Governing By Fiat

Will inevitably lead to dictatorship

President Trump has declared that later this month he will move to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10 percent.

Undoubtedly this move will be good for those consumers who are able to use a temporary reduction in interest payments to reduce the balance they owe. It would help make life a bit more affordable for many.

The move will be popular. Interest rates of 20 and 30 percent are not sustainable, and lead consumers down a pathway towards financial struggle.

In the long run though, such a low interest rate cap won’t work. It will not deliver lenders profits commensurate to the risks undertaken. 30 percent interest may well be predatory, but 10 percent interest (with continued easy access to credit) is unprofitable. It is a policy that will not be sustainable over the long term.

Photo by Aleksandrs Karevs on Unsplash

That it won’t be, can’t be, a long term policy should be understood from the start.

The President has not indicated how he intends to implement it. Perhaps he will do so through executive order, perhaps through simple ‘jawboning.’ The only thing that seems clear is that it will not be a law passed through Congress.

There seems to be little question that the President lacks the power to do this, but he’ll likely do it anyway. And lenders will probably go along, for a time at least, in order to stay on his good side.

That’s the way things are now. Congress is routinely bypassed. Congress allows itself to be routinely bypassed, more concerned with posting on X, campaigning, and personal stock portfolios than governing the country. Voters don’t seem to care, consistently returning even those members of Congress who have aged into obvious senility.

Government by executive order, not by law.

President Trump didn’t invent this. Executive power has been growing since our nation was young. President Biden foisted his schemes on the American people in exactly the same way.

One of the serious problems with this form of governance is that it raises the stakes and consequences of Presidential elections. These have always been of vital importance of course, but as executive power increases, their importance increases right along with it.

That means that someday, someone is not going to leave office.

President Trump, in his first term, made vast policy changes via executive fiat. President Biden was elected, quickly disposed of many of Trump’s changes, then enacted his own, also through fiat. Trump replaced him, and the cycle continued.

Likewise with the next election. It is likely that a Democrat will be elected, and assuming that to be the case, Trump’s current policies will be discarded and replaced with new, all through fiat.

Actual laws, laws passed through Congress don’t have this whipsaw effect. Certainly they can be, and are changed as Congressional majorities change, but there is a process. A slow process. A process that ensures what can at least be argued is widespread support. None of this is the case when policy is created via fiat.

That raises the stakes. And as our nation grows ever more divided, the visions for the country that will be implemented via executive fiat grow further and further apart from each other. Each side increasingly believes the other to be either nuts or evil, hell bent on destroying the country.

If this continues, someday, probably a lot sooner than we imagine, a President who has lost a bid for re-election, or who has reached the end of his second term, will look at the person who is to replace him, decide that person will destroy the country, and as a result, refuse to leave office.

Whomever the President is at the time will declare that he is seizing power in order to preserve the republic. Half of the population will celebrate the move, and the American experiment will die.

This sad fate can be averted. But averting it will take a Congress that insists on fulfilling its legitimate role in crafting the policies of our nation. And that will take an electorate that refuses to return incumbent Members of Congress who spend more time on X, their reelection bids, and their personal stock portfolios than on governing the country.