Opening Packet – Negative – hss 2017 offcase materials start here

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2nc - Congress makes inevitable

Congress makes financial deregulation inevitable – already happening and they’ll use the budget process to defund Dodd-Frank

Protess 1-30 [Ben Protess covers the intersection of Wall Street and government for the failing New York Times, including financial industry lobbying and white-collar crime. 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/business/dealbook/republicans-unravel-dodd-frank-act.html]

But the president has spoken out against Dodd-Frank, claiming that eliminating it would benefit working people, even as he stocks his administration with former Goldman executives and billionaires.

His allies in Congress began their legislative assault on Dodd-Frank on Monday, introducing a measure to repeal a Securities and Exchange Commission regulation that requires oil companies to publicly disclose payments they make to governments when developing resources around the world. The regulation was tangential to Dodd-Frank’s mission of reforming Wall Street but was included as a bipartisan effort intended to shine a light on potential bribes.

Republicans argue that the rule puts American companies at a disadvantage; the House Financial Services Committee has called it a “politically motivated mandate.” And the rule has some powerful opponents in the industry, including Exxon Mobil and, according to one account, its former top executive, Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of state.

The legislation to repeal the rule, introduced by Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan and advanced to the House floor by the rules committee on Monday, has a good shot of becoming law thanks to an obscure parliamentary procedure. Under the Congressional Review Act, passed in 1996, Congress has a limited window to undo newly finalized regulations using only 51 Senate votes, rather than the normal 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. Republicans hold a majority in both chambers, all but guaranteeing them success.

This effort is just the beginning. House Republicans are also moving bolder legislation that would repeal crucial provisions of Dodd-Frank, including the so-called Volcker rule, which prevents banks from making risky bets with their own money. And they are exploring ways to use the budget process to potentially defund some of the law’s most contentious provisions.

They’ll include it in budget reconciliation – harder to oppose

Protess 1-30 [Ben Protess covers the intersection of Wall Street and government for the failing New York Times, including financial industry lobbying and white-collar crime. 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/business/dealbook/republicans-unravel-dodd-frank-act.html]

The Budget

If his straightforward legislation stalls, Mr. Hensarling may find comfort in the minutiae of the budget reconciliation process.

In the next six weeks or so, his committee is required to submit its “budget views” for 2018 to the House Budget Committee. In this document, Mr. Hensarling is expected to recommend a number of measures that could rein in some core aspects of Dodd-Frank.

For example, he will most likely recommend replacing regulators’ authority to wind down troubled banks with a new chapter of the bankruptcy code. He also could tinker with the funding for two bodies that Republicans love to hate: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a collective of regulators who monitor threats to the financial system.

By subjecting these bodies to the congressional appropriations process, rather than a dedicated funding mechanism, Congress may be able to cut their funding.

2nc - No Trump Lashout

International checks reinforce domestic constraints

Burdette 3-1 (Zachary, National Security Intern at the Brookings Institution and M.A. candidate at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program concentrating in military operations. “America’s Counterterrorism Partners as a Check on Trump” 3-1-17 https://www.lawfareblog.com/americas-counterterrorism-partners-check-trump)

President Trump has begun to shift U.S. counterterrorism policies toward an extreme paradigm that departs from both liberal and conservative orthodoxy. In his first weeks in office, Trump recast the enemy as radical Islam, reconsidered U.S. policy on black sites and torture, and instituted a travel ban covering seven Muslim-majority countries. The unifying logic of these approaches is one of defining Islam as the problem, unshackling humanitarian constraints, and adopting extreme tools to combat terrorism. In implementing this vision, Trump inherits an already formidable counterterrorism architecture and an expansive legal interpretation of executive war powers from the Obama administration.

Ideally, the checks and balances of the U.S. political system will force moderation and curtail executive overreach. The national security bureaucracy, Congress, the courts, the press, and civil society are—individually and collectively—powerful impediments to illegal and extreme counterterrorism measures. While there are fierce debates over how effectively these domestic constraints have operated in the past, the early judicial challenges to Trump’s counterterrorism policies suggest that domestic institutions could place meaningful constraints on the new administration.

