Nearly a month ago, it looked as if Donald Trump could be setting himself up to leave the Republican party. His departure could either be official or de facto, but the signs were beginning to suggest that Trump, who has no real ties to the GOP establishment or its infrastructure, was putting distance between himself and Republican leadership on the Hill. The failure of Obamacare repeal, the persistence of the filibuster, the worsening of relations with Russia—these were all the fault of Republicans in Congress.
The likelihood of a departure seems to have gone up Wednesday. In an Oval Office meeting with congressional leaders in both houses and in both parties, the president surprised just about everyone when he agreed to a proposal from Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to pursue a short-term debt-limit increase and funding resolution in conjunction with a spending package for Hurricane Harvey disaster relief. That caught most of the Republicans in the room—House speaker Paul Ryan, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—off guard. The Republicans had been planning, and pitching the president, on a proposed long-term funding deal that would clear the legislative schedule of these pesky stopgap measures until after next year’s midterm elections, or at least until the spring.
I’m told that as Mnuchin was explaining how doing so would allow Congress the freedom to take on agenda items like tax reform, Trump cut him off. He would support a shorter, 3-month proposal from Schumer and Pelosi. Mnuchin, Ryan, and McConnell were surprised. Schumer and Pelosi were delighted, dashing off a statement on the agreement to raise the debt limit and fund the government until December 15. Republican leaders were reduced to grumbling anonymously in the press about the bad deal, while the rank-and-file were left stunned about the prospect of two more debt-ceiling/budget resolution battles before the end of the year. Mnuchin, for his part, told reporters later on Wednesday he “could not be happier” about the arrangement he had argued against in the Oval Office.
To the White House, Trump’s deal is an opportunity to focus on the agenda. “We believe that helping to clear the decks in September enables us to focus on tax reform for the American people,” Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, told reporters on Wednesday. GOP leadership sees the gambit as exactly the opposite: This move adds an additional fight on top of an already busy fall legislative schedule. “What we were doing clears the deck for tax reform,” complained one GOP congressional aide. Democrats look prepared to use the looming December deadline to push for a DACA fix, which could further divide the House Republican conference.
Trump’s decision to undercut Republican leadership Wednesday could have been a snap one, a knee-jerk effort to move on as quickly as possible from a dreary debate—this is, after all, the ad-hoc president. Perhaps Trump intuited that the McConnell-Ryan idea for a long-term budget and debt solution wasn’t as likely to pass as the leaders believed and determine the short-term arrangement was the best he could get. Maybe the move is a shot across the bow at the most conservative Republican House members.
But Trump’s decision is another data point for Republican leaders in Congress that the president isn’t on their team. Will they continue to play on his?
Photo of the Day
Senator Chuck Schumer makes a point to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on September 6, 2017. (Getty Images)
Mark It Down—“You can remind them that both of the Reagan tax cuts were passed by a Democratic majority in the House, a Democratic speaker, and a vast majority of Democrats in the Senate, including a Democratic senator from the great state of North Dakota.” – President Donald Trump, speaking on tax reform is Bismarck, North Dakota, September 6, 2017.
Tuesday’s speech by U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on the Iran deal sounded an awful lot like a trial balloon for the possibility that President Trump might not recertify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
At Bloomberg, Eli Lake explores further how Trump doesn’t have to keep recertifying Iran’s compliance—which the president hates doing—but nor does he have to completely blow up the deal and anger our allies in the process. “He could signal to his supporters that he is keeping his campaign promise by instructing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to rule against Iran,” Lake writes. “And yet he still would not have killed the nuclear deal; he would simply have punted to Congress. At that point lawmakers could vote whether or not to re-impose the crippling secondary sanctions that effectively cut Iran off from the global economy.”
Read the whole thing.
Must See TV—Former White House aide Steve Bannon will be on CBS’s 60 Minutes this Sunday.
Hurricane Watch—This is an amazing story about how Delta got one last flight in and out of San Juan’s airport just as Hurricane Irma was hitting Puerto Rico.
There was a bizarre and worrisome moment in Wednesday’s Senate hearing for Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett, who was nominated by President Trump to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of appeals. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein questioned whether Barrett, a devout Catholic, is fit to serve on the federal bench because:
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country,” Feinstein said.
At another point in the hearing, Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Barrett if she is an “orthodox Catholic.”
The implication in both senators’ lines of questioning was that some devout or orthodox Catholics may not be suitable federal judges. It’s not exactly a religious test for office, but it’s creepily close.
Song of the Day—“Stay Don’t Go” by Spoon.
