The House of Representatives Friday passed a White House-backed bill that provides $15 billion for hurricane relief while raising the federal debt ceiling and funding the government until December.
The deal originated in President Donald Trump’s head-scratching decision Wednesday to endorse the short-term debt ceiling strategy favored by congressional Democrats. Republicans had wanted to pass a “clean” debt ceiling that would get them through the next 18 months and past the 2018 midterms.
Most Republicans in both the House and the Senate grudgingly fell in line with the deal, although 17 senators and 90 representatives—all Republicans—voted against it. But many in the GOP now fret that the bill, which President Trump will certainly sign, will seriously weaken their negotiating position as Congress begins to deliberate tax reform.
“Chuck Schumer—whose title is minority leader, not majority leader—just made himself the most powerful man in America for the month of December,” Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said Thursday. What’s going to happen today is that the calendar for the next 90 days will be laser-beam-focused on that December shutdown and showdown. And Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi now have most of the cards for when we get to December.”
A Friday meeting with Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin did nothing to soothe congressional Republicans, The Hill reported. Mnuchin’s pitch “was incredibly poor, and his last words, and I quote, were ‘vote for the debt ceiling for me,’” said Mark Walker, chair of the House Republican Study Committee.
David Brat of the Freedom Caucus called the comments “unhelpful” and “intellectually insulting,” while Ryan Costello winced that “If it wasn’t so serious, it would have been a comedy.”
For Republicans, it’s bad enough that Trump gifted the Democrats leverage in the tax reform fight. But it also makes them wonder whether the president has further nasty surprises in store.
“We wondered if he’d back us on Obamacare repeal. He didn’t do much selling to the public,” an anonymous House Republican told the Washington Examiner. “Then a few days after the victory party at the White House he called it ‘mean.’ Many wonder the same thing on tax reform.”
