…“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?...

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