It kind of makes me laugh when people pretend that the Republicans in Congress need their numbers to add up in order to pass legislation. Still, the CBO says that the House bill to repeal Obamacare would create substantial savings. And, even if most of those savings would immediately be squandered on giving rich people more money, the GOP is relying on the extra money to pass tax reform so they can give rich people more money.
As a result, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who sits on the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Finance, says that if the health care bill fails, the Republicans “won’t be doing any tax revision.”
This is presumably because there are enough budget hawks in the Republican Party now that they can’t pass deficit-driven trickle-down economic policies, but that’s really something that remains to be seen. If the hangup is nothing more than budgetary chicanery that is unconvincing even to post-factual Freedom Caucus members, I’m not so sure it’s a fatal obstacle. Or, at least, they’ll be more inclined to go deeply into debt to finance tax reform than they would be to finance Trump’s infrastructure plan or education reforms.
In any case, the narrative is going around that Trump’s entire agenda will be imperiled if the congressional GOP doesn’t stop squabbling and get on with stripping health insurance from 24 million people. But, consider how imperiled his agenda is right now, and pay special attention to who is to blame for that.
As a candidate for president, Trump promised that he would work with Congress to pass legislation that would dramatically cut taxes, spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investments, significantly expand school choice and make it easier to afford child care. And he promised he would get started on all that — and six other pieces of legislation — in his first 100 days, according to a “Contract with the American Voter” released shortly before Election Day.
Now past the 50-day mark, only one of those bills — the House GOP health-care plan — has been introduced…
…Other promised 100-day bills included a sweeping crackdown on immigration, including a southern border wall paid for by Mexico; a new system of tariffs to discourage companies from relocating abroad; and reforms aimed at reducing “the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.” No such measures have been introduced.
As far as I can tell, the U.S. Senate isn’t inclined to enact Trump’s tariff plan and they don’t seem too keen on paying for the Mexican border wall since the Mexicans were supposed to pony up for that. The immigration crackdown is being done by executive order, and that’s tied up in court. And I haven’t heard a peep about a lobbying or ethics bill.
It’s not like the Senate Democrats are filibustering these bills. The bills don’t yet exist. And they’ll need 60 votes in the Senate, which means that at least 8 Democratic senators will have to support Trump’s plans. So far, though, the Democrats are showing no signs of cracking their resistance. Certainly, there aren’t eight Democrats in the Senate who are so worried about Trump that they’d go along with his agenda on any of these items.
The only reason the health care bill is moving at all (and it really isn’t) is because they’re doing it through a special budget reconciliation process that limits what they can change but also makes it possible to pass with only 50 votes in the Senate (plus the vice president’s tie-breaking vote). Trump has made the opposite of progress in wooing red state Democratic senators for any part of his agenda. At best, he might get some of their votes for his Supreme Court nominee.
So, what’s really imperiling Trump’s agenda isn’t the hostility nearly all people have for his health care bill. It’s that he’s been slow to introduce his agenda and he’s done absolutely nothing to line up support for it in the Senate.
So, shorter BooMan this week: We should view electoral gains as a hopeless prospect, and legislative losses as increasingly unlikely.
Not being facetious; genuinely interested in these bell-weather trends. (Others seem to agree.)
The best hope for 2018 is not losing any further Senate seats (quite unlikely to get a net gain) and making some inroads on the HOR, which is actually more vulnerable than one might think.
Gains for Democrats in the House more vulnerable or the GOP majority in the House is more vulnerable?
It’s a sorry pass this country has come to, when rooting for incompetence in the incumbent administration is the best hope for said country.
That’s a pass we came to a long time ago. I’ve been rooting for GOP incompetence for years. And often my prayers are answered.
Well, yeh, but when it’s Katrina-level it’s hard to cheer.
I do think the scope and depth of the chaos and incompetence is much greater this time around, reflecting the (utter lack of) leadership skills at the top.
