Policy pledges examined: what could the next president really do?

Let's discuss it, mmm?

In a Gettysburg speech last month, the Republican laid out many of his goals for the country. Alan Yuhas investigates the feasibility of each proposal

In the town where Abraham Lincoln addressed a shattered nation in 1863, Donald Trump gave one of the most detailed policy speeches of his campaign last month. As the US - and the world - wait to see which elements of the incoming president's inflammatory campaign he will attempt to pursue from the White House, this speech may be something of a guide. Alan Yuhas examines the likelihood of each of the 18 presidential acts and 10 bills Trump outlined in Gettysburg becoming reality.

The checks and balances of the US system will partially constrain Trump, as with any US president. But the eight-justice supreme court is likely to soon have a ninth, conservative justice once Trump takes office, and Congress is controlled by his fellow Republicans. State governments may resist some of the next president's initiatives by taking his administration to court.

But Trump will also have great leeway to act on his own, in line with precedents set by George W Bush and Barack Obama to expand the powers of the executive branch.

The text is drawn from Trump's campaign site.

On the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;

Trump can propose an amendment and Congress can reject it. The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, first took office in 1985 and has already said he opposes term limits.

SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);

Trump will have the power to halt hiring at federal agencies, but he has also said he would expand the size of agencies he has exempted (such as the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and military). There are about 2.85 million federal employees, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics.

THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;

Trump requires Congress to repeal regulations, and will almost certainly have its support to strip away environmental protections and financial regulations. His "requirement" is ambitious in its scope but Republicans have fought to deregulate banking and the oil and gas industry for decades.

FOURTH, a 5 year-ban [sic] on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

Trump would need Congress's help to truly cement such bans, though he could create rules for his White House staffers. Congress would not likely support a ban for its ex-lawmakers. More than 400 former members of the 112th and 111th Congresses have become lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, including some of the most powerful former lawmakers.

Conveniently for Trump, this five-year ban, at the moment, would primarily affect Democrats ousted from Congress and the Obama administration since 2011. His transition team, on the other hand, is already being filled with former lobbyistsand courted by current ones.

Bans on foreign interference could create legal knots for the Trump White House, however. He has a host of foreign business entanglements, with as many possible conflicts of interest, and a great deal still unknown about his dealings abroad.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following seven actions to protect American workers:

FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205

Actual renegotiation of a major trade deal could prove difficult: it took years of work across George HW Bush and Bill Clinton's White Houses to finalize the deal. Restructuring or withdrawing would also present a logistical nightmare, since car and airplane manufacturing, for instance, are already global, multinational industries.

But Trump could quickly hollow out the trade deal by enforcing some provisions harshly and not others, as he has promised, though this could cause litigation, higher consumer prices and/or a trade war with countries such as Mexico.

SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator

Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, a Republican and Democrat respectively, said on Friday that Barack Obama's long-planned Trans Pacific Partnership was in effect killed by the election. Ironically, the deal was designed in large part to curb China's economic influence in the Pacific, and its nullification will not improve US ties to would-be partners, who will probably turn to their closer neighbor. Nor will Trump's direction to his treasury secretary, which is in his power, improve relations with China.

FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and US Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately

Trump will have the power to direct enforcement priorities for his cabinet members, who can sue companies or countries they believe culpable of abuses.

FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50tn dollars' [sic] worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward

SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to UN climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure

Trump will be able to reverse any and all of Barack Obama's executive actions on climate change, including his block on the Keystone Pipeline, which he ruled against after a state department review found it would not significantly create jobs, lower the price of gas or break US dependency on oil imports.

As president, Trump will become the only leader of a large industrialized nation to doubt climate change, a crisis which even leaders such as the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte and Russia's Vladimir Putin have pledged to act on. Trump could simply ignore the US commitment to the Paris climate accord, though withdrawal would take four years. He has appointed a climate skeptic, whose organization is in part funded by coal companies, to head his EPA transition team, and could also try to gut Obama's environmental regulations, though he would face a fight in the courts, within agencies and from states such as California.

