For 37 years, efforts to open the remote Alaskan tundra known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil and natural gas got nowhere. It’s a barren, uninhabitable area that looks like the surface of an asteroid. But environmental groups and their Democratic allies treated it like a rare tourist attraction and insisted its pristine ugliness must be preserved.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) badgered his colleagues for years to allow the energy riches of ANWR’s “non-wilderness 1002 Area” to be exploited. But it was the senator’s pals, House Republicans, who kept this from happening in 2005. And when Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010, ANWR looked to be forbidden to energy companies forever.
No more. ANWR was opened for development as part of the Republican tax reform enacted last month. The tax bill became law through a legislative process called “reconciliation” that made profit-making assets attractive to lawmakers. Opening ANWR meant tax cuts could be bigger.
This was a relatively small Republican victory, but just one of many that made 2017 the “most consequential year from a right-of-center point of view,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says, since he was elected in 1984.
Another conservative surprise in tax reform was the elimination of the individual mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance or pay a fine. It was the idea of Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas). Since more people will be opting out of Obamacare, less money will be needed to fund subsidies and thus available for tax cuts. The ANWR opening, by the way, was pushed by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
There were much bigger victories than these. The corporate tax rate was slashed like never before—to 21 percent from 35 percent. The top rate on personal income dropped to 37 percent from 39 percent. And of special interest to middle-income taxpayers, the standard deduction was doubled from $12,000 to $24,000 for joint filers.
When McConnell talks about the triumphs of 2017, he starts with the confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch. McConnell made that possible after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 by refusing to let President Obama fill the vacancy. It was filled by President Trump.
Two more victories. The federal appeals courts, one rung below the Supreme Court, were created in 1891. And no president since 1891 has seen more appeals judges confirmed in his first year than Trump did in 2017. Also, Congress wiped out 15 Obama regulations by invoking the Congressional Review Act.
How did all this happen with a new president who lacks an ideology and stressed trade and immigration as a candidate? Both those issues divide Republicans. But that’s about all he came with, while Republicans were loaded for bear with proposals that simmered during the Obama years.
Especially worrisome to conservatives was Trump’s chumminess with Democrats. As recently as three or four years ago, he donated to Senator Chuck Schumer’s campaign and to other Democrats besides.
Tax reform? He had thoughts on the narrower matter of corporate tax cuts. Repeal and replace Obamacare? He appeared to pick that up during the campaign because so many Republican voters responded to it. Abortion? Pro-abortion as a Democrat, he became pro-life as a Republican.
Fears that Trump would try to impose a populist agenda on Republicans have not panned out. There just wasn’t enough of one to fill his needs as president. Instead, he’s attached himself to the conservative agenda of Senate and House Republicans as if he invented it. And he’s held on to his loathing of the left and political correctness, which appealed to conservatives even when they were leery of Trump’s character traits.
A key to GOP victories in 2017 was that Trump and Republicans came together. It wasn’t a political love story, but without acknowledging it, Trump had to give up the most to make the relationship work. He became a conservative, a skin-deep one anyway. They inured themselves to his tweets, bravado, and ADD.
In 2017, Trump focused on trade and immigration less than expected. That’s likely to change in 2018. But maybe not. If the defenestration of Steve Bannon is felt, we’ll see the result in White House positions on these issues that provoke the former adviser’s disapproval.
McConnell was a backbencher when tax reform was enacted in 1986. He thinks the GOP-only 2017 version is better. Back then, it was a bipartisan effort. Republicans had to give up things they wanted to hold the parties together.
When Republicans initially talked to Democrats about a tax compromise in 2017, they quickly realized a deal was impossible. Republicans would have had to give up too much. The bill would have reflected class envy and wealth transfer and the views of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
“We would never have gotten business rates down as we did,” McConnell says. The Trump administration wouldn’t be “a pro-growth administration.” And for Republicans, 2017 wouldn’t have been quite so consequential.
