White House Watch: The Year of Trump

. . .with the Obamacare repeal (a failure) and tax reform (a success) done, the White House is planning to release an infrastructure proposal in the first few weeks of the new year. Trump has met several times in the last month with congressional leaders about finalizing a framework.
Trump has a personal interest in the issue. “He really understands building stuff,” says Pennsylvania’s Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, who met with Trump in the Oval Office on December 11. “The guy’s a builder, he knows how to build things on time and under budget.”
According to White House officials, the forthcoming plan will expand on Trump’s executive orders speeding up the permitting process for projects, and the president hopes for something on the order of $1 trillion in total investment. This includes $220 billion in federal spending for roads, bridges, and similar projects, with the balance coming from investment by state, local, and private interests.

2017 was a year in which American politics vindicated Publius’s prediction that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” It was a year that demonstrated in spades Publius’s judgment that “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society.” And it was a year in which Publius’s prediction of what would happen in 1787 was repeated, 230 years later: “A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
But in the midst of these passions and declamations and invectives, one set of institutions has stood tall: those created by, derived from, and fostered by the Constitution of the United States. The separation of powers, the independence of the courts, the rule of law, federalism, limits on government power, an independent private sector and a vigorous civil society, basic freedoms of speech and assembly—these have survived the rocky seas of 2017, despite having at the helm of the American ship a captain who is careless of its well-being and reckless in its piloting.
The survival of that ship, the fact that it remains seaworthy and even in some instances is moving in the right direction, is a tribute to many individuals, but to Publius above all. He and his colleagues built well. They knew that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” And they knew that “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”