and former political staffer
February 10, 2025 — 6.30pm
February 10, 2025 — 6.30pm
Man (our preferred noun in this post-DEI world), did America need a Super Bowl break. There is drama across the country. Only the federal courts are halting, for the moment, the deconstruction by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk of the executive branch of the United States government.
At risk are tens of millions of Americans who will be affected by demarches to freeze $US3 trillion ($4.8 trillion!) in government spending, and the pending sacking of 10,000 American foreign aid workers who provide $US40 billion in humanitarian relief across the globe and more. Plus the transgender Americans who are now barred from women’s sport, the hundreds of Justice Department lawyers who put the January 6 criminal insurrectionists in jail about to be fired, the FBI agents being purged for their work on Trump’s criminal investigations, the thousands of Health Human Services employees who face lay-offs, and the Centre for Disease Control, whose public health websites have been shut down.
Add in the armed agents raiding apartments all over the country to arrest aliens and send them to Guantanamo Bay, and you have coast-to-coast angst.
But Trump’s voters are all in with him. His projection of executive power is working in the polls.
Trump is crushing it on tariffs. Colombia’s president folded in an hour after Trump demanded that he take deportees or get extortionary tariffs. Both Canada and Mexico acceded to Trump’s terms: thousands more troops on the border and more interdiction of fentanyl.
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There is more trade war coming. Just before the Super Bowl, Trump said 25 per cent tariffs would be imposed on all steel and aluminum. Trump is going to place “reciprocal tariffs” on all goods coming into the US. Trump is dead-set to punish China and the European Union. But Trump damn well better not hit Australia: 99 per cent of US goods entering Australia – thanks to the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement – enter duty free. The US trade surplus with Australia was $27.1 billion in 2022. There is no basis for Trump to punish Australia on any products we trade. None.
Trump is crushing it on his appointments. Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr at Health, Tulsi Gabbard at Intelligence and Kash Patel at the FBI are positioned to come through.
Russell Vought, a principal author of Project 2025, is head of the Office of Management and Budget. Trump is executing that blueprint to seize full control of all the agencies of government and tear down the “deep state” along with retribution against his enemies still sitting in their offices.
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In the Middle East is Trump’s real estate obsession with Gaza, which the US does not own.
These are all huge issues. But they are not the main game. The main game is whether Trump can govern – can succeed in governing. That test is staring him right in the face. Even though Trump controls both the House and Senate, he is on the brink of losing it.
Congress must pass two emergency measures or everything comes to a crashing halt. On March 14, the authority granted by Congress to fund the government lapses. The government will shut down unless Congress approves funds to keep everything going through to the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Simultaneously, the US has reached the debt ceiling, now at $31.4 trillion. Congress must raise it. When that ceiling is breached – even independent of whether Congress keeps the government open and functioning – Treasury is unable to pay its bills, and the US provokes a catastrophic default for the first time in its history.
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Both measures require passage by the House and Senate. The Republicans control the House by a margin of three votes. This is not Westminster; every member is a free agent. There is a rump group of about 10 pure Trump MAGA ultra-loyalists who absolutely hate government debt and insist on spending cuts of $US2-5 trillion (the current US budget is $6.75 trillion) to get their votes to keep the government funded. There is no guarantee today that Republicans in the House have the votes to pass these bills.
It is Trump who will take a political hit if the government is closed for an indefinite period and defaults on its debts.
This is only the first battle that will determine if Trump can govern. Trump wants all his legislative agenda: money for border security and immigrant deportations, a huge ramp-up in defence, “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels, money to make permanent the trillions of dollars of Trump’s first-term tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans that expire at the end of this year. Trump’s MAGA base in the House will want additional trillions in offsets for those.
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, his nation-changing legislative program – huge reductions in government spending, big tax cuts, conservative values – passed Congress because he worked with the Democrats and won about a quarter of their caucus over to his side. The Reagan revolution was born.
There is no way Trump can keep the government open and raise the debt limit unless there are Democratic votes for both measures. That means that Trump’s draconian spending cuts and executive orders have to be on the bargaining table. But Trump does not want that kind of bargain. He will not reverse any of them. Trump’s political posture is so extreme and radical that there are almost no Democrats for him to work with. He hates compromising with them.
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Trump can have all the trade wars he wants, all the appointments and judges he can muscle through the Senate, deport all the immigrants he wants, all the DEI he wants to snuff out, all the agency coups engineered by Elon (“Time for it to die”) Musk, all his new American imperialism to seize the Panama Canal, Greenland and annex Canada. And he can have a whole new real estate deal – with Vladimir Putin! – over Ukraine.
But if Trump fails in Congress and cannot govern, Trump cannot keep control of the country.
Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.
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Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.
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