While the Trump administration’s second attempt at repealing Obamacare sits in a holding pattern as Congress is in recess, attention has turned to the other major legislative goal for Republicans in Washington: tax reform. Except, the Associated Press reported Monday, Trump has “scrapped” his tax plan from the campaign and has gone “back to the drawing board” for a new plan.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer denied this in his Monday briefing. “I think that what you’re seeing is us going through this process of his economic team, everyone from Secretary Mnuchin to Secretary Ross to Gary Cohn and others, sitting down internally and beginning that process of meeting with groups that have been advocating for tax reform since 1986…and starting to meet with outside groups, industry groups, individuals, members of Congress, to get their input,” Spicer said.
Administration officials had been declaring the August recess as a deadline for getting tax reform done—one senior White House official told me last month that the strict legislative deadline was the reason the American Health Care Act needed to pass in March—but Spicer was unwilling to commit to passing a package by then.
“Obviously that still would be a great opportunity before they leave for August recess,” he said. “But we’re going to make sure that we do this right and we do it with the input of all of the individual groups and members of Congress that have had a longtime interest in doing this.”
Lessons from the AHCA Disaster
The language from the administration on this “process” for coming up with a new tax reform proposal indicates one thing clearly: The White House does not want a repeat of the Obamacare repeal debacle.
But while Trump and his team have learned some important lessons from the AHCA’s failure—chiefly that the White House has a crucial role in building a coalition of support before plowing ahead with a vote—the administration may be setting itself up for a similar sort of defeat by members of their own conference. The conservatives who helped draft Trump’s original tax proposal, Steven Moore and Larry Kudlow, have been boxed out of the White House, while Gary Cohn, a Democrat and former top executive at Goldman Sachs, serves as the president’s National Economic Council director and is intimately involved in tax reform.
Politically, Cohn’s influence on tax reform could mean problems down the road for getting Republican members of Congress on board. One veteran conservative tax expert in Washington told me earlier this year of his concern that Cohn could fail to appreciate the various factions and interests within the Republican coalition. If Cohn and the rest of the economic team decide to prioritize corporate tax cuts over lowering individual rates, that could give conservatives in the House GOP conference enough reason to oppose the proposal.
A Major Immigration Announcement From Sessions
Attorney general Jeff Sessions will visit the U.S. border with Mexico on Tuesday in Nogales, Arizona. His tour of the border will be Sessions’s first as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Sessions will address border patrol and law enforcement officers, and a source at the Justice Department tells me the AG will make a “major announcement” about immigration enforcement while in Nogales.
On Russia and Syria’s Chemical Weapons
The Associated Press published a report Monday that the United States “has concluded Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week,” citing a senior official.
An administration official, however, has disputed that conclusion. “At this time, there is no U.S. intelligence community consensus that Russia had foreknowledge of the Syrian chemical attack,” said that administration official.
Here’s what the unnamed senior U.S. official told the AP:
Song of the Day
“What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye.
