THE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS ARE NOT IN SYNC WITH THE PRESIDENT-ELECT

….Speaker Ryan doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

 

The president-elect has said that he has no intention of touching Medicare or Social Security.

 

OK, the election is over.  The new president-elect is having a real issue of, “How do I drain the swamp, when the only experienced people I can draw upon are those that are already part of the swamp?”

 

But that problem is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan said this week, “We’re on the same page with our president-elect!”  Well, that isn’t exactly the way it looked based on the get-together of the House Republicans for the first time since the elections.  Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) initially warned Ryan not to “come back” from his conversations with Trump “with a whole bunch of garbage that we’re not going to like.”

 

If you were in attendance at that get-together, you would have thought that based on what the president-elected ran on, much of it was totally the opposite of what was being discussed at this meeting.

 

To start with, there was a major split between those that wanted to repeal Obamacare in its entirety, and those that want to keep some of its features, which is what the president–elect wants to do.  Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), lamented that there’s no Republican alternative to Obamacare to be enacted.  Well, the GOP has never had a viable replacement for the ACA.  That's not new, news.

 

But Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) wasn’t worried. People would still be “way better off” if nothing were passed to replace Obamacare, he said.  But tell that to someone with cancer that currently depends on Obamacare coverage.

 

Today, the government belongs to the Republicans. But if they repeal Obamacare, an attendee said, “There’s no guarantee that something will come up to replace it  Then you run the risk of tossing 20 or 30 million people off health care and the public will blame our side.”  He's correct about that.

 

Then the discussion turned internal when half of the group wanted to use the “nuclear option” to get rid of the senate filibuster, the other half was against the idea.

 

The president elect said he wants a giant infrastructure jobs bill regardless of how its paid for, but most all that attended was against any bill that isn’t funded by cuts elsewhere in the government. On infrastructure spending: “If Trump doesn’t find a way to pay for it, then at least a majority if not all of us will vote against it,” one representative said. “Fiscal conservatives in the House will not support anything that’s not paid for.”

 

 

The whole group warned both Trump and Ryan, that they would rebel against any attempt to increase spending before Trump takes office.

 

 

Doesn't exactly sound like a group "in sync" with the president-elect does it?

 

You may recall that the president-elect has said many times that he has no intention in touching Medicare or Social Security, while Speaker Ryan wants to privatize Medicare and make it a voucher program.  Other conservatives want to cut back on Social Security. 

 

On budget cutting: “Everything [all entitlements] has to be on the table,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). But Trump has declared Social Security & Medicare off-limits.

 

On spending and debt-limit increases: “I think that’s a very dangerous thing, especially for our conservative base,” said Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.)  But Trump has proposed spending increases on infrastructure, military spending, and for saving parts of Obamacare, which would cost more tax payer money.

 

On a totally different subject, many House Republicans discussed wanting to return to the days when the lawmakers had the ability to fund their pet projects through pork-barrel type earmarks.

 

In another area, they were totally split on any efforts by some Republicans to protect Speaker Ryan from procedural vehicles for removing him from the speakership.

 

But the biggest issue was that during their hour-long Q&A with reporters, they signaled a potential future donnybrook with Trump over his anticipated executive power.  Remember, all those things that Trump promised, that he couldn't do without congressional approval?  You know, those things that only a dictator or king would be able to do on their own. 

 

As Dana Milbank of The Post correctly wrote about the meeting, “Carved on the moderator’s lectern was an eagle and “E Pluribus Unum” seal. If this meeting was any indication, the GOP motto may become “E Pluribus Chaos.”

 

Another reporter asked whether the House conservatives viewed the election as a mandate for Trump, or a mandate for the congressional Republicans.  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) said, to laughter. 

 

However, Representative Labrador really put the situation in perspective when he described three Republican factions of the latest election:  “There were Ryan’s Wall Street Journal wing, Trump’s populist wing and, the conservative ideologues. Donald Trump didn’t get the majority of the American vote, Hillary did. He got the majority of the electors,” Labrador said. “So he has a mandate where the American people are saying, ‘Let’s move a little bit in that direction.’ ”  Meaning to the left?

 

As I’ve always said, the Democrats are always very good at governing, where the GOP is very good at getting their opposition against the Democrats together, efficiently and being highly effective.  For the last eight years, they were totally unified in opposition to President Obama and they were in total opposition to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. But while it’s always easy for the GOP to oppose the Dems, as usual, they are finding out that it’s much more difficult to govern. Where they are always together and so good at opposing the Democrats, they are much less efficient when they have the "governing of America" responsibility.

 

I’m sorry Speaker Ryan, you’re not only not on the “same page” with the president-elect, you both are reading from a totally much different book.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016