Two days after an uneventful and friendly conference call with the Republican House conference,Donald Trump will attend the Senate GOP’s weekly policy lunch meeting. Will the president get so amicable a greeting? Despite Trump’s on-again friendship with the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and his new golfing buddies Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, the Senate Republican conference remains the more challenging of the two groups for the president to work with.
One recent high point is the Senate’s budget resolution, which passed on Friday with just one Republican defection (Rand Paul). But the 51-49 margin underscores just how narrow Trump’s path to success for his next legislative agenda items. Chief among them is tax reform, legislation for which remains unwritten. Perhaps an actual bill will get any skeptical Senate Republicans on board, but a simple majority is no sure thing.
Bob Corker, who is calling Trump’s Tuesday appearance on the Hill a “photo-op,” is not a reliable “yes,” particularly since he’s announced his retirement and let loose on what he really thinks about the president. As he was with Obamacare replacement, John McCain is a bit of a mystery on tax reform. And his and Thad Cochran’s health problems mean it’s hard to guarantee their availability weeks out.
Trump needs all the votes he can get on tax reform to give him a much-needed legislative victory. But Senate Republicans need wins, too, which will be much harder to come by once the midterm elections come into focus in just a few months. As McConnell and Trump found in their meeting at the White House last week, there’s enough reason right now for both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue to grin and bear it for the sake of a win. Can everyone hold it together until Thanksgiving?
I’m With the President, Wherever He Is—There are a few other legislative items Congress may consider after or concurrent with tax reform. Among them is the question of a legislative fix to the cost-sharing reimbursements to health insurers, which the Trump administration ended earlier this month. Trump himself has been all over the map about what he wants Congress to do, or not do, with a situation that could cause a further breakdown of the insurance market.
But this reaction from the number-two Republican senator, John Cornyn, sums up where things stand on that issue:
Asked for his position on CSR deal, @JohnCornyn responds: “I’m with the president.” I asked where Trump is and Cornyn throws hands in air
With Congress and the White House gearing up for their autumn tax reform push (that still doesn’t have a bill!), Ivanka Trump praised the plan on Monday as a boon for families and the middle class.
“This tax plan really couples two things that are really core values as a country, which is work and supporting the American family,” the president’s daughter said during an appearance in Pennsylvania.
While most GOP tax rhetoric has centered around economic growth and increased take-home pay, Ivanka has focused on the family angle as she stumps for an expansion of the child tax credit, which currently pays up to $1,000 per child annually.
“The cost of raising children has gone up dramatically, yet over the last several decades wages have largely stagnated,” she said Monday. “We have to support the American worker, we have to create jobs, we have to create growth, but we also have to support that American worker’s family and encourage that next generation to be as skilled and competitive and compassionate and engaged as every other generation prior.”
Steve Bannon, Foreign Policy Non-Expert—My colleague Andrew Egger saw former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s appearance at a Monday conference on violent extremism. The event was hosted by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, and also included separate appearance from former Defense secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA director Gen. David Petraeus.
In his remarks, Bannon blasted the “foreign policy elite” of the previous two administrations, who he mockingly called “geniuses,” for creating the various foreign policy messes currently faced by President Trump.
Here’s a little more of what Bannon had to say:
Bannon repeatedly emphasized Trump’s June trip to the Middle East as a highlight of his foreign policy, arguing that it showed the president was neither an isolationist nor an Islamophobe and had spurred the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to crack down on the misbehavior of Qatar. “I’m not a foreign policy expert by far, but I took a very hard line in that,” Bannon said. “I thought the UAE and the Egyptians and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia had a well-thought-through plan, that we’re going to stop the financing of radical Islamic terrorism, that it has to be cut off 100 percent. And if we cut off funding, cut off support, we can really have a chance to eradicate it from the face of the earth, which is what President Trump laid out to the American people he was going to do.”
President Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to retired Army captain Gary Michael Rose on Monday in a ceremony at the White House. Rose’s heroism as a medic in the Vietnam War is a remarkable story. Here’s how Trump told it on Monday:
Raised in Watertown, New York, Mike’s father was a metalworker and a World War II veteran. He taught his son that we live in the greatest country in the world, and that we must love it, cherish it, and always defend it. Mike took that very much to heart. After his first year in college, he enlisted in the Army, and by the time he was 22, Mike was a medic for the Fifth Special Forces Group in the Vietnam War. On September 11, 1970, Mike was called on his second combat mission. He was the only medic for 136 men who embarked on one of the group’s biggest missions of the war: Operation Tailwind. Their goal was to prevent the North Vietnamese from funneling weapons along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to use against our American troops. Helicopters dropped the unit into Laos. Before they even touched the ground, enemy fire struck three men. Once they landed in the clearing, they rushed to the jungle for much needed cover. Soon, another man was shot outside their defensive perimeter. Mike immediately rushed to his injured comrade, firing at the enemy as he ran. In the middle of the clearing, under the machine gun fire, Mike treated the wounded soldier. He shielded the man with his own body and carried him back to safety. But this was just the beginning of Mike’s harrowing four-day mission. Mike and his unit slashed through the dense jungle, dodged bullets, dodged explosives, dodged everything that you can dodge because they threw it all at him, and continuously returned fire as they moved deeper and deeper and deeper into enemy territory. Throughout the engagement, Mike rescued those in distress without any thought for his own safety. I will tell you, the people with him could not believe what they were witnessing. He crawled from one soldier to the next, offering words of encouragement as he tended to their wounds. On the second day, one of the allied soldiers was shot outside their company perimeter. Again, Mike raced to the side of the soldier, exposing himself to constant fire. As bullets flew in every direction, Mike fired at the enemy with one arm while dragging the injured soldier back to the perimeter with the other. Soon after they returned to their unit, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded nearby and shot smoldering metal into Mike’s back and into his leg. He was seriously, seriously wounded. The shrapnel left a gaping hole in Mike’s foot. For the next 48 excruciating hours, he used a branch as a crutch and went on rescuing the wounded. Mike did not stop to eat, to sleep, or even to care for his own serious injury as he saved the lives of his fellow soldiers. On the second and final night of the mission, the enemy surrounded the company. All night long, Mike treated the wounded and dug trenches to protect them from blazing rockets and grenades. After four days of constant engagement with the enemy, and after successfully destroying an enemy base camp, Mike’s unit prepared to evacuate. When the helicopters arrived, Mike fought back the enemy as his fellow soldiers boarded the aircraft. He boarded the last chopper, limping up to the craft while still warding off the enemy forces that were fast approaching. As Mike puts it, “If you don’t believe in God, then you should have been with us that day. And I can tell you, it’ll make a believer out of you because we should not [ever] have survived.” Mike, today, we have a room full of people and a nation who thank God that you lived. Mike’s story doesn’t end there. Soon after the helicopter lifted off the ground, the chopper was hit by enemy fire. Mike, this is serious stuff. This was not a good four days. The bullets tragically struck a young Marine gunner in the throat. Again, Mike rushed to help. As he wrapped a cloth around the Marine’s neck, the engine of the helicopter failed, and the aircraft crashed less than a mile from where it had taken off. Mike was thrown off the aircraft before it hit the ground, but he raced back to the crash site and pulled one man after another out of the smoking and smoldering helicopter as it spewed jet fuel from its ruptured tanks. Finally, another helicopter rescued them, and by the time they reached the base, Mike was covered in blood. He refused treatment until all of his men had been cared for first. In every action during those four days, Mike valiantly fought for the life of his comrades, even if it meant the end of his own life. Mike, you will—I mean, I have to say, you really—your will to endure, your love for your fellow soldier, your devotion to your country inspires us all. I have to tell you, that is something. Nations are formed out of the strength and patriotism that lives in the hearts of our heroes. Mike never knew for certain whether or not that Marine gunner who was shot on the helicopter survived until earlier this year, when Mike learned that the Marine had endured a painful and difficult recovery, but that he had made it and lived a long and very full life before passing away in 2012. As Mike said, “That in itself made it all worth it.” That Marine was one of many men Mike saved. Throughout those four days, Mike treated an astounding 60 to 70 men. Their company disrupted the enemy’s continual resupply of weapons, saving countless of additional American lives.
