White House Watch: Trump Wins Tax Reform!

It was a joyous celebration on the White House lawn Wednesday afternoon, and deservedly so. Republicans in Congress passed their tax cut bill, their biggest legislative achievement all year, amid some difficult circumstances—particularly their little-room-for-dissent Senate majority. Donald Trump was in a particularly gleeful mood on what has so far been the best day of his presidency. And for that, he was grateful to the members of Congress who made it happen.

“This was the culmination of a few months work, but they’ve been working on getting this done—whether it’s Mitch, or Paul, or Kevin, or Kevin, or Orrin—they have been working on this for years. Years and years,” Trump said “And I just want to turn around and I want to thank them all. They are very, very special people.”

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Hill Republicans from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on down were effusive in their praise for President Trump. “Well, let me just say, Mr. President, you made the case for the tax bill,” said the Senate majority leader.

“Something this big, something this generational, something this profound could not have been done without exquisite presidential leadership,” said Ryan. “Mr. President, thank you for getting us over the finish line. Thank you for getting us where we are.”

“This bill could not have passed without you,” said Utah’s Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance committee. “We would not be standing here today if it wasn’t for you,” said House majority leader Kevin McCarthy.

But just as Hill Democrats did nearly all the work on what will forever be known as Obamacare, the Trump tax cuts passed thanks mostly to Republicans in Congress. At least, that’s how one GOP aide put it to me, calling it a “Congress-driven process” with little White House involvement beyond the initial policy framework the administration released in conjunction with Hill leadership in September. In the subsequent negotiations on Capitol Hill, White House aides have characterized their role as advisory.

Trump himself was not an indispensible figure in getting tax reform to the finish line—after all, it was Vice President Mike Pence, a White House aide tells me, who was heavily involved and was whipping votes in the Senate “until the last minute.” Would Republicans have passed this or a similar tax bill with another Republican president? Almost certainly. But there is no other Republican president. There is only Trump.

Here’s some more commentary from THE WEEKLY STANDARD on the tax bill, first from yours truly on the Daily Standard podcast, and then from the editors, who say the bill is a “good one.” Here’s an excerpt from today’s editorial:

We didn’t think congressional Republicans could pass a major tax bill without creating something worse than the status quo. The party’s ideological confusion and fractiousness, its thin majority in the Senate, the president’s penchant for distracting tweets: We assumed the worst. And yet the tax bill passed today by Congress, despite all the apocalyptic and dishonest rhetoric from the Democrats and their allies in the media—and indeed some unsavory provisions in the legislation itself—is a good one. It’s moderately unpopular according to some national polls, and Democrats can be counted on to spend 2018 accusing Republicans of helping the rich on the backs on the poor. But the bill’s reforms can be easily defended by any free-market conservative. The bill lowers the cost of running a business in America. It cuts the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, reduces taxes on business-owners who pay individual rather than corporate rates, and makes it easier to deduct business investments. If you think of taking less money from taxpayers as “costing” the federal government, these measures will “cost” rather a lot. But the American economy has had lackluster growth for a decade, and there is no hope of dealing with the deficit without much more robust growth.

President Trump said during a full Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the GOP’s tax bill “essentially repealed Obamacare.” The bill does repeal the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act, but the health-care law remains on the books.

“When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed, because they get their money from the individual mandate,” Trump said. “So in this bill, not only do we have massive tax cuts and tax reform, we have essentially repealed Obamacare, and we’ll come up with something that will be much better.”

One More Thing—Another news development from Capitol Hill Wednesday is proof enough that Obamacare has been weakened by not eliminated. “Senate Republicans announced Wednesday afternoon that they would not attach measures providing additional funding to Obamacare in a year-end spending bill to keep the government open,” reports my colleague John McCormack. “Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had indicated he would tie the Obamacare bills to the must-pass government-funding bill this week. That plan faced backlash from pro-life groups because McConnell had not said whether or not the new funding streams would be protected by the Hyde amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion.