The Republican To-Do List

In all this, Republicans are not overly optimistic. Indeed, the two legislative initiatives would be difficult to enact in any year. Tax reform is often proposed, but it hasn’t been approved by Congress since 1986. And then it had bipartisan backing. Today, Democrats are totally opposed. “It’s not your father’s Democratic party anymore,” a Republican official laments.

Republicans are comfortable in dealing with taxes, but that’s not true with health care. It’s a Democratic obsession. Republicans have a history of fumbling the issue. And despite rumors that Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, may step down after nearly 30 years on the court, he may decide that writing landmark opinions beats retirement. A Reagan nominee, he is the court’s lone centrist.

Republicans on the Hill know Trump won’t be much help. But the notion that his troubles will prevent them from making any headway is a myth fostered by Democrats and the media.

On the contrary, the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the FBI investigation of Trump, his campaign, and Russia is a blessing in disguise for Republicans. “Strategically, it really helps,” says Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Illinois). It doused the anti-Trump fever, for now anyway.

What gives the GOP hope for success? On health care, it’s the role of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. He’s organized a series of meetings at which senators search for common ground not so much on repealing Obamacare—Republicans agree on that—but on what should replace it. That’s the hard part.

The meetings are not idle discussions. The senators are under pressure, both from McConnell and the grassroots. He believes it’s critical for Republicans to follow through on what they have promised to do since Obama­care was enacted in 2010. Last week, senators met twice in one day. Are they making progress? Who knows?

But David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote recently there’s “an alarmingly large chance” Republicans will agree on a bill. As you might expect, Leonhardt is a critic of whatever Republicans are up to—in this case, he says it would amount to “taking health insurance from their fellow citizens.”

When Republicans are blamed for this, it’s usually because they would eliminate Obamacare’s gun at the head of every American forcing them to buy health insurance. Without this mandate, the Congressional Budget Office estimates millions will choose not to buy insurance. They probably won’t change their minds until the “essential health benefits” imposed by Obamacare are tossed out and less expensive policies are allowed. Democrats refer to those who voluntarily decline to buy insurance as having “lost” it or having had it “taken away.”

Democrats and their media allies tend to ignore what Republicans actually favor—that is, a freer market in health care in which people can buy (often with subsidies) the level of insurance they want. Republicans, unfortunately, do a pathetic job of selling this product to the public.

They do better on tax reform. No help is needed from Trump, even if he could deliver it. The key here is to rally around a single bill. The White House, McConnell, House speaker Paul Ryan, and the chairmen of the tax committees, Orrin Hatch at Senate Finance and Kevin Brady at House Ways and Means, have agreed to come up with one.

They have a ways to go. A point of contention is the border-adjustment tax, a levy on imports that would create a level international playing field with countries that apply a value-added tax (VAT) to imports. It makes sense, but it has enemies, particularly retailers whose wares are produced abroad.

Both Brady and Roskam, chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on tax policy, are persuasive defenders of the border tax. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin contends it stands in the way of a bill Republicans can agree on. It’s not dead, as the New York Times claims, but Mnuchin’s intervention may be too much to overcome.

Meanwhile, should Kennedy announce his retirement when the court finishes its term late next month, Republicans will be in an enviable position. Trump has committed to choosing a nominee from a list of conservative judges and jurists—the same list from which he picked Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Trump has a way of making trouble for himself, but he was on his best behavior after selecting Gorsuch to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat. And Gorsuch was a superb witness in confirmation hearings, unflappable and pleasant.

Confirmation won’t be as easy a second time, though Democrats have lost the ability to filibuster. A nominee in his or her late 40s or early 50s who hasn’t ruled on cases involving abortion or gender issues would be ideal.

Trump interviewed four candidates before deciding on Gorsuch. Judge Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals came in second. Longevity matters. Gorsuch is 49, Hardiman 51. Scalia, by the way, was on the court for 27 years after President Reagan, who appointed him, left office.

To defeat a nominee, three Republican senators would have to defect. It would take a real issue—unlike the fake ones drummed up against Gorsuch—for that to happen. Would Democrats insist that no president under investigation by a special prosecutor should be allowed to choose a Supreme Court justice? Maybe, but that doesn’t sound like a winning argument.

Consider, finally, what’s at stake this year and next. The prospect, assuming Kennedy retires, of a reliably conservative court, the dream of Republican presidents since Eisenhower. Tax reform. Obamacare out, a new health care system in. That trifecta may be a long shot. But a new justice and tax reform? Quite possible, I’d say. And in Trump’s first two years, no less.

Fred Barnes is an executive editor at The Weekly Standard.