And Trump's ambitions to resurrect the coal industry face a larger problem than environmental safety laws: decades of economic decline, driven by the boom of natural gas. His promise to "fix" water and environmental infrastructure also runs directly afoul of his promises to reinvest in the coal and natural gas industries, the latter linked to earthquakes and the former to air and water pollution.

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama

Trump will have great leeway to rescind executive orders, though he would almost immediately run into practical problems in undoing them. He can revoke Obama's 2012 order to protect about 1.3 million young migrants, for instance, leaving them vulnerable to, if still not the priority for, deportation. Any orders relating to Obama's signature healthcare act, as with environmental orders, would be sent into the gears of bureaucracy, and could disrupt an already nervous healthcare industry. He could also rescind Obama's ban on torture, but would almost certainly face the courts for this decision (where a majority-conservative supreme court could, eventually, accept the decision).

SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States

Trump released two lists of names, totaling 21 names, though Senator Mike Lee refused consideration. It is the president's prerogative to nominate supreme court justices, though this year the Republican-controlled Senate has shifted the balance of power between the branches by its unprecedented block on even hearing Barack Obama's pick, Merrick Garland.

THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities

Trump would have the ability to revoke federal funding to cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Miami and Chicago, whose local governments try to shield migrants without criminal histories. So far, the mayors of New York, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle have pledged to defy Trump. The president has only weak legal power to meddle in city politics, but he could threaten them with withdrawing funding.

FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back

Trump has promised to deport migrants with criminal records and without papers, and to expand the definition of "criminal alien". As president, he will have discretion to guide law enforcement priorities as widely as he sees fit.

Trump's second pledge refers to a punitive action that the state department can take against countries that refuse to accept deported people. In 2001, the supreme court ruled that the US cannot detain migrants longer than six months if their home country refuses them, even in cases with criminal records (Trump spent much of campaign falsely blaming Obama for "catch and release" of migrants, when the president was actually following the law and had deported a record number of people). Trump's only recourse in the cases of these "recalcitrant" countries is a little-used tactic, denial of visas, which would almost certainly strain diplomatic relations.

FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

Trump's 2015 pledge to "ban all Muslims" from entering the US eventually became a promise to suspend migration from unspecified countries. Most of the power to regulate immigration lies with Congress, and constitutional experts are divided about whether such a ban could be ruled legal. What's more, as the scholar Lyle Denniston wrote in December, "the supreme court has never decided specifically whether a religious preference could be a valid basis for exclusion".

Trump's "extreme vetting" also rests on uncertain constitutional grounds, especially in the context of a proposed religious test. The US already has extraordinarily strict screening procedures for migrants and refugees, but presidents have wide discretion for enforcement powers. The fight over such a ban would land in all three branches of government.

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from seven to three, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate.

Neither the conservative Tax Foundation nor the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center have predicted major tax benefits to the middle class from Trump's plan. It would vastly benefit the highest earners, and increase the deficit by several trillion dollars over 10 years, according to their estimates.

End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the US tax-free.

American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1tn in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make two and four-year college more affordable [sic].

Trump could use federal funding as a carrot and a stick - benefits for compliant states, withdrawal for reluctant ones - to try to persuade states to abandon Common Core educational standards, but he will not have power except to advise and make recommendations to them. He has also not said how he would fund his school voucher program.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

Trump has been similarly vague about how he would replace the Affordable Care Act, which the Republican-controlled Congress will almost certainly try to gut, if not repeal. Millions of people stand poised to lose healthcare coverage, and it's not clear how the removal of government programs, in an industry six years into adjusting to them, would affect private providers or premiums.

End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the US after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

Mexico has refused to pay for the wall, which nonpartisan estimates place at a $25bn cost, if not more.

Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

FBI data showed a 10.8% single-year increase in violent crime in 2015, though national rates remain near historic lows and about half of their peak in the early 1990s. As the chief of federal law enforcement, Trump could instruct the justice department to allocate funding for militarized gear to police departments, and to rewrite Obama's guidelines for police departments, away from community policing standards and toward more aggressive tactics, such as stop-and-frisk, which would probably land the Trump administration in court over its legality.

Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values

Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

Trump has not said how he intends to pay for his huge military budget increase, which ends the sequestration cuts that Republicans demanded during the Obama administration.