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Where Does the GOP Agenda Stand Now?
The headline on my new The Week piece, “Donald Trump’s failing presidency” is definitive whereas the actual analysis is inquisitive. There is certainly a long way to go in his first term. And big-time policymaking is never a series of uninterrupted successes. It’s often darkest before the dawn.
But there are some worrisome signs. I mean, if a presidency were on the wrong track, trouble with its two biggest initiatives would be a powerful indication. And there are clear problems with healthcare and taxes. As I write:
First, repealing and replacing ObamaCare, the GOP’s top priority, was just dealt a hammer blow by the Congressional Budget Office. Conservative Republicans will surely focus on the CBO finding that the American Health Care Act would reduce projected debt by $300 billion and cut taxes by $900 billion over a decade. But the more relevant numbers to many Americans will be the 14 million people losing health insurance coverage next year and the 20 percent rise in insurance premiums if the bill becomes law. … Priority two doesn’t look a whole lot healthier. The GOP plan to deeply cut tax rates depends on the blueprint’s controversial and deeply confusing border-adjustment provision. Dropping this provision — as seems highly probable — would blow a trillion-dollar revenue hole in a plan already counting on aggressive growth forecasts to avoid hemorrhaging red ink.
But maybe my animal spirits are of the pessimistic variety. Maybe I am not seeing the initial streaks of rosy-fingered dawn. It’s possible, I guess. Then again, it’s not just me. Here are some observations from a new Goldman Sachs note:
The current bill does not appear to have much of a shot at passage in the Senate, and even House passage seems uncertain. …
Additional changes to the AHCA are very likely, in our view, before it reaches the House floor. … The greater obstacle remains the Senate, where the bill is unlikely to come up for a vote until the week of March 27 and potentially much longer. At this point, the Senate seems likely to take a different approach than the House bill, though what approach the Senate will take is not yet clear. … It is unclear what combination of ACA changes could pass, but Republican leaders might need to take an entirely different approach. … While Congress still seems more likely than not to pass some kind of ACA reform legislation, failure to do so is becoming an increasingly realistic scenario. … It means that the tax reform debate probably won’t start until closer to mid-year, and failure to pass ACA legislation could make it harder for tax reform to be “revenue neutral.” … The upshot is that tax reform legislation would probably not see its first committee vote for a month or more after the ACA bill reaches the President’s desk. At this point, that suggests the first action might come in June.
And while GS still sees a corporate tax rate reduction to 25%, “proposals like the border adjusted tax (BAT) or even the repeal of deductibility of corporate interest expense may be too controversial for Congress to pass along party lines.”
So I hear! And FYI, if Republicans are looking for a less controversial tax plan that is good to go, there is always the 2014 blueprint from former House Ways and Mean Chair Dave Camp. Of course, that plan probably falls short of the big-bang approach many congressional Republicans are looking for. But it is hard for me to see no tax reform of any sort not passing. Not so much an ObamaCare replacement.
Published in Economics, Politics
Once Gorsuch is confirmed I don’t think you can call it a “failing presidency”
Congress, which I am told is the “Most Conservative Congress ever” cannot move legislation to the President now that we control the White House, and that is Trump’s fault?
I have been told, for over a decade “Wait”. We controlled the Whitehouse and Congress but not enough of the Senate. Then we had to get back control of the House. Then we had to get back control of the Senate. Then it was “We don’t control the Whitehouse”.
Well, we have all three and could pass anything we wanted, right? It seems to me Trump has little to do with this bill, other than saying “Pass it and I will sign it”, but it is his fault it is struggling.
The very people who are complaining about Trump’s autocratic nature, are more than willing to blame him for what the GOP is or is not doing in Congress. I just do not get it. If I am to be a proper Conservative and reject Trump, who am I supposed to back, if not the Conservatives in Congress? And if, being Proper, they do something I don’t like, I should then blame Trump for their mess?
Signed – Confused.
JimP,
What total nonsense. This is all perception and no reality. Can you imagine what the H.R. Clinton presidency would have been? The hopeless disaster of Obamacare doubled down to the nth degree. Taxes raised across the board including the corporate tax rate. QE infinity.
You must learn to thank Gd for the blessings you have been given not worry about what you didn’t get. We have the luxury of arguing over how to best pull out the impacted wisdom tooth of the ACA. We have the luxury of debating how best to invigorate the economy.
With HRC we would have had the luxury of discussing how to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Let’s just get it done.
Regards,
Jim
14 million aren’t losing healthinsurance. 14 million are now not forced to buy a product they don’t want and / or perhaps can’t afford.
With that nomination (and its assumed confirmation), Trump repaid my vote in full.
As has been said in other threads — including members who did not vote for the president — Congress should bear the bulk of the responsibility for this disappointment. There’s no way around it: Paul Ryan and the Republican House are screwing this up.
That said, the president appears to be very pleased with it:
Of all the times for Trump’s vaunted negotiation skills to go AWOL, this is a wretched time. If Trump smartens-up, great. If Congress smartens-up, that’d be even better.
But, again, to repeat myself: the bulk of the blame for this lies with Congress.
Don’t stop negotiating.
Sounds like you and I are on the same page. Looks different than the page of the OP.
Funny you should say that. I was going to add “But now, I’m feeling piggish. I want more.” I went with succinct. It was a mistake.
