04.02.2018, Washigton.
The difficulties that US President Donald Trump’s various legislative initiatives face when attempting to pass through Congress show a lack of unity in the Republican Party, Arystan Siraliyev, an expert in US domestic policy, said in his interview to a Rossa Primavera news agency correspondent on February 2.
According to Siraliyev, Democrats do not play the decisive role in hampering the passage of Trump’s bills.
“The Congress minority cannot prevent anything, except for constitutional amendments and some strategic provisions, such as adopting the budget, for which the Senate needs a ratio of 60:40. When Trump’s initiatives are torpedoed in Congress, this is due to weak party discipline among the Republicans“, the expert said.
“Given the fact that the Republicans received a majority in both houses of Congress in 2016, Trump’s legislative initiatives encounter unexpected difficulties in getting passed. Primarily, this is due to the fact that a significant number of Republicans is accustomed to serving the interests of transnational capital, to the detriment of the national interests of the United States. In many ways, these ‘Republican globalizers’ set the tune in Congress, and not only there“, Siraliyev concluded.
On January 19, the Senate was not able to approve the budget for 2018, which resulted in the shutdown of a number of government agencies. Five Senate Republicans, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, voted with the Democrats, and John McCain abstained. This allowed the adoption of the budget in the Senate to be blocked.
At the same time, five Democrats voted against their own party.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
