I’m going to make this post shorter than the last one. Presumably, you will thank me for this. I’m not going to get down in the weeds of all the procedure involved in trying to pass tax reform using the budget reconciliation process. Instead, I’ll just note that the process shares most of the characteristics we saw in the effort to repeal Obamacare with the budget reconciliation rules.
In both cases, the idea is that the Republicans can pass a bill through the Senate without worrying about a Democratic filibuster. In both cases, the Republicans have to pass the legislation with almost no defections from their own side. And, in both cases, it’s a time consuming process that needs to be completed by a definite deadline. In the case of health care, their chance officially expires after September 30th when the fiscal year ends. In the case of tax reform, the deadline would be next September 30th.
Now, Trump did Congress a favor by clearing the looming debt ceiling and government shutdown crises off the September calendar, which should allow them to work on a budget which can include reconciliation directives for tax reform. But we saw the health care effort founder on the inability to unite Republicans on the issue of Medicaid expansion. Any tax reform bill will be complicated by several similar conundrums. For example, what happens when you eliminate the exemption for state and local taxes and you discover that this is a good deal for some Republican senators’ states and a horrible deal for others’ states? That’s just one example, but it’s well known that tax reform is difficult because it creates winners and losers and that those winners and losers don’t break down neatly along partisan lines.
President Trump now needs to decide if he wants to begin this process anew after it failed him on health care. Does he want to risk not getting any tax cuts or tax reform at all because he trusted Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to deliver on something that they could not actually deliver?
It’s obviously tempting to try, because the party is kind of demanding it for one thing, but also because who wants to make concessions when they might not have to?
On the other hand, why take the risk of complete failure?
The Democrats are not opposed to working on a tax reform bill, but they do insist on a few conditions:
Schumer and 44 others in the Senate Democratic caucus signed a letter in August that laid out “three key principles that we believe are prerequisites to any bipartisan tax reform effort.”
These are that any tax-reform plan should provide no tax cut for wealthy people, be fiscally responsible and move through so-called regular order.
The “regular order” part of that means that they won’t agree to negotiate unless the Republicans abandon the effort to pass the bill using the budget reconciliation rules. In other words, as long as they can filibuster and kill the bill if they don’t like it, they’re willing to work on tax reform.
Now, if Trump, quite sensibly in my opinion, concludes that he’s more likely to get some kind of tax cuts by working with the Democrats than he is by going along for another excellent budget reconciliation adventure with Ryan and McConnell, does that mean he’s pivoting or making a very defensible risk/reward analysis?
Is another consideration his risk with regard to the Russia investigations? If he sufficiently pisses off his own party, what’s preventing them from taking him out? Especially if they’re not getting the tax cuts they want to get.
Definitely could color his decision making. But he gets more mileage out of moving to the center than he gets out of being completely ineffectual. His base appears to be loyal so long as he isn’t rendered impotent.
the only addendum I would put on this is the Republicans in Congress are largely outside his base (mostly)
I guess it comes down to how much damage those voters could do, my guess is they wait until after primary season
His game seems to be making sure the Republican Congress gets all the blame. I continue to assume he does not care about policy, except as it affects him personally, which taxes certainly do, but he has bigger fish to fry. He got where he is running against the Republican establishment, and i think he is ready to do it again. The difference between this situation and the debt ceiling is something really had to be done about the debt ceiling. This is more like Obamacare. Trump doesn’t really give a damn so long as he is not blamed.
I think it’s too early to see if the capitulation on the debt ceiling hurt him with the base. Everyone’s mind in on disaster relief right now, but in three months, all this will come up again.
Cooperating with the Repubs on taxes will be very dangerous for the Democrats with their own base. There probably does not exist a tax reform package that will please both progressives and Republicans because the two have opposite objectives (unless it is trivial clean-up of minor flaws). The Schumer position sounds to me like theatre. “Fiscally responsible” should mean revenue-neutral or better. Tax cuts for the rich and/or corporations are whole point for Republicans. Are corporate tax cuts going to be paid for by the middle class? Political death. Are they going after entitlements again? Dem suicide to cooperate with that in any form. I think the offer is a non-starter and is probably meant to be. It’s there for the talking points.
Booman, you can’t claim that Trump is pivoting, or even better, “triangulating”. That is a claim that can only be made against Democratic presidents and in particular against Bill Clinton. The reason is that Republican presidents are ruthless ideologues in agreement with equally ruthless, ideologically lockstep Republican Congressional blocs, whereas Democratic presidents and Democratic Congressional blocs are spineless wimps without any ideological disposition at all aside from a craven desire to suck up to their donors and hang out with Hollywood celebrities. I thought everyone knew this, but in case you’ve forgotten, some of Our Progressive Betters will shortly join this discussion to remind us.
But the Repub leadership still has to put the bill through, and much as they want tax deform they won’t like Schumer’s rules. How much room is there really to pivot?
(I fat-fingered “liedership” above and almost left it that way).
It would be interesting to see where the lines of division actually are at the moment. Who exactly is desperate for a tax cut now. Who depends on government spending? And how will relief for Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and California affect the politics?
