President Trump stunned Republicans on Wednesday when he sided with Democrats on a proposal to attach aid for Hurricane Harvey victims to measures to keep the government funded and its borrowing limit suspended until mid-December. Mr. Trump’s decision to ignore pleas from GOP congressional leaders upended the partisan alliances that have long set the boundaries of congressional policy-making—and is likely to inflame tensions with his fellow Republicans. It also raises the question of whether he will now turn to Democrats to reach deals on tax reform and immigration.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s provocative veiled threat to Congress
She repeated: “Again, if they can’t, then they should get out of the way and let somebody else take their job that can actually get something done.”
.. This is a remarkable tone for the White House to be setting on the eve of a number of critical fights and pieces of legislation. We knew President Trump was willing to unleash his Twitter account on GOP congressional leaders, and during one Q&A, he left open the idea that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might need to be replaced if he can’t deliver. But Sanders’s repeated comments make clear those weren’t just one-offs; this is now the White House’s official strategy and talking point.
.. To recap, the things on Congress’s to-do list are:
- averting a government shutdown,
- passing the first major tax reform since 1986,
- a hurricane relief bill for Harvey (and the possibility of emergency action required for Hurricane Irma in Florida),
- a massive to-be-determined infrastructure bill and now
- comprehensive immigration reform. (Sanders made clear Trump doesn’t want “just a one-piece fix.”) Oh, and don’t forget that Trump wants Congress to
- resurrect health care and get that done, too.
.. Even if this wasn’t a Congress in which failure and gridlock have become the norm, that would be a daunting set of tasks. Trump has now set the bar so high that he’s basically guaranteeing Congress will fail, by his standards.
.. And Sanders so casually adding comprehensive immigration reform to their to-do list Tuesday — and basically giving them six months to complete it before DACA is phased out — was the equivalent of a gut punch to congressional leaders, given years and years of failure on that issue. Having the White House pile that on is almost cruel.
.. The problem, as I noted earlier Tuesday, is that Trump has shown little appetite for providing that leadership. He has demonstrated that he much prefers to leave things to Congress and blame them when they fail. Even more troublingly for GOP leaders, Trump doesn’t just get out of the way; he is forever changing his positions and giving Congress conflicting signals, leaving leaders without the opportunity to apply presidential pressure on members.
.. Trump’s only priority seems to be passing something, but even on that front, his efforts are usually counterproductive. Even in urging large-scale action on immigration, the White House on Tuesday declined to say specifically what it wanted from a bill or whether Trump would sign a straight replacement of just DACA.
.. Tuesday’s example was the latest indication of a looming showdown and irreconcilable, inherent problems between Congress and the White House.
This will get worse before it gets better.
Harvey upends shutdown fight
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Congress is eager to deliver disaster relief, but it’s complicating plans to avoid a government shutdown and debt ceiling breach.
Closing down the government as it tries to provide relief to the country’s fourth largest city could also be a PR fiasco for Republicans.
.. top Trump advisers would rather spend September focusing on an emergency package for storm victims, tax reform and other spending requests rather than on a showdown over wall funding.
.. Republican leaders believe adding Harvey assistance would grease the votes and help push the unpopular package through Congress while also giving them cover from their far-right flank.
.. the White House doesn’t want to be seen as shirking the states but also doesn’t want a larded-up package that will draw criticism from the right.
Feds on Trump’s shutdown threat: ‘It’s blackmail’
Complaining about the budget process in May, Trump tweeted: “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”
Let that sink in — the president thinks the country “needs a good shutdown.”
.. “It’s blackmail. It’s wasteful. It hurts the American people that the government serves as much as it does the employees. Contract employees, cleaners, cafeteria workers, etc. — of which there are more and more and who are the ones most likely to live closest to the bone — are hurt worse than anyone as they are never recompensed,” a Library of Congress staffer said by email.
.. Now, Mick Mulvaney heads OMB. He supported the earlier shutdown as a Republican congressman from South Carolina and doesn’t shy away from the possibility of one next month. Federal programs are funded through Sept. 30. An impasse on spending could result in the closure of many federal operations.
“We believe we did it for the right reasons,” Mulvaney said in 2013. “We believe it was good policy. We believe good policy makes good politics.”
.. In May, he again endorsed the tactic, which is more like extortion than blackmail, saying that if the budget process is “business as usual and nothing changes and it takes a shutdown to change it, I have no problem with that.”