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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
We really need not-a-graham in Congress.
My issue with judging this as Trump’s failure is that this wasn’t for Trump to own. Trump was a go-along guy on health care reform in the campaign. People who voted for him did so for reasons outside health care (immigration, SCOTUS), while tangentially providing the Republican Congress with a Squishy Republican president to get Obamacare out. The FC shouldn’t have issues with convincing Trump on this, especially since they are of similar mind to his closer advisors.
To judge Trump’s presidency on this one issue and label it a failure is limited in scope, and for all JP’s claims to “nuance,” he’s rigid and narrow-viewed.
Hugh Hewitt has some out of the box ideas, some of which may actually work. He says if we put the benefit mandates and state lines prohibition in the house bill and pass it the Senate could pass it and even if the Senate parliamentarian ruled that these provisions violate reconciliation VP Pence can overrule the parliamentarian.
HH talked with Tom Cotton who thinks that the benefits mandates and state lines provisions do not violate reconciliation because they impact the cost of subsidies in Obamacare.
Amen to that. With all this time one would have thought the GOP actually had concrete proposals that were largely ironed out to push forward with general support and fewer controversial mines impeded in them, especially since they took control of the house.
Gingrich supports the AHCA.
Also, probably Joe Manchin and seven other Democrats.
Key word: compromise.
I propose taking all of the guys you mentioned, plus Ryan, Bill Cassidy, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, and Dave Brat, plus Manchin, Jon Tester, Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Donnelly on the Democratic side, plus Avik Roy, Yuval Levin, Michael Cannon, and Ramesh Ponnuru, and locking them all in a conference room. Let them out when they all compromise on a plan they can agree on.