…“Literally 30-thousand jobs could be lost if Trump is sworn in. Washington as we know it, and how business is conducted, will change instantly.”… ~DC Lobbyist

Over the past few days we have been providing background explainers on why congressional legislation is frozen.   The lack of legislative action in the era of Trump is one of the least understood political realities.  Corporate media cannot discuss the issue because they are part of the system itself. The election of President Trump threw a wrench into the gears of the entire DC legislative and lobbying machine.

Part I HERE -and- Part II HERE -and- Part III HERE.

The entire political and legislative apparatus is frozen, and it is genuinely impossible to predict what happens next.  Where we stand is the outcome building a very targeted system over the course of three decades.  The entities and institutions which assembled the system became functionally obsolescent overnight on November 8th 2016.

To fully grasp the tectonic shift, and understand the current challenge, it helps to revisit the words by a key DC machine operator, lobbyist Jack Burkman, who was contemplating the unthinkable prior to the unthinkable becoming a reality:

DC Public Relations2016 […]  seismic panic has ensued on K Street as lobbying firms brace for a reality of a possible Donald Trump presidency and what that might mean for them and their futures.

Prominent D.C. lobbyist Jack Burkman said today that he started assembling a delegation of lobbyists and lobbying firms to meet with the New York billionaire and begin building a bridge to the Trump organization.

“Trump is a Washington outsider. We need the outreach now or Trump will bring in a whole new team made up exclusively of New Yorkers, effectively ending our grip on the White House and The Capitol which will bring about the end of life as we know it here,” says Burkman, who represents a diverse set of national and multi-national clients.

Since Trump has no experience as a politician, not a single D.C. lobbying firm has any ties to Donald Trump.

“More than $4 billion in lobbying business could be lost overnight should Donald Trump become president,” says Burkman. “Decades of relationship-building in politics could be lost. And make no mistake every lobbyist in the town is worried.”

Lobbyists routinely use money to gain access and buy influence. They leverage their connections for wealthy clients who want access. But The Donald has said he won’t accept their money.

“Literally 30-thousand jobs could be lost if Trump is sworn in. Washington as we know it, and how business is conducted, will change instantly.”

[…]  “Asking him to accept contributions in the general must be order number one. It is critical to our survival. We must also make him understand that the Capitol city simply cannot be run without us. We, in fact, make things happen.”  (more)

Well, the unthinkable happened.

Think about the institutional shock.  As the 2016 article outlined, 30,000 people who make a living funneling $4 billion of financial influence into the organizational swamp are now doing what?

The media is focused on ‘shiny things’ and ‘palace intrigue’ and no-one is discussing the larger ramifications of the influence machine shutting down.

If you step back and look at the overall direction of action from the White House it becomes evident the first 100 days of the Trump administration can be summed up as: laying out all the tools for a grand dis-assembly.

Using mostly executive orders, the Trump administration is requesting data and ordering reviews of various federal and institutional constructs.  SEE ORDERS HERE

In addition to a review of merit or worth, OMB director Mick Mulvaney has also begun a full-scale review of every sub-agency within the federal apparatus to find duplication of action.  Identified duplicates will either be removed or reassigned.

For all of the aforementioned reasons the legislative side is at a stand still.  There’s nothing to indicate that will change in the foreseeable future.

President Trump needed only three legislative items to fulfill his policy mission:

• Repeal of ObamaCare.
• Passage of Tax Reform. -OR- Just the targeted portions of the tax proposal.
• Passage of a budget.

Despite all the media protestations to the contrary, these are the only three essential ingredients in the President Trump domestic policy agenda.   That said, the larger direction of the agenda can continue even without them.

Passage of legislation for the three initiatives most certainly enhances and amplifies the effects of Trump’s executive action, exponentially so; but passage in-and-of-itself is not mandatory for President Trump’s larger institutional deconstruction to continue.

Then again, didn’t we always know this?...

♦In Part-I we explained how legislation is actually constructed in 2017. NOT how most people think it is constructed – SEE HERE

♦In Part-II we explained what that modern reality means with a Trump administration, and what will be needed to overcome the corrupted swamp – SEE HERE

The final paragraphs include accepting the reality and pondering:

[…] President Trump is not going to sit and wait for congress to evolve in their ability to turn away from existing lobbyists hanging around to defend their interests.  Sooner or later President Trump is going to do something dramatic to break the impasse within the broken legislative system.

Considering that Trump is not a politician, that “something” could get rather ugly.

We are not going to get bogged down in the weeds and loose the capacity to see the larger, more consequential, picture.  Staying elevated – However, as if guided by a prescient cue, part of the possible answer to the quagmire becomes evident today:

The controversial president of The Heritage Foundation, former Sen. Jim DeMint, may soon be out of a job, following a dispute with board members about the direction of conservative think tank, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

Some Heritage board members believe that DeMint has brought in too many Senate allies and made the think tank too bombastic and political — to the detriment of its research and scholarly aims.

[…]  “If Heritage pushes Jim DeMint out, it was because a few board members, who are close to the Republican establishment, never wanted him to be president and have been working to push him out ever since,” said one operative who has worked with Heritage. “DeMint is one of the most respected and selfless conservative leaders in the country and pushing him out would be a big mistake.” (link)

During his keynote remarks at the NRA convention in Atlanta today, President Trump noted the high regard carried for Jim DeMint:

[…] And also from Heritage, Jim DeMint.  It’s been amazing.  I mean, those people have been fantastic.  They’ve been real friends.

Former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, now head of the Heritage Foundation has been pushing the organization toward more political activism because it is necessary for the exact reason we have outlined in the previous discussions:  “There are almost zero organizational entities within K-Street presenting any legislative constructs or legislative briefs intended to advance any of Trump’s policy objectives.” (link)

Virtually all of the K-Street policy and lobbying influence is targeted to grow government and present legislation that grows the scale, scope and interests of the financial political class.  DeMint’s efforts toward providing a counter-balance to the influence of the singular policy agenda is exactly what’s needed to begin to deconstruct the UniParty institutions.

The House and Senate, and all of the membership therein, are mired in the swamp by the legislative priorities of the financial influences and lobbyists upon them.  The scale of the lobbying is jaw-dropping when you consider over $3 billion spent in 2016 alone.

The Citizens United SCOTUS decision injected massive fuel into the swamp to expand the scale and scope of multinational corporate influence.   There is now virtually unlimited money pouring in to Super-PAC’S who target politicians for legislative influence.

If President Trump is going to make inroads to advance his America-First agenda, he is going to have to find a way through the financial network pressure now leveraging and choking all members of congress.  The UniParty dynamic cannot be broken without directly confronting this issue.

Senator Jim DeMint, founder of the Senate Conservative Fund (SCF), is the original Tea Party politician who generated support for grassroots conservative politicians.  It was specifically through DeMint’s pre-CU fund many of the modern leaders of conservatism gained their office.

Senator DeMint began slaying incumbent GOPe candidates and raising up challengers to GOPe preferred primary candidates.   He was remarkably successful, and the professional republican class hated him for wiping out their establishment next-in-liners.

However, empowered by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision (2010), the professional GOPe machine changed their strategy and began fighting back against DeMint’s firebrand of conservative primary politics.

The establishment GOP (McConnell, Hatch, Cornyn, Blunt, Thune etc) used the CU decision to coordinate with lobbyists like CoC President Tom Donohue and fund Super-PAC’s with tens of millions of dollars for attacks against republican primary candidates they viewed as outside the party norms.

By the 2012 election the GOPe strategy was working and most of the incumbent republicans were considered safe and secure.  The defeat of Mitt Romney didn’t matter to the UniParty republican leadership; what mattered most was their ability to remain in power.

If the UniParty republicans lose an election to a democrat nothing changes; the leadership remains in power and influence regardless of the flag color atop the spire.  However, if the UniParty republicans lose an election to a real conservative their power is threatened; this is why the professional GOPe attack their own.

For all of these reasons it just makes sense for Jim DeMint to join the Trump administration.  DeMint could be a great Chief-of-Staff replacement for Priebus, or DeMint could be the COO inside DC to guide the architecture of legislative constructs that are in line with Trump’s policy objectives.   Jim DeMint and Mike Pence are strong allies and good friends from all earlier battles on Capitol Hill.

Jim DeMint would be a natural asset to the administration because the battle has now evolved beyond party affiliation; and the UniParty, including the GOPe, must be confronted if any success is to be achieved.

To fight this:

…You Need This:

….Because ultimately the battle looks like this: 

.

In Part I we explained why President Trump has not received any legislation:

To Wit: President Donald Trump winning the election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. The modern legislative machine is frozen in place.

The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump are not within the legislative constructs coming from the authors of the legislation.   Congress has no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written are not in line with President Trump policy.

That’s why congress has not passed any legislation for President Trump to sign.

There’s no entity within DC writing legislation that is in-line with President Trump’s economic and foreign policy agenda.  Exactly the opposite is true.  All of the DC pipeline legislative briefs and constructs are antithetical to Trump policy.

There are almost zero organizational entities within K-Street presenting any legislative constructs or legislative briefs intended to advance any of Trump’s policy objectives.

Think about how much money is behind the legislative business when those who control the legislation are willing to spend $3.1 BILLION in a single year to achieve their needs.

♦The “Associated American Southern Border Wall and Security Builders” – special interest and lobbying group – simply doesn’t exist. Nor are there any entities creating legal briefs (bills) to facilitate the southern border wall construction.

♦There is no “Associated Illegal Immigrant and Deportation Enforcement” group lobbying for the removal of undocumented illegal aliens; or writing legislation to fast-track deportation of illegal aliens.

♦There’s also no official corporate political action committee or group office on K-Street creating legislation to repeal ObamaCare, or lobby for the removal of government interventionism into the healthcare system.  etc.

The DC legislative pipeline is devoid of any bill, brief or construct for any of the platform priorities of the Trump administration.   Quite the opposite is true.  Almost all of the K-Street institutions -which create the legislative priorities- are capable of producing a product that flows in one direction.

This reality is the epicenter of the UniParty problem.

Voters can demand change and switch the House of Representatives from Democrat to Republican control, but politicians don’t actually write legislation.  The legislative product coming through the system remains the same regardless of which party is in control of the House of Representatives.

Voters can go further and change out the Senate from Democrat to Republican control; but again, you find little difference because the legislative product hasn’t changed.  K-Street may (usually they don’t) modify the special interest ingredients a little – but the progressive sausage is still a progressive sausage; it’s not a hamburger.

Voters go one step further and change the Executive Branch away from progressive control.  However, there again, the legislative product has not changed.  The DC system is creating the same ideological product regardless of the dynamic of party affiliated politics.

The problem in 2017 is systemic because there’s no counter-balancing legislative or lobbying enterprise within the epicenter of the DC Swamp, K-Street.  There’s virtually no alternative legislative product being generated which would coincide with the change in representative political ideology.

This UniParty system is why Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell voted to fund and approve every one of President Obama’s priorities.  Omnibus, Bailouts, Porkulous, DACA, Healthcare Exhanges, Stimulus etc. are the only game in town with support – there simply are no alternatives being pushed by interest groups.

Yes, there are a few modestly sized groups like Heritage Foundation who can generate alternate legislative products and some advertizing. But for every one of them there’s a hundred going in the other direction.

When you think about it, it simply makes sense.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why would there be an organizational entity inside the system whose primary purpose would be to spend money in order to generate less spending or smaller government?  They would essentially be advocating against their own interests.

Remember the grand fiasco that was the 2013/2014 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill (Gang-of-Eight)?

That Go8 bill was an outcome of the same lobbying process, same K-Street legislative construct etc.  The controversial bill was not majority supported outside the beltway.  Despite the electorate lack of support it passed the Senate and Speaker Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy were only two days from a vote in the House when Cantor was primaried.

When ObamaCare was passed on December 23rd at 1:38am a full 70% of the country when polled did not support it.  But the DC lobbying and legislative system created it and found a way to get it passed.

Jump to 2017 – President Trump takes over the White House in January, and there’s really no Pro-Trump legislative product from congress because there’s no Pro-Trump legislative construct coming from the people who write legislation, K-Street.

Instead, crickets.

The only special interest group that President Trump advocating for him are the voters.

The DC swamp (writ large) is a singular organism with multiple visible components that seem disconnected; but in direction or pathway they are not dissimilar.  Under the visible surface the UniParty roots are all intertwined and connected around principles of self-sustaining common interest.  Their commonality lies in growth of government.

President Trump’s fiscal and economic policies are adverse to those UniParty interests.  President Trump’s first full-year budget proposal was a trillion dollar reduction in spending.  As a consequence the combined weight of all visible DC interests immediately aligned toward diminishment of the proposal.

Within the DC Swamp the flow of legislative interest travels in only one direction.  Albeit there are multiple organizations able to construct legislation for sale; the direction of the product they are producing is going in one progressive direction.

There are no K-Street lobbyists demanding smaller/lesser government.  There are no lobbyists walking in to House and Senate offices and asking for representatives to spend less money.  The only people doing that are voters.   How do reps generally deal with those annoyances?  They turn off the phone, disconnect the fax machine and ignore the emails.

Accepting the reality of who controls legislative constructs also helps to understand why those same entities will not allow prior legislative accomplishments to be undone.  Modern K-Street considers prior legislation ‘paid-for investments‘, they will not allow removal.

Retention priorities:

♦Retention of ObamaCare. ♦Deep Federal Spending. ♦NO border wall. ♦Open-ended immigration until congress delivers comprehensive immigration reform to include amnesty. ♦Tax Cuts (corporate revenue enhancements) are permitted.

They did however suffer defeats on legislation that had not yet passed, but were prepped for Hillary Clinton, like: Trans-Pacific-Trade (TPP) and Common Core federalization of education.

So the next obvious question is: what can be done about it?

The only viable solution, under the current system in place, is for the Trump Administration to generate their own legislative product to deliver to congress for passage.  It sounds weird, but essentially that appears to be what is taking place right now with the White House staffing up with their own groups of bill authors, constructionists and administration lobbyists.

President Trump’s team will create the legislative product, and hopefully the republican controlled house and senate will pass it.

However, even this process also runs head first into the positions of the UniParty.

Example: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sends the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation a statutorily required “letter of intent” to renegotiate NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) mid-March, and the Republican Committee Chairman John Thune doesn’t accept it. (Today is 4/28/17).

Now what?  The GOP wing of the UniParty is beholden to lobbying interests (U.S. CoC) who are adverse to NAFTA renegotiation.   See who is on the committee HERE.

This example is not even a legislative product that needs a vote.  This example is simply a statutorily required notification that requires being accepted.  What do you think would be the outcome if Senator McConnell was given a legislative product containing similar pre-paid lobbying conflicts for his membership?

This reality also helps to explain the frustration from the White House when they do have a legislative product that moves the needle (ie. healthcare), road-mapped primarily by HHS Secretary Tom Price, and yet the House of Reps can’t even bring it to a vote.

The Freedom Caucus can wax philosophically about the Price/Ryan bill not being a full repeal; and they can argue accurately about the bill having flaws remaining from the influence of the ObamaCare lobbyists, but what is the actual alternative?  Nothing.

Nothing is not an option.

The White House paying for their own staff to hire outside people to write legislation because congress doesn’t have an ideological enterprise to create their own is what has lead to this ridiculous situation we are in right now.

This DC quagmire might improve over time as new enterprises (legislation builders) move into DC to do work with a more favorable ideological outlook in-line with the new administration.  But in the interim nothing is getting done, the simple tasks of budgets are at loggerheads, and time is wasting.

Fortunately for congress, right now foreign policy is taking up a lot of intellectual and administrative energy.  The current domestic economic policy outcomes are being driven by the executive office alone without congress having to do any work.

However, understandably, President Trump is not going to sit and wait for congress to evolve in their ability to turn away from existing lobbyists hanging around to defend their interests.  Sooner or later President Trump is going to do something dramatic to break the impasse within the broken legislative system.

Considering that Trump is not a politician, that “something” could get rather ugly.

There are many new commentators at CTH, and even more new people taking notice of politics for perhaps the first time in their lives.   There is also some confusion noticed between two distinct groups who appear to be talking above and around each other.  Two groups trying to communicate from two entirely divergent sets of understanding.

Perhaps it is valuable to reset the larger frames of reference and provide clarity.

Many, heck, most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past.

There is not a single congress person who writes legislation or laws.

In 2017 not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct.  This simply doesn’t happen.

Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body.  Here’s how it works.

Outside groups often called “special interest groups” are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs.  These groups are often corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar business connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their like-minded affiliation.

Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists like climate groups, environmental interests etc.   The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.

The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests.   They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their business is getting legislation for their unique interests.

These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs.  In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress.  Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the ‘sausage’ is actually made.

Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.

Once the corporation or representative organizational entity has written the law they want to see passed they hand it off to the lobbyists.  The lobbyists are people who have deep contacts within the political bodies of the legislative branch, usually former House/Senate staff or former House/Senate politicians themselves.