Trump has an agenda beyond enriching himself through outright corruption? Who knew? His campaign promises were so much meat thrown to the yapping hyenas in his rallies not an actual legislative agenda. Short of invading Mexico and seizing its Treasury or forcibly taking over PEMEX, Mexico is not going to pay for any wall and everyone knows that. Trump is filling up the swamp faster than ever; there won’t be an ethics law, etc. etc. His agencies have barely any leadership staff and one can assume that most of the civil and foreign service employees pretty much despise him and his Cabinet appointees. So…
“…he’s done absolutely nothing to line up support for it in the Senate.”
Er, Elaine Chao? With a trillion of infrastructure… Hello and welcome back, Pork Barrel.
These are the folks who would ordinarily mark up a transportation bill in the Senate:
And, ordinarily, if you’re going to get Dems to crossover and support your bill, you’re going to need a bunch of folks from the relevant committee. If they all say it’s crap, the rest of the caucus will sit tight.
Guess we will see. But she is formidable.
Is this based on anything more substantial than the other signature on her marriage license?
Chao was a cipher under Bush. Window-dressing. A diversity two-fer.
Wow. That was pretty dismissive in a very ugly way.
Ask the millions of white collar hourly workers how effective she was at taking away their overtime, eh? (How come Dems did not tie her regulation changes up in court, I wonder.) Something Republicans had been trying for since 1977, supposedly. On time and implemented.
I did not claim that she plays for the Dems.
Three, maybe as many as six, Dem presidential aspirants on that committee.
If the Dem rank-and-file out in the hustings are in a “No! To everything.” mood there will be no horsetrading.
If the people lead, the leaders will follow.
Trump is an ass. It’s too bad that the primary process gave us the worse two major Party candidates of my lifetime. Forty years ago, I would not have believed that I would want Richard Nixon back in the White House forty years later. Or Lyndon Johnson.
For all of the griping about how bad the two candidates were, Clinton would have been 1000 times better than Trump.
Don’t pretend otherwise.
Damn right. And I’d take domestic policy Lyndon back in a New York minute.
Yes, why not? We have the unending war anyway.
Even accepting that H. Clinton was the worst Democratic candidate in a lifetime (which I don’t), she still would have been 1000 times better than Trump.
(In other words, both things can be true.)
What Bernie Sanders said works for me: “On her worst day, HRC would be a hundred times better than Donald Trump.”
Smart man, the senator from Vermont.
She woulda been 1000 times better, yes, but one of the proofs she was such a lousy candidate is that she couldn’t beat Trump. So your point cancels itself out.
bullshit!
Trump imperiled his own agenda?
Booman…I think we need to start considering what Trump’s “agenda …and that of his closest advisors/controllers…really is.
I have been saying all along that Trump is not stupid. Crude, but not stupid. There is a difference between manners and intelligence. He is a nasty-spirited bully…genetics at work…but he is not a stupid bully. (Also genetically mandated.) Bannon has publicly stated that his “agenda” is to tear down the whole superstructure of the U.S. government…or at least, that is what we have been told he has said, and it certainly matches the gradual demolition job that is quite obviously underway now with this regime.
Tactic?
Strategy?
A strategy that is being served by that tactic.
Served quite well., so far.
If he was just some bumbling fool instead of a big-time hustler with a world-class dumb act, then we might argue that he is “imperiling his own agenda.” But if we fall for the line that “his agenda” is simply serving his own ego and in the process growing even richer than he is already, we are underestimating him the same way he has been underestimated ever since he first declared his intention to run for the presidency.
And look where that got us.
We need to take him as a serious threat to the country as it has stood for hundreds of years…a rickety but never (so far) totally failed democracy…and resist him on all levels. Resist him politically, in terms of media coverage, by mass demonstrations and by insisting that if the Democratic Party doesn’t get off its entitlement-blinded, elitist ass and start actively fighting tooth and nail to bring him and his controllers down there will be formed a new party (the Resistance Party, for want of a better name) that will do the work that the two-headed Centrist Party is too weak to do.
So far?
I don’t see that sort of resistance happening.
It has to happen soon, because the Trumpistas are holding their own against the tepid, secretive, under-the-covers-and-in-the-back-rooms work that is now being waged against them.
Soon!!!
AG