John Kelly cannot make Trump effective
First, this administration has zero legislative accomplishments and seems unable to negotiate with members of its own party. Kelly, who has been openly scornful of Congress, is unlikely to help in that regard.
.. (“If lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should have the courage and skill to change the laws,’’ he said about congressional critics of immigration enforcement. “Otherwise they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.’’)
.. as the administration faces deadlines for the debt ceiling and the budget. Ironically, Trump needs help to close deals, and Kelly doesn’t have those skills.
.. Second, the president refuses to learn in office or master any level of detail. He therefore is far less influential in pressing lawmakers to pass his initiatives. Without understanding individual lawmakers’ objections, his ability to persuade and cajole them is limited to repeating empty talking points. The same problem that afflicted him in the health-care debate will be evident no matter what the topic.
.. it seems no one — not even Trump’s relatives and lawyers — can prevent him from digging himself a deeper hole.
.. Fourth, Kelly is more likely to accentuate Trump’s alienation from Republicans. Already strained because of health reform, the president’s serial outbursts and the Russia scandal, the relationship between Congress and Trump seems more like that between a president and the majority of the other party. In point of fact, Trump’s never really been a Republican
.. Kelly has no particular ideological leanings, no ties to the conservative movement and no experience in domestic policy. That leaves Trump even less tethered to his party than he was at the onset of his term.
.. Fifth, Trump refuses to be disciplined. He rejects the overwhelming sentiment among voters that Twitter is a dangerous distraction. Trump doesn’t agree. He tweeted againTuesday: “Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!” Without a disciplined boss, the administration and Congress will be tied up in whatever controversy of the day Trump creates. Trump remains the obstacle that’s impossible to overcome. As long as he is there, effective leadership will be a fantasy.
Trump’s Tax Proposal Is Just a Symptom of the Disease
No wonder this administration can’t get anything done. It specializes in wishful thinking.
This conveys the impression that the administration cares a lot about cutting taxes for very wealthy people and corporations, and considers the other elements of the plan to be filler, to be sketched in brief if at all.
.. Tell hundreds of thousands of government employees that they need to make a more business-friendly environment, and you’ll rapidly discover the terrifyingly myriad ways in which such a directive can be interpreted by individual minds. No, what you actually have to do is create rules to follow, all of them spelled out in mind-numbing minutiae.
Detail makes enemies.
Let’s revisit the personal deduction eliminations, for example. Going to get rid of the deduction for people with high medical expenses? Enjoy the frantic phone calls from patient groups. How about educational savings accounts? Are they going away? Stand by for the firestorm of indignation from middle-class parents. If the Trump administration actually tries to enact its plans, one by one, many of its ideas, so pleasing in vague summation, will become flesh, encounter political resistance, and die an early and gruesome death.
Paul Ryan Failed Because His Bill Was a Dumpster Fire
It was bad policy, not poor tactics or negotiating skills, that doomed the GOP’s efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
he and his allies crafted a poorly constructed and radical bill that would sharply cut support to low-income Americans and those with serious health conditions, while enacting big tax cuts for the wealthy.
.. Speaker Ryan’s crafting of AHCA was a slapdash enterprise.
.. even leading health-care experts were confused by the changes. As Timothy Jost noted at Health Affairs: “This comprehensive a repeal of the ACA would have far-ranging consequences for our health care system that can scarcely be described, much less understood, in the hours that remain before a vote.”
.. wondered whether the game plan was just for the House to pass something—anything—and then let the Senate do the real work.
.. So why did Republicans fail? In a word: insincerity.
.. they might have refined another conservative model, such as Avik Roy’s modifications to ACA exchanges, to turn ACA’s exchanges in a more conservative direction.
.. Secure in the knowledge that they would face President Obama’s veto, Republicans rammed through a succession of extreme repeal-and-replace bills that resembled AHCA’s original draft. These bills excited the Republican base, but would have horrified most other Americans if they ever found sufficient reason to look.
.. Congressional Republicans suffered what George W. Bush might call a “catastrophic success” with Donald Trump’s unexpected victory.
.. leaving people in plans where the “deductibles are so high that it’s really not worth much to them.”
.. He vowed to replace the “failing,” “horrific” Obamacare with “something terrific.”
.. Republican plans are designed around higher deductibles and narrower benefits, not to mention more limited Medicaid.
.. smaller financial subsidies for people with chronic health conditions. That was the clear intention, but Ryan refused to admit it.
.. Many in the GOP, above all President Trump, seemed strangely uninterested in the policy details.
.. To the extent Republicans did have an animating passion, it was to puncture President Obama’s legacy—and to avoid looking foolish by failing to honor their “repeal and replace” rhetoric.
.. For all their endless warnings about how Obama’s signature health law was hurting American families, driving up costs and putting us on the path toward socialism, it turns out they didn’t care enough to put in the work.