I think it’s likely true. Basically, you end up with a situation where the Congressional Republicans know they 1. won’t get anything good from doing business with Trump and 2. won’t get anything bad from refusing to do business with him.
Once that happens, that’s really bad. Remember that the people in Congress are there for their own purposes. They have no independent wish to make Trump look good. They only care about how things reflect on them or, in some cases, their ideologies.
Many of them are seeking positions of greater power, are trying to shore up support at home, or are thinking of running for president someday. Trump thinks, I think, that Congress is there to serve him. They just aren’t.
The Art of the Deal is only 384 pages of not particularly deep or complex ideas, published well before Trump had any political ambitions to tap dance for, and describes his motivations and tactics in detail which aptly matches the behavior he displayed on the campaign trail and in his brief tenure as chief executive of the nation. It was a very popular book, readily found in most libraries, secondhand book stores, and bargain bins where it can be picked up cheaply. Trump may have not actually written the words, but the concepts and philosophy espoused within was drawn from his statements to the ghostwriter, has been endorsed and promoted by Trump, and may be readily taken as a more or less honest expression of his beliefs about making deals. And yes, the book essentially endorses cheating on deals, using the threat of economic or legal power to force opponents to accept less than the agreed upon compensation, and generally doing anything one can get away with to obtain a better “deal”, which again is entirely consistent with Trump’s past behavior in business and present actions in the presidency. What it does not contain is any clear strategy for actual negotiation, establishing long term plans for business development, or any other guidance which would be indicative of a personality suited to holding a powerful office such as President of the United States which has to deal with some many different priorities and often conflicting interests. But you don’t need to take my word for it; you can pick up a copy at the library for free, or from a used bookstore for a couple of dollars, and read for yourself.
Actually Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, and many others have plenty of motivation to want to make Trump look bad provided they can do so while credibly distancing themselves from the Trump Trainwreck. The GOP establishment as a whole didn’t want him to begin with, although Newt Gingrich, Devin Nunes, Lou Barletta and others were early backers who are basically joined at the hip with Trump. Gingrich just stands to lose credibility but those still active in Congress will likely be inextricably linked during the next campaign cycle. The net result is to open up rifts between the highly partisan “Freedom Caucus” (for whom Trump is not really radical enough), the more normal neoconservatives who have reluctantly backed Trump under the assumption that he’ll help them if they help him, and the moderate Republicans (themselves a minority) who see the opportunity to use Trump as a divining rod to eliminate the more radical members of the party and bring the GOP back to a more pragmatic (albeit still conservative) position by washing their hands of all involvement and even actively defying Trump.
Trump needed to pull of AHCA to prove that he’s the dealmaker that he promised he’d be on the campaign trail despite any evidence or clear policy. Having this flop around like fish in an empty pail shows just how hollow those promises were, and the legislators who reluctantly tied on to the Trump wagon in the hopes that success would rub off on them like some kind of clueless Trump University clients are going to start actively denying that they support anything Trump wants unless it clearly has broad support.
You know, pirating the book (using the fact that since the publisher/Trump cannot force me to pay as piracy is mostly anonymous) would be fair turnabout in this case. Essentially, Trump is saying to cheat people who have provided you services of the agreed upon payment. I do not see any difference between this and stealing from them as a con man, if you intentionally plan to short them of their payment at the start of the deal. The only difference is that con men skip town, while Trump only steals from people that he can prevent a court from forcing him to pay. In the rare cases he robs someone where the evidence against him is so clear that he will have to pay, I guess he settles.
TLDR. Trump : wire up my building. After the job is done, “here’s half payment, fuck you, I ain’t payin the rest, I don’t like the visual appearance of the conduits in the utility room”. Whatcha gonna do about it.
Me : I’m stealing this book and there is no way for you to stop me because you can’t prove it. Whatcha gonna do about it.
Basically they boxed themselves in by only putting health care in the 2017 reconciliation rule. I don’t think there is anything that would have prevented them from including both, but it would have to be in one reconciliation bill which would obviously have been even harder to get passed.
I had also heard that part of the reason these things were tied together is that the budget reductions from the ACA repeal could be used to offset the deficit-increasing parts of the tax reform effort. Without the ACA repeal they need their tax reform to not increase the deficit, which for them kind of defeats the purpose.
"Under Senate interpretations of the Congressional Budget Act, the Senate can consider the three basic subjects of reconciliation — spending, revenues, and debt limit — in a single bill or multiple bills, but it can consider each of these three in only one bill per year (unless Congress passes a second budget resolution). Consequently, in the Senate there can be a maximum of three reconciliation bills in a year, one for each of the basic subjects of reconciliation.
"This rule is most significant if the first reconciliation bill that the Senate takes up affects both spending and revenues. Even if that bill is overwhelmingly devoted to only one of those subjects, no subsequent reconciliation bill can affect either revenues or spending because the first bill already addressed them. "
Also, note that calls supporting Obamacare and opposing Trumpcare exceeded the opposite by about a thousand to one (!). It wasn’t only the Freedom Caucus members that sunk Trumpcare; the more moderate Republicans in Congress, especially those in vulnerable areas, were against it too - and it’s good odds that the furious response from the callers contributed to the stiffening of their spines.
This gives the Democrats a rallying cry - “See? Opposition worked! Keep it up! Keep calling your Rep/Senator, let him/her know what you think.” Liberals are energized in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades.
So, what happens when the news on the new budget hit, especially if it’s as draconian as the “trailers” of it has been. More calls, more faxes, more tweets and everything else. Moderate Republicans will have more to worry about from their constituents, and now know that Trump’s threats are empty.