The lobbyist takes the written brief, the legislative construct, and it’s their job to go to congress and sell it.

“Selling it” means finding politicians who will accept the brief, sponsor their bill and eventually get it to a vote and passage.   The lobbyist does this by visiting the politician in their office, or, most currently familiar, by inviting the politician to an event they are hosting.  The event is called a junket when it involves travel.

Often the lobbying “event” might be a weekend trip to a ski resort, or a “conference” that takes place at a resort.  The actual sales pitch for the bill is usually not too long and the majority of the time is just like a mini vacation etc.

The size of the indulgences within the event, the amount of money the lobbyist is spending, is customarily related to the scale of the bill the sponsoring business entity needs to get support for.   If the sponsoring business or interest group can gain a lot of financial benefit for the legislation they spend a lot on the indulgences.

Recap:  Corporations (special interest group) writes the law.  Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it.  Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc.  Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.

Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary way-points to generate/leverage a successful outcome.

But the important part to remember is that the origination of the entire system is EXTERNAL to congress.

Congress does not write laws or legislation, special interest groups do.  Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.

When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws.  Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.

While all of this is happening the same outside groups who write the laws are providing money for the campaigns of the politicians they need to pass them.  This construct sets up the quid-pro-quo of influence, although much of it is fraught with plausible deniability.

This is the way legislation is created.

If your frame of reference is not established in this basic understanding you can often fall into the trap of viewing a politician, or political vote, through a false prism.  The modern origin of all legislative constructs is not within congress.

“we’ll have to pass the bill to, well, find out what is in the bill” etc.  ~ Nancy Pelosi 2009

“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber 2011, 2012

Now, think about this reality against the backdrop of the 2016 Presidential Election.  The entire system within DC was not structurally set-up to receive a Donald Trump presidency.

If Hillary Clinton had won the election, her Oval Office desk would be filled with legislation passed by congress which she would be signing.  Heck, she’d have writer’s cramp from all of the special interest legislation that would be flowing to her desk.

Why?  Simply because the authors of the legislation, the special interest and lobbying groups, were spending millions to fund her campaign.  President Hillary Clinton would be signing K-Street constructed special interest legislation to repay all of those donors/investors.  Congress would be fast-tracking the passage because the same interest groups also fund the members of congress.

President Donald Trump winning the election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. The modern legislative machine is frozen in place.

The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump are not within the legislative constructs coming from the authors of the legislation.   Congress has no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written are not in line with President Trump policy.

That’s why congress has not passed any legislation for President Trump to sign.

There’s no entity within DC writing legislation that is in-line with President Trump’s economic and foreign policy agenda.  Exactly the opposite is true.  All of the DC legislative briefs and constructs are antithetical to Trump policy.

There are hundreds of file boxes filled with thousands of legislative constructs that became worthless when Donald Trump won the election.

Those legislative constructs (briefs) representing tens of millions of dollars worth of time and influence and are now just sitting there piled up in boxes under desks and in closets amid K-Street and the congressional offices.

Any current legislation must be in-line with an entire new political perspective, and there’s no-one, no special interest or lobbying group, currently occupying DC office space with any interest in synergy with Trump policy.

Think about the larger ramifications within that truism.

That is also why there’s so much opposition.

No legislation by outside interests means no work for lobbyists who sell it.   No work means no money.  No money means no expense accounts.  No expenses means politicians paying for their own indulgences etc.

However, no K-Street expenditures -because of the futility of it- also means more money available for opposition and activist activity.

Lastly, when you understand this reality you begin to see the difference between legislation with a traditional purpose and faux-legislation with a political agenda.

Remember, politicians don’t write laws – outside groups do.

If you asked a DC Senator or House Member to actually write a law they’d look back at you like a cow just licked them on the forehead.  The politician would have no clue what you are asking them to do, and would immediately look to their staff as their closest reference point (the go-betweens) for outside lobbyist assistance.

This helps to understand when Senator Rand Paul, Mike Lee or Ted Cruz are “pitching” a “bill they’ve written”, it’s a gimmick – a ruse – a pure fundraising ploy.  Nothing more.  That’s why the bills they talk about (ie. El Chappo, Clean Repeal etc.) never actually materialize…. they are raising money, not legislation.

And that’s why Trump’s legislative inbox is empty.

Staffers with nothing to do…