Trump needs Democratic votes to pass tax reform, right? Will the Democrats hold as strongly together as they did against Trumpcare, given that there might be more divergent interests in the caucus?
Trump showed he was capable of punting if he thought he could win downfield.
There’s an assumption that no tax reform would be acceptable and that “giving Trump a win” is never going to be worth it.
But, a tax reform authored by Rep. Neal and Sen. Wyden would probably end momentum for a tax reform done on other terms, and possibly for decades.
Tax reform isn’t bad in and of itself, and it could be far better than a mere tax cut that sunsets or whatever other garbage the GOP might be able to cobble together.
Plus, splitting Trump off from the GOP’s stranglehold in Congress could conceivably have positive effects that transcend Trump’s interests.
It could unravel the GOP’s majority without actually gaining a majority for the Democrats.
Trump is never going to be an ally to the Dems, but he could become and instrument of destruction that actually accelerates the demise of the conservative movement.
I would tap on the wedges carefully, keeping an ear out for cataclysmic fissures.
Whatever one calls this, it would effectively result in Trump leading a coalition government. After all, if not tax reform, why not repairing the ACA? Heck, why not single payer?
Since what has made Republican voters loyal to their leaders is tribalism (not actual policy), Trump could effectively tear the Republican coalition to shreds. If he had begun right at the beginning of his term, he could have been a popular president. Probably too late now (especially after his slightly veiled comments in support of white supremacy); he’d probably alienate as many as he reconciled. Which is one reason I doubt it will happen.
Still seems like magical thinking to put forward the idea that DT is capable of strategy that doesn’t involve dominance/humiliation/revenge/temper tantrums. He wants his tax cuts; he’s going to kick and scream until he gets them. I’ll say this and keep saying it: there is no pivot.
That’s Trump whining about the debt ceiling not getting resolved before the August recess and demanding the continuing resolution include money for his wall.
He does these things and everyone takes the seriously, but eventually he gets seated in a chair and someone explains reality to him.
Deadlines definitely help in this regard. So far, deadlines and adverse court rulings and legislative defeats and the appointment of special counsel have been the only things to change his behavior.
He doesn’t learn easily, but he follows strategy when every alternative has been taken away from him.
One has to wonder how much having Kelly controlling access to him has affected his recent behavior and decisions. Might we be seeing the results of a shadow president at work?
I think that’s worth discussing. Clearly the recent purge/reorg has empowered the voices of (relative) sanity in the white house. But whose voices are those? As Tien Le says below, Trump doesn’t make his own strategy.
“He doesn’t learn easily, but he follows strategy when every alternative has been taken away from him.”
Exactly. The operative word is ‘follows’. He doesn’t originate strategies, certainly not strategies that are meant to get him what he wants with the legislature.
A pivot is a conscious effort to make a change in direction. He only changes direction when it’s the only direction available. He’s like a rat in a maze.
Precisely.
sigh … Trump is such a transparently horrible and incompetent jerk … but before the election I said he would do less domestic economic damage than Ryan, Pence et al, and I guess that’s panning out so far.
I found this site during the Plame scandal, with which I was “obsessed” and I’m still a huge sucker for a political scandal, but I’m having trouble deciding how and more importantly when I want this Russian debacle to conclude. Going into the election, I was already assuming a Clinton win and a 2018 bloodbath – now I’m trying to see how if at all the madness of this year could lead to a positive 2018/2020. An even more distasteful and frustrating thought is that perhaps in long the long run it would be better if the GOP continued to control congress after 2018 so that the backlash in 2020 would be the deathblow we’ve all been waiting for.
There’s gotta be some ways this ends well.
Yes, Martin, but Trump’s entire presidency is now like “a rat in a maze.” He has no way out whatever, and it seems like he’s recently emerged from his cocoon of obliviousness and begin, dimly, to understand just how completely hated he is by the majority of voters. If an election were held today, he’d lose, badly. And the next Democrat he faces will not be hated like Hillary Clinton, whom the media had spent 20 years vilifying.
I don’t expect him to realize that his best chance for re-election would be to split his party into factions, lead his base into a new “populist” direction and work with Democrats to produce bills that do infrastructure projects.
He could get away with this, but it’s unlikely he will see the need in time. Most likely, he reverts to form and outrages everybody who is not already a Trumpite (or media nodding-head jonesing for bi-partisanship for the sake of bi-partisanship).
But, he’s going to need “wins” in the future and the only way he can get any “win” is by cutting a deal with Pelosi & Schumer. So, he will be forced back to the well again. The only question is whether he will have so outraged every non-Trumpite in the US by that time that he cuts off his own chances by being too much of an asshole such that he poisons the well.
I still consider it by far most likely that Republicans go for a 10 year tax cut with no offsets. This will satisfy the Koch creeps and assorted deep-pocketed demons.
Again, it’s not tax reform. Stop using the framing of the right.
For example, at no time will you ever see an abortion rights advocate use the term “pro-life”.
I know, you’re writing to a (mostly) choir-like crowd here (our resident glibertarian the the members of the Our Progressive Betters caucus being the exceptions) but still, start framing this consistently from a progressive standpoint, not a GOP one.