President Trump’s early days in office produced a flurry of executive orders that promised sweeping reviews and swift actions, and although his administration has delivered on some fronts they have also missed some important deadlines.
There’s the overdue report that was supposed to identify the reason trade deficits have developed with each country that trades with the U.S., and the report on how the federal government can respond effectively to the national opioid crisis that was initially due in late June.
There are reports on how federal agencies should approach deregulation on a broad scale, how officials could “reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies” and how the Treasury Department could undo regulations that complicate the tax code.
The administration has labored behind the scenes to issue guidance or produce reports that satisfy the president’s executive orders, often with little of the fanfare that accompanied Trump’s signings.
For example, Trump’s original travel ban executive order, which he signed on Jan. 27, had asked the secretary of homeland security to decide what data DHS would need to perform extreme vetting and required him to create “a list of countries that do not provide adequate information” within 30 days of the signing. A DHS spokesman told the Washington Examiner that the report was delivered to the White House early last week and noted several other reports related to the travel ban have quietly flowed from the agency to the White House in the months since Trump signed the order.
Critics had questioned whether the hype over Trump’s action-packed debut was warranted given that 22 of the 40 executive orders and several of the additional presidential memos he signed in his first six months on the job were largely requests for information or plans for future initiatives rather than instant changes.
And some of those reports and initiatives have stalled as the agencies tasked with completing them struggle to comply with the president’s ambitious orders.
The stagnation of Trump’s executive agenda comes as his legislative agenda faces similarly disruptive delays on Capitol Hill. Republican efforts to overhaul Obamacare have continued unsuccessfully in fits and starts since March, with lawmakers notching just one symbolic victory by passing a repeal bill through the House in May.
Tax reform has simmered on the back burner while members await the savings they hoped to reap from repealing Obamacare. And infrastructure — once floated as a bipartisan package that could have started the legislative session off on a productive note — remains in a conceptual phase with no clear path to becoming reality.
That doesn’t mean the Trump administration hasn’t managed to deliver on a number of its promises, however.
For example, an executive order Trump signed on April 27 required the Department of Veterans Affairs to create an office specifically for handling whistleblower complaints within 45 days of the order. The VA has already unveiled the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection as well as began a policy of publishing the disciplinary actions taken against agency employees who harm veterans or fail to live up to standards.
Trump signed an order on April 18 that required the secretary of commerce and his budget director to put forward a plan within 60 days for the federal government to buy American-made products and rely on American labor whenever possible.
On June 30, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney issued a joint memo outlining how agencies could comply with Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” order.
But whether several of Trump’s deadlines have been met is unclear because the administration has often drawn little attention to the work done toward fulfilling the president’s orders.
For example, a White House official could not answer whether the Office of Management and Budget had submitted its “comprehensive plan for reorganizing the executive branch,” which Trump requested in a March 13 executive order.
“You should ask them,” a White House official said when asked whether OMB had delivered the report. A spokeswoman for OMB did not return a request for comment.
