Unbelievable Happenings

Tax Reform:  Trump continues his charm offensive.  Last night he had dinner at the White House with a bipartisan group of Senators including Democrats Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly.  Democrats presented a uniform front against Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare but these three, who face tough reelection campaigns in 2018, are viewed as more amenable to voting for some form of a tax reform package.  Still before Trump can persuade anyone, Republican or Democrat, to vote for his tax reform plan, he will need one and his is still sketchy at best. Yesterday Treasury Secretary Mnuchin admitted that Trump’s goal of cutting the corporate tax rate to 15% will be tough to achieve.  Even though no draft of a tax reform proposal has been released by Congress, he said that he is confident that one will be passed by year end and even suggested that it’s effective date will be back dated to January 1, 2017 regardless of when it’s passed.  While Trump’s tries to court a few Democrats, Senate Majority Leader McConnell still plans to push tax reform through via the reconciliation process in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster.  However, to take advantage of the reconciliation process, Republican leaders will first have to pass a  budget blueprint and they have yet to reach agreement with hardline conservatives who are demanding more details about the tax reform plan before they’ll vote for the budget blueprint.  At this point a number of big tax reform issues remain up in the air including tax rates, caps on mortgage deductions, deductibility of state taxes and the previously mentioned corporate tax rate.  In other words, nothing has yet been resolved.     

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Lawyers representing current and former White House aides are telling their clients that they shouldn’t lie to protect Trump.  This sounds fairly obvious, but then again Trump is the guy who asks everyone to swear an oath of loyalty upon joining his team, so this group may be more willing to prevaricate than most.  The timing of the lawyer warnings may reflect the fact that things are heating up in Mueller land.  Yesterday, Trump’s lawyer Mike Dowd reported that Trump’s campaign has been handing over documents to Special Counsel Mueller’s office as part of the collusion investigation.  For his part, former security advisor Mike Flynn is still refusing to appear as a witness before the Senate Intelligence Committee because the Committee continues to refuse to grant his request of immunity.  Given the mounting evidence of Russian interference in the election, the Senate Committee is considering issuing an interim report focused solely on Russian meddling because of a sense of urgency that Russian activities were significant and are ongoing. If they do this, they will then continue their investigation into Trump team collusion.  Adding to collusion suspicions, new reports indicate that the Russians thought that there would be a complete reset in US – Russian relations following the elections and that the reset would take place without any concessions on their part related to the issues that caused the deterioration in relations in the first place.  All of this may explain why Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched into another attack of former FBI Director Comey today, part of an orchestrated White House effort to repeatedly tarnish his reputation and credibility.  She even implied that the Department of Justice should prosecute him for his “transgressions.”       

What Happened Was Unbelievable:  Hillary Clinton’s new book, What Happened, is now out so she’s been making the rounds of the talk shows.  She remains stunned that she lost to someone so incompetent and ill-suited for the presidency.  Among other things she makes it clear that she firmly believes that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, an opinion shared by Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Russian Duma who said that “American spies slept through while Russia elected a new US president.”  When asked if Trump plans to read Hillary’s book, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “I think it’s sad that after Hillary Clinton ran one of the most negative campaigns in history and lost, the last chapter of her public life is going to now be defined by propping up book sales with false and reckless attacks.”  For his part Trump is agitated, he started yesterday by tweeting “Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. #FAKE NEWS.”  Trump was probably also responding to Unbelievable, a new book by MSNBC’s Katy Tur.  Tur, who was assigned to cover the Trump campaign during the election was frequently targeted by Trump, who called her Little Katy, while ridiculing her and calling her a liar.  She had to be escorted out of some of his angrier rallies by the Secret Service when the crowd turned on her in response to Trump’s comments.  Her book also recounts the time that Trump came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss on the cheek.  Sound familiar?   

Climate Change:  Economic Advisor Gary Cohn plans to meet with senior climate and energy ministers from around the world during next week’s annual United Nations meeting.  The NY Times reports that this is intended to be an “informal exchange of views” but the very fact that Cohn, an advocate for staying in the Paris accords, is holding these meetings is interesting. Hopefully, Cohn, who has been on Trump’s bad side ever since he criticized Trump’s response to Charlottesville, has full administration support for his outreach.  When Trump started the four year process of pulling the US out of the Paris Climate accords he said that he would be open to future negotiations, a suggestion that other world leaders found unacceptable especially since the original agreement was largely negotiated by the US in the first place.   

Election Finagling: Last week, Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of Trump’s voter fraud commission wrote an op-ed in Breitbart News where he once again charged that Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan stole the New Hampshire senate race from former Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, through voter fraud because of the participation of voters with out of state licenses.  New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, a member of Kobach’s commission, vigorously dismissed this charge yesterday during the commissions second public meeting pointing out that New Hampshire law allows people who live in New Hampshire to vote whether or not they have local licenses.  Sadly Kobach stands by his absurd allegation.  Instead of addressing methods to encourage voting, the fraud commission continues to look for ways to suppress voter turnout.  One of the experts testifying at Tuesday’s meeting suggested that all voters be subjected to the system that completes background checks for buying guns, a sure way to further discourage voters.  On another front, the Supreme Court put on hold several lower court rulings that would have required Texas to immediately redraw voter districts in order to rectify gerrymandering that discriminated against voters of color. No surprise that the deciding vote was cast by new Justice Gorsuch.  Separately, the Supreme Court also agreed with the Trump administration for now, putting on hold a lower court decision that would have allowed more refugees into the country.      

Healthcare Anyone:  A number of Senate Republicans are still pushing forward with a last ditch attempt to squeeze an Obamacare repeal in before the September 30 deadline.  Republican Senators Graham and Cassidy plan to introduce their block-grant plan to replace Obamacare this week.  However, it’s not scored and at least at this point doesn’t have enough votes.  At the same time Republican Senator Alexander and  Democratic Senator Murray are working on their Obamacare fix.  Sadly, they haven’t reached agreement yet on a plan to sure up the individual insurance markets.  Bernie Sanders plans to introduce his “Medicare for all” health plan this week. There is no chance that a Republican led Senate will even vote on his plan but many of the Democratic Senators who are considering running for President in 2020, including Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken have joined as co-sponsors.