REPUBLICANS NOW HAVING TO DEAL WITH THE “TRUMP CIRCUS”

 

…The way some of us look at the new president.

 

Trump’s plans “for a major investigation” into his false accusations of widespread voter fraud.

 

Republicans in congress were in Philadelphia last week to discuss the details of what will replace the Affordable Care Act, which taxes might get slashed and how the government will pay for a new border wall and a trillion dollar infrastructure plan.

 

But as usual with Mr. Trump, he has offered a new list of distractions through his latest announcements and early morning tweets.

 

Here are some of the latest:

 

>>> A new order to jump-start the new border wall

 

>>> An executive order to stop entry from 7 mid-east countries  (That caused major demonstrations an major US airports)

 

>>> An order to withhold funds from “sanctuary cities”

 

>>>  A White House draft proposal for allowing the CIA to reopen secret interrogation prisons overseas

 

>>> Discussion on the resuming of “enhanced interrogation” (torture) techniques

 

>>> Trump’s plans “for a major investigation” into his false accusations of widespread voter fraud.

 

Of course, after the announcements of these items, it left the Republican leadership scrambling as they had few details on these orders and fewer answers about these issues.

 

The first signs of trouble came at midday Wednesday, when Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Cathy Mc Morris Rodgers (R-Wash.) had to face reporters in a hotel ballroom at the start of a two-day party strategy session.

 

These two had come prepared to talk about health care and the tax code, but were barraged with reporter’s questions about Trump’s latest executive moves.

 

On voter fraud, Thune said he had not seen any evidence of widespread problems and declined to directly endorse Trump’s idea of an investigation.

 

“If they want to take that up, that is a decision that obviously he [the president] can make,” Thune said.

 

On the administration’s plans to rethink how terrorism detainees are interrogated, Thune was much stronger, emphasizing that Congress had settled the issue.

 

“With respect to torture — that’s banned,” he said, citing a 2015 law that was approved overwhelmingly.

 

Trying to get back on message, Thune added: “What we have to do is focus on the things that unite us,” including repealing Obamacare and revamping the tax code.

 

That is what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to do later in the afternoon.

 

In a private gathering of lawmakers, the two GOP leaders laid out an aggressive legislative agenda calling for Congress to repeal major portions of the ACA, pass replacement measures and embark on a significant overhaul of the tax code, all within the first 200 days of blanket GOP control in Washington.

 

What they didn’t do is fully explain how these goals will be achieved, which is what most of the Republican lawmakers had traveled to Philadelphia to learn.  (And that’s what the reporters wanted to know.)

 

The leaders laid out a three-pronged plan to undermine Obamacare with a combination of new legislation, executive action by Trump and regulatory changes within his administration. They said a replacement law would require some Democratic support.

 

Tax restructuring would follow on an ambitious schedule, members who attended the briefing said, with an eye toward passing that overhaul, at least in the House, before Congress breaks for its summer recess in August. Ryan told members that they would work toward a tax overhaul that would cut rates while roughly maintaining current revenue levels.

 

“He laid out a very ambitious agenda,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). “We’re on an aggressive timetable; it was almost like a construction chart the way he laid it out.”

 

Additionally, a senior House appropriator, Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), announced plans to pass a special appropriations bill funding a Mexican border wall in the spring and to undo several major Obama-era regulations in the meantime. Also on the agenda: Drafting the first all-Republican budget in a decade with the goal of funding the government and avoiding a debt-ceiling crisis.

 

“Exact, specific and detailed — that’s what people want,” said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee. “We’re going to own this stuff, and we better be able to explain it.”

 

“He’s [the president’s] only been there a couple of days, I get it, but we do need to know this: Is he going to be with us when we go forward? Where does he stand on these issues?” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.). “There’s a lot of questions we need to ask him so we know where he is, so we don’t go out down the dirt road while he’s going on down the freeway.”

 

Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), was more blunt about his views on bridging the divide. “I’ve watched this guy for two years,” he told a small group of reporters. “You guys take him literally, and nobody else does. You’ll learn eventually not to take him literally.”

 

As usual, this is the result of Trump’s blanket statements and promises without his stating how he would plan to make his promises actually happen. 

 

Now that the Republicans are running the whole show in both Houses of Congress, the White House and are ready to take back the US Supreme Court, they are also in the position for taking responsibility of actually governing.

 

For years I’ve stated that whether you agree or not, the Democrats do know how to govern, the Republicans usually just screw things up and the Dems have to pull their ass out of the ditch.  It happened with FDR after the Great Depression, it happened again after George W. Bush in 2008 and the Great Recession, and it looks like it might just happen again with Donald J. Trump.

 

It this just another “Here we go again?”

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017