One of the intriguing things about this is that now it’s the Democrats who are united and the Republicans who are fracturing. I realize that it’s far easier for individuals with different agendas to unite in opposition to something than in support; still, I have the distinct feeling of having wandered into dnaLsdrawkcaB.
I cannot find the cite but at some point the Votemaster explained that the way the budget reconciliation process works, the only way they can use it is if it does not increase the anticipated deficit. Therefore they would have had to save money on medicare in order to go on and cut taxes. With the AHCA dead there is no fiscal room.
BTW, the Votemaster also predicted that if it failed, Ryan could not continue as speaker. I guess governing is more complicated than those guys realized. Interesting fact I just gleaned from somewhere: 2/3 of the Republicans in HR had never served under a Republican president, meaning all they knew how to do was say “No!”
I have heard some people say something similar, but it doesn’t make sense to me, and I haven’t seen any written explaination of how that could happen.
To the best of my understanding (and I’d like to say I understand the Federal budget pretty well), each reconciliation bill is judged on whether it eliminates the deficit or not. Saving $300 billion in a 2017 reconciliations bill shouldn’t allow you to spend $299 billion in a 2018 reconciliation bill. I believe that this one result in the 2017 reconciliation bill being allowed to use the expedited procedures, but the 2018 bill would raise the deficit by $299 billion, meaning it isn’t a reconciliation bill.
There’s something in the back of my mind about the 1997 omnibus reconciliation bill, but I think I will have to do some further study. If you have cites of people explaining how reconciliation bills can “spend” previous savings, I would like to see that.
I’m having trouble seeing how tax reform is going to be easy.
As I understand it, virtually all Republicans agree on three things:
Taxes should be lowered.
The deficit should be reduced.
Military spending should be maintained or increased.
All three of those statements, taken alone, poll pretty well. But in order to do all three of them, you must engage in some extremely unpopular cutting of popular domestic spending programs. When people see Medicare being slashed, or social security retirement ages being raised, or Meals on Wheels slashed, there’s gonna be epic blowback.
Not to mention the relative sensitivity. Cutting meals on wheels or NPR to nothing doesn’t do squat for the military. It maybe gets them 1 more F-35 or a little bit more room in the training budget.
The Trump budget slashes 50 billion from those programs and gives it to the military. So it’s huge reductions on hundreds of programs, and yet it’s only a less than 10% budget increase to the military.
And of course, sane ness. What the fuck does the military need ten percent more money for? That’s crazy. Right now, in the current world, the U.S. military can crush any 3 countries armed with conventional weapons within weeks. The damage from a nuclear weapons exchange would be intolerable for fighting most nuclear armed nations, except for ones who have barely any, like North Korea, or probably don’t have the range, like Israel. We can’t do squat to Russia because they can still destroy our nation as a viable affair. (not kill everyone, but basically end the USA as a world power)
If it was up to me, I’d eliminate the Marine Corps. The whole thing. That’s an entire fucking military in a military. I’d transfer the best soldiers and best equipment to the Army/Navy/Air Force. I’d shrink all 3 down to a sane size - enough to fight reasonable conventional wars, assuming America doesn’t plan to get involved in every last spat. And I’d send some of the money saved to the only military force that really matters - ballistic missile defense and ballistic missile submarines. I’d go for a budget of about half to 2/3 current spending levels.
Rolleyes are due for all of this, but particularly the notion that “the only military force that matters [is] ballistic missile defense and ballistic missile submarines”. There is certainly a good argument for reducing the size and expenditures of the military dramatically, both to save money and to reduce the impulse of military adventurism for the sake of justifying the cost of maintaining the current military forces, but wholesale cutting of the Marine corps–an arm specifically intended to be a logistically self-contained advance combat operations force–is pure nonsense, as is expecting the threat of nuclear attack to be sufficient as a response to all strategic threats.
As for ballistic missile defense, we’ve spend an estimated US$40B in the last decade on the Ground-Based Mid-Course Defense system (the only working strategic ballistic missile defense system) and even the actual interceptor portion of the system is of dubious reliability, much less the essentially non-function Sea Based X-Band Radar and other critical command, control, and integration functions of the system. Want to cut some major discretionary spending? Start with scaling back a system which even the most ardent proponents say is only useful against single attacks from “rogue nations”, and demand accountability for how the budget for development is spent and how tests are orchestrated.
The same fractures in the GOP that lead to the defeat of “repeal Obamacare” might also lead to a defeat in tax reform. The GOP plan essentially kept the more popular parts of Obamacare and removed some unpopular stuff (which was a terrible strategy for effective healthcare reform for reasons I won’t get into). The plan didn’t pass because some really conservative Republicans thought that the bill did not go far enough in repealing Obamacare, and the more moderate Republicans did not want to repeal the more popular provisions of Obamacare.
Same thing might happen on tax reform. Conservative Republicans will demand steep cuts to entitlements and the more moderate republicans will resist. In such situations it would help if there was an experienced politician putting forth a unifying compromise that everyone could rally around. But we have “vote for the bill or else” Donald Trump. Deal Maker extraordinaire. I’m sure that the GOP won’t have any problems.
Yup. That’s exactly what I’m expecting. A reasonable plan might shift tax burdens, might even trim some budgets a bit. But a reasonable plan will be nixed by Meadow Muffin and his F’uckus: they want to be a villain in an 80s horror film.
Now, a true GOP leader might say, “Screw the radical fringes; we’re gonna deal across the aisle.” But that leader would need some amazing dealmaking skills to keep their leadership job, and I just don’t see that leader emerging.
It’s exactly this. The Freedom Caucus has and always demanded full compliance to all their demands before they support anything, and what the AHCA failure showed was that Trump couldn’t bully them. So his options is either go with their agenda 100% or fail.