Donald Trump took the presidential office with Republican majorities in Congress on January 20th, 2017, despite the numerous allegations of Russian interference, and the campaign he carried himself with was filled to the brim with campaign promises. President Trump’s election threw many people into fits of raging emotion in fear of these promises, as some of them may seem polarizing. The purpose of this essay is to explore four promises that he intends to bring to fruition, and examine the possibilities of them. Citizens have very different opinions on the direction his presidency would take, including the Muslim ban and the Mexican border, and there seems to be no end to the complications of these rather bold actions. After Trump’s first year in office, he has come across a harsh reality in governing: nothing comes quickly and easily. With time, he has been able to deliver on some promises, but also stumbled on others.
Campaign Promise #1
Trump’s specific ideas about deportations fluctuated at points during the campaign. At the bare minimum, he said he would deport 2 million undocumented immigrants who are criminals in the country now. He has also said he would mount a mass-deportation effort to expel all unauthorized immigrants. Trump continuously asserted that undocumented immigrants are large sources of criminal activity in the United States. As of July 2015, there are approximately 180,000 noncitizens with criminal records living in the United States, despite a government order for their removal (Valverde). Trump says he will triple the staffing at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and add 5,000 agents to the Border Patrol. Immigration arrests rose 32.6 percent in the first weeks of the Trump administration, with newly empowered federal agents intensifying their pursuit of not just undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but also thousands of illegal immigrants who have been otherwise law-abiding. Border agents report greater freedom to deport, and internal Department of Homeland Security notes show the department is looking for more agents to help speed deportation (Nakamura). But while immigration arrests are up since the Trump administration entered office, the actual number of deportations only decreased by 1.2 percent in three months as compared to one year before. As president, Trump could use his executive authority to revise President Barack Obama's deportation priorities or start from scratch. Prioritizing criminals for deportation has been Obama's policy for the past few years, as well (Johnson). More than 2 million people have been deported during the Obama administration. Some of Trump's proposals would require congressional approval and funding. For example, Trump wants Congress to pass Kate's Law, which would establish mandatory minimum sentences for undocumented immigrants who re-enter the United States after having been convicted of certain serious crimes. The measure is named for Kate Steinle, a woman killed by an undocumented immigrant who had been deported multiple times. If Trump keeps with his broader promise to remove all undocumented immigrants, regardless of criminal record, experts say that could have a strong negative impact on the economy as a whole. These policies to prioritize removing criminal undocumented immigrants could cost several billion dollars over five years, and damage the amount of laborers in the country, according to an analysis from the Washington Post. Tripling ICE officers could cost about $11 billion, and reviving Secure Communities and passing Kate's Law could cost $1 billion each (Blake). There are simply too many immigrants to carry out his promise of eliminating them all in less than 4 years.
Campaign Promise #2
In his campaign, Trump pledged to tackle the mental health and opioid crisis that is booming across the nation. As time passes, the statistics on school shootings continue to rise, which puts more pressure on the president to take action on funding more mental health programs. Also, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, more than 115 people die per day due to opioid overdose, and the illegal pushing of narcotics holds an economic burden of at least $78.5 billion a year (NIDA).
This past February, the president signed a two-year funding bill hammered out by congressional leaders that included $6 billion for opioid and mental health care. In this year’s fiscal spending plan, it said the president wanted to allocate $13 billion in mental health and opioid funding (Timm). Mental health care experts say those big dollar amounts obscure a dangerous reality: that same budget proposed massive cuts to Medicaid that they say would devastate the nation's mental health care system. For starters, the budget reiterates the administration's desire to repeal the Medicaid expansion enacted in some states under the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare. That's a problem for this promise because "upwards of 40 percent of adults covered through Medicaid expansion are people with behavioral health conditions" (Jacobson). This means that mental health care threatens to be taken away from people that may need it most.