Your animal spirits lean pessimistic is an understatement. James, the man has been in office for eight weeks (shy of 5 days). Really? Your title fuels the left wing agenda more than I can say…but I think you already know that. Obamacare dismantled our already great healthcare system that needed to become better, not dismantled. The new healthcare bill will need years of massaging and readjustment, there is no overnight fix….to anything. The man is trying to bring back jobs, clean out a very corrupt Washington, which is proving to be a full time job, when he could be spending that time helping the country get back to the principals and policies that the voters asked him to do.
We as Americans can either support or tear down. Get a backbone and pick your battles. This war won’t be won in 60 days.
Trump would sign a wide range of repeal/replace bills. Ryan is the inflexible one. He’s the one who made promises he couldn’t keep. So, let me get this straight, he makes cosmetic changes to Obamacare and two of the most hated ACA drivers of cost (mandatory benefits and no sales across state boundaries) will be repealed with 60 votes later? With what Democratic votes? Am I missing something?
The White House must tell congress what to do and what it tells them has to be simple enough for the President to sell to the people. These things, health and taxes, cannot be reformed from inside legislation that is too complex for anyone to understand and so riddled with interests that it’s quite clear it is not supposed to be understood. They must be tossed. Congress simply can’t see things this way they must be led. We expected leadership from this White House and if we don’t get it Congress will continue to insure failure. That is what it does. It’s too complex and can’t be done. Nonsense it is the only thing that can be done.
Undoubtedly true. Regardless, he’s supporting this steaming pile. If Ryan’s offering a turd (which I think he is), Trump seems perfectly happy putting his name on it. Both of those are problems.
He’s among those who aren’t keeping their promises and — as I said — the most responsible for this mess.
I’m not going to defend it, because — in its current form — it’s indefensible.
At the moment, the only people looking good in this are the Freedom Caucus, who are trying to move things in the right direction. Interestingly, they’re appealing to Trump rather than Ryan. If that strategy ends up working — and if Trump decides to actually pull this in a positive direction — that’ll be a good thing.
I hope that happens but — to my knowledge — it hasn’t happened.
Well the votes for a complete repeal certainly aren’t there now. It seems like the only two immediate options are:
At least partial repeal is a step in the right direction. Am I missing something?
Partial repeal is a step in the wrong direction. Because it means Republicans own the system and get blamed for all failures going forward.
Doing nothing makes it clear that the failures are the fault of the Dems (although the Republicans will still get blamed for not fixing it).
They need to either fix it right, or leave it alone to collapse under it’s own weight, without putting their fingerprints on it.
Yes, you are missing the fact that keeping the mandatory benefits and no crossing state lines will make the replacement extremely ineffective at containing costs, while at the same time making it just sustainable enough to stand forever as a monument of Republican stupidity. Let it collapse and we have a chance to be rid of it.
Of course they will, and they should.
Suppose a CEO initiates a corporate re-org that is a complete disaster, so the Board of Directors fires him and hires a new CEO to clean up the mess. The new CEO sits on his hands for a year, and at the next annual meeting the shareholders demand an explanation. His reply: “I chose to do nothing in order to make it clear the company’s problems were all my predecessor’s fault.”
Of course he’d get fired. He’d deserve to get fired.
If it collapses, we get single payer, guaranteed.
People need to be gradually weaned off their dependence on the state. We need to drive down the actual cost of health insurance before people will put their faith in a market-based solution. If prices continue to skyrocket, people are going to panic and figure that government-run health care is at least better than no health care at all.
As our president has only recently learned, constitutional government is different from the corporate boardroom. In this constitutional government you need 60 votes. Corporate analogies don’t always work.
What magical compromise will get Susan Collins, Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Lindsay Graham on board?
Except, you don’t. With the reconciliation process, you can repeal some parts of Obamacare with only 50 votes. That’s what they’re trying to do, and I think it’s better than doing nothing.
Challenge accepted!
You apparently need 60 to change the rules that are written into the law. These rules are keeping costs high for the vast majority of us who are on employer provided plans or otherwise don’t get Obamacare subsidies. I have no interest in getting Ryan or Trump off the hook on Obamacare if the regulations remain. That would be worse than doing nothing at all, because it will give Ryan et al an excuse to ignore the real problem.
I though you wanted them to ignore the real problem, and wait for the system to “collapse.” What is it exactly you want Ryan to do here?
“Failing presidency”?? After a few weeks in office? Really? And I thought the left were the overwrought hyperbole-prone group. Wow.
The real problem is mandatory pre-existing conditions, mandatory benefits, and prohibition of selling across state lines. The first of these is apparently untouchable now (which constitutes a rewriting of the definition of the word insurance), and the other two need 60 votes, which they can’t get yet. I don’t want them to ignore any of these problems. Rand Paul’s plan solves these the best that I’ve seen. I like Rand Paul’s plan. If there’s some way Republicans could coalesce around a plan closer to that than to the current bill I’d love to see that happen. But since that can’t get 60 votes either we’re left with collapse and replace. BTW, Lindsay Graham agrees with me.
We didn’t create this problem, the Democrats did. I say if we can’t get the votes we need to do it right we insist that the Democrats offer their solution in 2018. Am I the only one who remembers them ridiculing us constantly for not having an alternative plan when we were the ones in the minority? Turnabout is fair play.
To the NeverTrumpers, he will always be “failing.”
Where is the senate majority leader while all this is taking place? Ryan is so afraid of sending legislation that would break the Byrd Rule, the Reid Rule. How about McConnel proposing a rule of his own? We need someone to think outside the box.
We really need a Newt in Congress
If only the Ivy folks could run everything for us it would all work out. Sigh.