The best road to progress is freedom's road.
-John F. Kennedy
CRUZ MISSILE:TX Senator Ted Cruz met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen as she tries to promote her Island’s desire to forge relationships with western governments. President Tsai has been riding high since her phone conversation with President-elect Donald Trump breaking a decades-long communication blockade as part of the One China Policy. The move by Cruz pokes China again, which now thinks the U.S. is breaking with tradition, and ratchets up already high tensions.
DON’T DUST OFF THAT RESET BUTTON JUST YET: MD Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee is preparing a bill that would provide congressional authorization for economic sanctions against Russia. The bill has bipartisan support - notably from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham - and could cause an early faceoff between the Senate and President-elect Trump over the direction of U.S. policy with Russia.
RAMPING UP REGULATORY REVERSAL: The little used and very powerful Congressional Review Act (CRA) will be dusted off in the early days of the Trump Administration. The law has only been used once in its 20-year history and will make up for lost time the coming months. Trump and Congress both want to overturn many Obama era rules even though employing CRA will have a negative impact on executive power; once a rule is overturned by the CRA, a new rule that is substantially the same cannot be issued making it difficult for any future president to propose a rule that covers a similar area.
WHEN IT REINS, IT POURS: As planned, the first week of the 115th Congress mainly focused on regulatory reform. The House approved the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act and the Holman Rule which allows Congress to cut the salary of an individual employee down to $1. We expect many more regulatory reform bills in the coming weeks particularly surrounding the repeal of the Chevron and Auer doctrines.
ETHICAL DILEMMA: As confirmation hearings begin today Democrats will move to slow down the process as much as possible. The main complaint is that several of the nominees have not be thoroughly vetted and have not completed the ethics review process. The independent Office of Government Ethics is raising red flags, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who originally showed no intention of slowing down the hearings with seven of the nominees appearing before the committees in the next two days pushed the hearing of Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos into next week.
READY FOR REFORM? CONFERENCE CALL INVITE ON TAX AND DODD-FRANK REFORM: Please join us for a call on Tax Reform and Dodd-Frank Reform on Wednesday, January 11th at 2:30 PM. Dial-in instructions can be found here.