Although there are qualms to his efforts, the money Trump is putting towards mental health and substance abuse programs will still help. Even if the opioid epidemic doesn’t quickly decrease, the President has the ability to take these actions in order to set up a brighter future for these heartbreaking statistics. The public holds support for the increase of addiction treatments and mental health therapies because of how popular these problems are among the population.
Campaign Promise #3
Trump says he wants to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate to hold insurance, and replace it with something that is “so much better, so much better, so much better.” He has offered few details on how to do that, though he has suggested health-savings accounts and interstate markets for insurance as ideas. He also says he wants to ensure that anyone who wants insurance coverage can get it and afford it. (Priest and Sullivan) After meeting with President Obama, Trump praised parts of Obamacare and acknowledged that it would be far more complicated to repeal the law than he acknowledged while campaigning.
Repeal should be relatively easy, at least on a nuts-and-bolts level. Republicans in Congress are eager to do so, and much of it can be accomplished through the process of reconciliation, which removes procedural hurdles. But replacement will be more difficult, since it’s likely to be politically divisive. Removing benefits may also be politically perilous. A first attempt at repeal ended in collapse in late March, with Republican leaders forced to pull a bill when it became clear it could not pass. The process faces hurdles: newfound popularity for Obamacare, Trump’s insistence on a replacement that maintains coverage, and deep divisions in the GOP. Nonetheless, as of April 27, the White House continues to push for a new vote on a bill that might pass the House but appears dead on arrival in the Senate.
In today’s American government, the president has limited powers in Congress, because repealing the ACA would mean for the majority in the chambers of Congress to be on the same page, which is a little bit tricky. There tends to be disunity in between the two parties, so in 4 years, I don’t believe Trump can manage to repeal Obamacare, as well as replace it with something that he thinks is better.
Campaign Promise #4
In his successful run for the presidency, Donald Trump often focused on ISIS, an acronym for the brutal Islamic fundamentalist group that seized control of territory in Syria and Iraq. One time, Trump said he would "bomb the hell" out of them. He claimed to have a plan to defeat them, but he refused to describe it, saying he didn't want to tip off extremists.
In a major foreign policy speech Aug. 15, then-candidate Trump said his administration would "aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS." A few weeks later at a campaign rally, he promised to take the preliminary step of crafting a winning strategy. "We are going to convene my top generals and give them a simple instruction," Trump said on Sept. 6, "They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.” On Jan. 28, 2017, Trump made good with a presidential memorandum. The key line was,"within 30 days, a preliminary draft of the Plan to defeat ISIS shall be submitted to the president by the secretary of defense.” The Pentagon sent Trump a preliminary framework Feb. 27. Defense Secretary James Mattis and other military planners met with the president the same day to discuss options to move decisively against ISIS.
Nine months after President Trump promised to defeat ISIS "quickly and effectively," U.S.-backed forces captured Raqqa, which until Tuesday had served as the ISIS capital. A spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition battling ISIS said later Tuesday that there were an estimated 100 members of the militant group still in Raqqa. Even if all the extremists were killed or captured by Friday, as the SDF claimed, Williams said earlier in the week that it could still take months before Raqqa is finally cleared of all the explosives they left behind. Only then will Syrians somehow have to find a way to rebuild the shattered city, where there is hardly a building left unscathed. Williams reported Tuesday morning from al-Naim Circle, in the heart of Raqqa. It used to be an ordinary traffic circle, but ISIS turned it into a place notorious for public executions, and then posted evidence of those horrific killings on the internet as propaganda.
Trump’s victory in Raqqa proves to be a good sign that ISIS can be defeated. Although it may be difficult to fully eliminate ISIS in one term of presidency, Trump is able to work with the Pentagon to instill a longer plan for the future past his term. ISIS has been established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi since 2004, and with our troops and advanced weapons, there is a good chance that the ISIS militants can be defeated.
Conclusion
Predicting how a Trump presidency would impact the United States seems very difficult because of his own inconsistent statements and promises, and it is unclear whether the Supreme Court or Congress will comply with his more controversial ideas. Because of this, the American population split in two, one group in fear for their future, and the others in radical support.