President Donald Trump barnstormed Capitol Hill Tuesday on a huge day for his presidency and the Republican Party, desperate to inspire and cajole GOP senators to pass a controversial tax reform bill and salvage an unproductive legislative political year.
Trump lunched with Senate Republicans, as party leaders race to piece together a thin majority to pass a bill that Trump says will give everyone a tax cut but critics have lambasted as a massive giveaway to his rich friends.
But even as he met GOP senators behind closced doors, his plans to choreograph the other half of a year-end political dance to fund the government and avoid a federal shutdown crashed to a halt.
Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, who had been due to sit down with Trump and GOP leaders at the White House Tuesday, abruptly pulled out of the talks, blaming an early morning tweet in which the President said he saw no possible deal to reconcile their demands with his program.
The twin showdowns reflect how Trump, and Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, are using a crunch of year-end business to seek wins that will define 2017 in Washington and set up next year’s midterm elections.
Republicans have shown every sign that they are desperate to pass anything to alleviate pressure from their voters who are fuming at their failure to leverage their monopoly on Washington power.
Trump, meanwhile, is fulminating about the need for a win after promising his own supporters that his presidency would be one long victory lap.
But the rush to pass anything may cause Republicans to discount the long-term political implications of a bill that independent surveys show does far more to enrich the already wealthy than to lift the working and middle classes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed optimism the bill would pass in the next few days but admitted that putting together the winning majority on such a “big, complicated” bill was challenging.
“Think of sitting there with a Rubik’s Cube, trying to get to 50,” McConnell said.
Schumer tried to stoke Republican jitters that the tax bill could turn out to be a long-term political liability by warning that massive legislation passed in haste rarely worked out well for the American people.
“Let it sit out there in the sun … and let it bake,” he said, demanding more time for Americans to understand the implications of the proposal.
Poor Americans would lose billions of dollars in federal benefits under the proposal, according to the CBO report, largely because the measure eliminates the mandate forcing most Americans to get health insurance.
Many of those who would forgo coverage would have lower or moderate incomes and would have qualified for Medicaid or federal help paying their premiums or out-of-pocket health expenses, the CBO found.
The legislation would make multiple changes to the tax code, but the vast majority of individual tax cuts would expire after 2025.
These include changing the rates on individual tax brackets, nearly doubling the standard deduction, eliminating personal exemptions, expanding the child tax credit and repealing the state and local tax deduction.
Washington cliffhanger
Amid the drama of a quintessential Washington cliffhanger Tuesday, it was unclear whether the uncertainty was typical of habitual deal-making and brinkmanship over the fate of a major bill, or whether tax reform measure, a hugely significant political lift for Republicans was actually in trouble.
Given the debacle over the failure to repeal Obamacare earlier this year, tax reform has become a must-win for the GOP and is the last chance for Trump to claim a legacy building achievement at the moment — in his debut year in office — when the President’s power is traditionally at its apex.
In typical bullish form, Trump is publicly expressing great confidence that the bill — which he claims represents the biggest tax cut in history — will pass.
“With just a few changes, some mathematical, the middle class and job producers can get even more in actual dollars and savings and the pass through provision becomes simpler and really works well!” Trump said in his latest tweet on the tax bill.
But Republican Senate leaders, handicapped by their narrow two-vote advantage over Democrats, still lacked the votes to ensure that a bill that could be sent to the Senate floor as early as Wednesday can pass. The measure has already sailed through the House.
Ahead of Trump’s meeting, the President, Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and even first daughter Ivanka Trump, have been been on a lobbying blitz behind the scenes, sources told CNN.
On the fence
A number of senators however, including Republicans Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Bob Corker of Tennessee, still have problems with the legislation. Sen. John McCain, who has emerged as a thorn in the side of Trump and McConnell and helped defeat the repeal of Obamacare, has not yet said how he will vote. There are signs however that other senators are trying to get to yes, including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins.
“I’m feeling better today,” Murkowski told reporters on Tuesday.
The first hurdle on the tax quest Tuesday for Republican leaders still lack the votes to pass the measure, is a key meeting at 2:30 p.m. ET of the Senate Budget Committee.
The Republicans have only a one-vote majority on the committee, and both Johnson and Corker are on the panel, meaning that if either of them vote against moving the measure to the floor it will stall.
The problem for Republicans is that if they offer concessions to Johnson, who is worried about tax rates for businesses that use pass-through accounting, they could alienate Corker, who is fixated on the deficit implications of the bill.
An aide to Johnson said that despite frantic efforts to appease the Wisconsin senator, he couldn’t yet commit to vote yes.
“As of now he’s in the same place he was last night,” the aide said. “So far, we haven’t gotten there.”
Corker, a vehement Trump critic who has warned that the President’s explosive temperament could spark a third world war, is concerned the tax bill will not generate enough revenue to pay for itself after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned it would hike deficits by $1.4 trillion over 10 years.
Corker initially refused to say whether he would back the bill on Tuesday, as he works to create a mechanism to offset its costs.
But following the President’s meeting on the Hill, Corker said he’s gotten to an”acceptable place” — but he did not elaborate on the contours of the agreement.
“We had a very good lunch,” he said. “I think we’ve come to a pretty good place.”
Another Trump critic, Sen. Jeff Flake, is balking at “gimmicks” which he said include phasing out individual tax cuts over the life of the proposed law but which keep corporate tax cuts permanent.
“I would like to vote for the bill. I’m trying to get there,” Flake told reporters Monday.