A Bill is a Bill is a Bill

Just a few days ago, Trump highlighted some of his nascent administration’s accomplishments on…wait for it…Twitter.

One of those accomplishments is “36 new legislative bills signed.” I decided to take a look at what those 36 bills accomplished. I searched www.congress.gov and actually found 39 bills the 115th Congress has passed and Trump has signed into law. I don’t know why there is a difference of three bills, but I’m willing to give Trump the benefit of all 39 laws. I initially wanted to provide a description of each bill, but I got lazy. Instead, I decided to categorize them.

• 15 bills that stopped the implementation of Obama-era rules
• Five joint resolutions
• Five bills directing one or more government agencies to take specified action(s)
• Three funding bills (one was a continuing resolution, one funded most of the U.S. government for Fiscal Year 2017, and the third was specific to NASA)
• Three designation or naming bills (to rename an existing building)
• Two bills to encourage women to enter the STEM fields
• One bill stating that National Vietnam War Veterans Day, March 29, is among those days on which the flag should be displayed prominently
• One bill that gives priority for federal grants to those federal and state law enforcement agencies that hire and train veterans
• One bill that takes steps to reduce the backlog of families awaiting approval of survivor benefits of public safety officers killed in the line of duty
• One bill extending whistleblower protections to federal employees
• One bill expressing Congress’s desire to rejoin an intergovernmental organization that, among other things, supervises international exhibitions (the last World Expo held in the United States was in Louisiana in 1984)
• One bill to waive the limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces (this is how Mattis became Secretary of Defense)

It is not my goal to disparage any of the above-listed bills. In fact, I particularly applaud those directed at women, veterans, and public safety officers. The agency-directed bills are helpful, but limited in scope. They direct certain agencies to improve weather forecasting, better manage its vehicle fleet, strengthens oversight capabilities, or asks one agency to create regulations concerning how employees use transport companies like Uber or Lyft. In other words, I don’t see anything so broad in scope that would cause Americans from across the political spectrum to cheer.

On the other hand, nearly 40% of the bills are negative: those bills claw back an Obama administration rule or regulation. Whether or not the rules should have been left to stand or were rightfully stopped, my point is this: destroying someone else’s work does not demonstrate an independent, policy-based agenda. It is partisan, through and through.

Finally, where is the major legislation? The bills that will spur job growth? Wage growth? Improving our aging and building new infrastructure? Tax reform? Healthcare reform? In just a couple of weeks, the 115th Congress will have spent one-fourth of its time in session without much of substance to show for it.