International dynamics may reinforce these domestic checks and balances. U.S. allies and partners could leverage their continued cooperation on counterterrorism to pressure the Trump administration to exercise uncharacteristic self-restraint. In other words, the United States could soon face an uncomfortable dilemma: President Trump must either restrain his most hawkish impulses or his administration may find itself increasingly going it alone in the war on terror.

The Trump administration may not be concerned about such a possibility, given the President’s dismissive attitude toward American allies throughout the campaign, but it should be. Allies provide important assets in international counterterrorism operations, many of which the U.S. intelligence community would be hard-pressed to replace.

If partners believe the new administration’s counterterrorism policies are illegal or excessive, they will likely turn first to diplomatic condemnation to induce moderation. The collective voice of the international community shapes expectations about what is acceptable, which raises the political costs of crossing certain legal and political thresholds. Global outcry would lend weight and legitimacy to those inside the United States calling for restraint, serving as an external prompt to jumpstart dialogue and the internal processes of U.S. checks and balances. For example, international naming and shaming of the Obama administration helped end the U.S. practice of spying on the communications of certain allied heads of state.

While the Trump administration may prove itself immune to such international condemnation, there is some cause for optimism. In addition to his uncompromising demand for unconditional praise, one of Trump’s few consistencies is his lack of principled commitment to any particular policy. He flip-flopped on proposed counterterrorism measures when domestic audiences criticized him during the campaign. A concerted, global effort may have a similar effect during his presidency, especially if it were combined with fawning praise for his leadership when he moderates.

SecDef vetoes US lashout

Picht 16 James Picht, PhD, teaches economics and Russian at the Louisiana Scholars' College, Senior Editor for Communities Politics, CDN, 6/14/2016, “President Trump’s inability to accidentally start a nuclear war”, http://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/president-trumps-inability-to-accidentally-start-a-nuclear-war-65654/

But we don’t want them used too easily. To set your mind at ease, there is no actual button on the president’s desk that can launch nuclear weapons. We need not worry that in a moment of inattention, the president will accidentally start a nuclear war. The system by which we launch nuclear weapons can’t be so easy that they can be launched by accident or on a whim. It can’t be so difficult that, when we detect Russian missiles flying at our cities and our military installations, the president can’t respond quickly and launch our own missiles before they’re reduced to radioactive slag. Those competing requirements mean that the system will be highly complex. It includes failsafes, backup systems, redundancies, and verification checks. When the order comes to launch the missiles, we want to be sure that it came from an authorized source that really, really meant it. The nuclear button isn’t real. There is a chain of command, and there are verification codes. The president can order the release of nuclear weapons, but the order must be confirmed by the secretary of defense. A “watch alert” is sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and after the president reviews the war plans, an aid contacts the National Military Command Center. Trump seems lackadaisical about nuclear proliferation, speaking casually about the “inevitable” spread of nuclear weapons and the desirability of countries like Japan and Germany building nuclear arsenals of their own. His view of the subject seems predicated more on cost savings than on the history of nuclear non-proliferation or on national security concerns. That’s a real concern. Trump’s thin skin is not. The LBJ campaign’s infamous “daisy ad” against Barry Goldwater was demagoguery at its worst; it was intended to terrify voters and convince them that Goldwater might really launch an attack on the USSR. The evidence is that Trump is careless with his words, crude in his treatment of people he considers unimportant, and ignorant of foreign affairs. It is not that he is insane or looking forward to Armageddon. And unless he managed to fill the Department of Defense with lackeys who were as insane as he would have to be, he couldn’t start a nuclear war for no better reason than an offense to his very thin skin.

Pence has all the power – Trump is a puppet with no strings

Oh 16 – Writes for Mother Jones, managing editor of mother jones (INAE OH, “Donald Trump Reportedly Plans to Delegate All Domestic and Foreign Power to his VP”http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/donald-trump-mike-pence-running-mate-domestic-foreign-policy) RMT

A new report from the New York Times Magazine goes behind the scenes of the VP selection process and claims that Trump's first choice was his former rival, Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Perhaps more interestingly, the report sheds light on the unprecedented level of power Trump plans to delegate to his vice president if elected. According to the Times, Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., was responsible for vetting the potential candidates. Here's a scene from one conservation he had with a Kasich adviser.

Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

"Making America great again" was the casual reply.

If true, this means that Trump doesn't plan on doing much governing at all. It may also reveal that he actually agrees with Hillary Clinton's claim that he is temperamentally unfit to become president of the United States. As for Kasich, he declined the offer and isn't even showing up to the Republican convention that's taking place in his home state.

2nc - No diversionary war

It’s unlikely speculation

Foster 16 – Dennis M. Foster, Professor of International Studies and Political Science at the Virginia Military Institute, “Would President Trump Go To War To Divert Attention From Problems At Home?”, Washington Post, 12-19, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/19/yes-trump-might-well-go-to-war-to-divert-attention-from-problems-at-home/?utm_term=.bf5bc633b8b7

If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war? Since the age of Machiavelli, analysts have expected world leaders to launch international conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly performing economy.

One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy.

In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent behavior.

Do words translate into foreign policy action?

One way to identify these traits is content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military force.

For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively.

Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert popular attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable and confident (military force).

Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in times of rising inflation and unemployment. By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so.

What about Donald Trump?

Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern about how he will react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action.

I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January 2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents.

These results are startling. Nearly 35 percent of Trump’s references to outside groups paint them as harmful to himself, his allies and friends, and causes that are important to him — a percentage almost twice the previous high. The data suggest that Americans have elected a leader who, if his campaign rhetoric is any indication, will be historically unparalleled among modern presidents in his active suspicion of those unlike himself and his inner circle, and those who disagree with his goals.

As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual complexity. Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a doubt.”

A possible implication for military action

I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly predicts an increase in the use of force.

But the model would predict that a president with Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an increase in the use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate more than one major conflict per quarter.

Of course, predictions from such a model come with a lot of uncertainty. By necessity, any measures of a president’s traits are imperfect. And we do not know whether there will be an economic downturn. Moreover, campaigning is not governing, and the responsibilities of the Oval Office might moderate Donald Trump. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has found that presidents often become more conceptually complex once they enter office.

2nc - no spillover

U.S. not key

Molavi 11 – Afshin Molavi, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the World Economic Roundtable at the New America Foundation, “US Economic Power is Part of a Healthier Global Order”, The National, 7-4, http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/us-economic-power-is-part-of-a-healthier-global-order#full

Thus, the world faces the prospect of America slipping quietly into a "lost decade" of sluggish growth - of America sneezing and wheezing and coughing, but not facing a crisis moment. What will this mean for the world? Japan's growth throughout the 1970s and 1980s bolstered many of their Asian trading partners. Japan's demand was a boon. But Japan's lost decade in the 1990s did not stop the Asian tigers from rising. In some cases, countries such as South Korea and Taiwan even benefited from the Japanese slowdown, stealing away market share in key industries. The same may happen with an American "lost decade". A World Bank report in late 2009 noted that Latin American countries - the most exposed to American contagion - did not feel severe effects from the American crisis. The same goes for other emerging markets. So, perhaps the world will shrug off a steady American economic decline over the next five years. This is partly because the global economic pie is not a fixed size. As "the rest" rise, it grows. Thus, America controlled a quarter of the world's GDP in 1970 - roughly the same as today. But the pie is much bigger. Global GDP has tripled since 1970 and Asia today accounts for a quarter of global GDP. The pie is not only larger, but it is more balanced. Will there even be a "lost decade" after all? American corporations are sitting on large piles of cash. The problems with the economy have as much (perhaps more) to do with business confidence as with fundamentals. That could change. To be sure, the world is better off when America grows and produces and innovates. But if the declinists prove correct, then the cliché of "when American sneezes" will truly be tested once and for all. Or perhaps the world will be too busy to notice: emerging markets will be growing their middle classes, oil-rich Middle East states will be bolstering ties to Asia, and Chinese investments will flow across Africa and Latin America. And that sneezing $14 trillion (Dh51.4 trillion) economy would still be the envy of most countries around the world. We can put the cliché to rest: an American sneeze might not breed a global cold after all.