Amid all the Russia controversy, Trump and the GOP Congress can get it done.
.. Look, the House has already passed a repeal and replace of Obamacare. And a Senate health-care working group led by Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz is making progress resolving key issues between moderates and conservatives. There’s no reason why the AHCA can’t become law by the August recess.
And that opens the door for taxes.
.. Representative Peter Roskam, who chairs the tax-policy subcommittee, said this last week: “I’m of the view that 2017 is the year.” He thinks tax reform is easier than replacing Obamacare.
.. So following a markup, Ways and Means can report out a bill. And because prosperity is America’s Number One issue, it will pass the floor relatively easily. And that will put pressure on the Senate to get moving.
.. the very core of the tax bill is a simple three steps:
- a deep corporate-tax-rate cut,
- immediate expensing for new equipment of all kinds, and
- the repatriation of offshore cash.
This is the tonic that will restore capital formation, productivity, real wages, and growth.
Both Senate and House leaders have got to understand how flexible reconciliation is. It can be nearly anything you want it to be. The key player is Senate president Mike Pence, who can overrule the parliamentarian.
.. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
.. “What I have said repeatedly is that any plan we put forward we believe to be paid for with economic growth.”
.. And lowering marginal tax rates across-the-board, especially on large and small businesses, will foster the mother of all prosperities — the one middle-class Americans in all those red counties that voted for Trump have been yearning for.
Will Republicans ever rein in Trump? Only when this happens.
Republicans — hoping to refocus on getting tax cuts and Obamacare repeal through — will use the existence of the special counsel as cover for evading pressure on them to exercise meaningful oversight.
Trump’s conduct further devolves into truly unhinged autocratic madness
.. It is plausible Trump might start attacking Mueller on Twitter
It is even plausible Trump could try to get Mueller fired, by appealing to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein
.. If somehow Republicans lose the upcoming House special elections in Georgia and Montana — which seems unlikely but not impossible — that might really focus their minds.
.. Republicans are doing nothing to try to compel Trump to release his tax returns or otherwise be transparent about his business holdings, even as he advances a tax plan that could deliver him and his family an enormous windfall
.. reports that Trump called Comey a few weeks after the inauguration and asked him
I am confident that these incidents … sketch a trajectory in which Trump kept Comey on board only as long as it took him to figure out that there was no way to make Comey part of the team. Once he realized that he couldn’t do that — and that the Russia matter was thus not going away — he pulled the trigger.
Don’t underestimate Trump
Trump not only showed up for the St. Louis debate that Sunday, he stood on the stage and told Clinton that if it were up to him she’d “be in jail.” Ten days later, Trump insisted at the Las Vegas debate that allegations made against him by nine women of groping and other unwelcome physical contact were so baseless that he “didn’t even apologize to [his] wife” for his actions.
.. It is dangerous to underestimate Trump’s survival skills.
.. how tenaciously Trump pursued power, along with five key assets he has to maintain his grip on it
- .. Trump is an incredibly skilled politician.
- Second, there is the power of the presidency
- Well-regarded people — such as national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein — have shown a willingness to sacrifice their own credibility to protect Trump
- a retinue of prominent law firms appear ready to provide legal and public relations cover in defense
- the desire of many observers to try to normalize Trump and get “back to business.”
- an agenda of repealing Obamacare and cutting taxes.
- It might take shockingly little .. for pundits to conclude that he is “back on track.”
- intensity of his most devout supporters
- he was probably right when he said that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody”
- this group is 25 percent to 40 percent of the electorate
- they make up a majority of Republican primary voters in most Republican-held districts
- die-hard supporters are more devoted to Trump than they are to the rule of law.
- an increasing number of Americans generally, and Trump supporters specifically, have “lost faith in democracy.”
- he may even be at his most dangerous in “wounded animal” mode.
It’s Chicken or Fish
.. are there a few good elected men or women in the Republican Party who will stand up to the president’s abuse of power as their predecessors did during Watergate?
.. But we already know the answer: No.
The G.O.P. never would have embraced someone like Trump in the first place — an indecent man with a record of multiple bankruptcies, unpaid bills and alleged sexual harassments who lies as he breathes — for the answer to ever be yes.
.. Virtually all the good men and women in this party’s leadership have been purged or silenced; those who are left have either been bought off by lobbies or have cynically decided to take a ride on Trump’s Good Ship Lollipop to exploit it for any number of different agendas.
.. Are there tens of millions of good men and women in America ready to run and vote as Democrats or independents in the 2018 congressional elections and replace the current G.O.P. majority in the House and maybe the Senate?
Nothing else matters — this is now a raw contest of power.
.. they enjoy, exercising raw power against their opponents.
.. Democrats and independents should not be deluded or distracted by marches on Washington, clever tweets or “Saturday Night Live” skits lampooning Trump. They need power.
.. they have power and are not afraid to use it, no matter what the polls say.
.. they will use that power to cut taxes for wealthy people, strip health care from poor people and turn climate policy over to the fossil fuel industry until someone else checks that power
.. The party has lost its moral compass.
.. Just think about that picture of Trump laughing it up with Russia’s foreign minister in the Oval Office, a foreign minister who covered up Syria’s use of poison gas. Trump reportedly shared with him sensitive intelligence on ISIS, and Trump refused to allow any U.S. press in the room. The picture came from Russia’s official photographer. In our White House!
.. it is a threat to the rule of law,
freedom of the press,
ethics in government,
the integrity of our institutions,
the values our kids need to learn from their president and
America’s longstanding role as the respected leader of the free world.