Tag: GOP congress

GOP maps out impeachment defense amid messaging stumbles

House Republicans are scrambling to hash out a unified strategy to defend President Donald Trump as the GOP struggles to respond to the rapidly-moving impeachment probe.

With Democrats aggressively pushing ahead with their impeachment inquiry, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) convened a conference call on Monday afternoon where he urged members of his leadership team and GOP committee leaders to get on the same messaging page, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.

McCarthy implored his troops to stay focused on communicating that there is nothing that rises to the level of impeachment in the president’s July phone call with Ukraine, when Trump urged the Ukrainian president to investigate the Biden family.

View the complete September 30 article by Melanie Zanona on the Politico website here.

Republicans might oppose impeachment, but do they condone what Trump did?

Washington Post logoFor most of the time President Trump has been in office, Republican elected officials have chosen to look away or down during difficult moments. They have preferred silence over speaking out, whether out of a fear of political retaliation or a calculation that the value of policies he and they are pursuing outweigh any damage brought about by his behavior.

The revelations of the past two weeks put Republicans in new and far more uncomfortable territory, but little has changed so far in their posture toward the president. They are doing all they can to keep their heads down, showing once again the degree to which the president has cowed the Grand Old Party.

First it was the reports by the media, starting with The Washington Post and then by others, about the existence of a whistleblower’s complaint charging Trump with using his office to ask a foreign leader to attack a political rival.

View the complete September 28 article by Dan Blaz on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s Corporate Tax Cut Is Not Trickling Down

Center for American Progress logoTwo years ago, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). At the time, the Trump administration claimed that its corporate tax cuts would increase the average household income in the United States by $4,000. But two years later, there is little indication that the tax cut is even beginning to trickle down in the ways its proponents claimed.

The Trump administration claimed its corporate tax cuts would translate into a $4,000 raise for the average household

In selling the large corporate tax cut to Congress and a skeptical American public, the Trump administration claimed that corporate tax cuts would ultimately translate into higher wages for workers. The tax cuts would trickle down to workers through a multistep process. First, slashing the corporate tax rate would increase corporations’ after-tax returns on investment, inducing them to massively boost spending on investments such as factories, equipment, and research and development. This investment boom would give the average worker more and better capital to work with, substantially increasing the overall productivity of U.S. workers. In other words, they would be able to produce more goods and services with every hour worked. And finally, U.S. workers would capture the benefits of their increased productivity by successfully bargaining for higher wages. Continue reading “Trump’s Corporate Tax Cut Is Not Trickling Down”

Trump administration again pushes limits of authority in shielding whistleblower complaint from Congress

Washington Post logoPresident Trump and his Justice Department are once again on a collision course with Congress over the extent of the commander in chief’s authority, this time stemming from the administration’s refusal to give lawmakers a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s interaction with his counterpart in Ukraine.

Trump, legal analysts say, has the right to withhold such communications with foreign leaders from lawmakers and the public as classified or otherwise privileged. But in this case — when Trump is said to have pressed the Ukrainian president about investigating the son of former vice president Joe Biden, one of his political rivals — he could be misusing his authority to cover up personal wrongdoing, analysts say.

“We cannot say that executive privilege and control over classified information is going to be used to shield the president from his duties to comply with federal law,” said Claire Finkelstein, the faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania law school. “That’s just a sort of complete abuse of office.”

View the complete September 23 article by Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett on The Washington Post website here.

Republican lawmakers scramble to contain Ukraine whistleblower fallout

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are scrambling to contain the political fallout from reports that President Trump pressured a foreign leader to investigate his leading Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Several Republican lawmakers have called on Trump to reveal more details from his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the president on Sunday acknowledged discussing Biden and his possible links to corruption in Ukraine. This effort comes as some Democrats in the House are ramping up their calls for a vote on an impeachment inquiry.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced on the Senate floor Monday afternoon that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is trying to bring the Trump-appointed intelligence community’s inspector general who received a complaint from a whistleblower before his panel to investigate the matter.

View the complete September 24 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Trump kicks off House GOP retreat with speech bashing Democrats, media

Washington Post logoBALTIMORE — President Trump kicked off a policy retreat for House Republicans with an address that bashed his potential Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and the media, receiving a full embrace from GOP lawmakers converging on a city the president disparaged as a “rodent infested mess.”

“They’re colluding and they’re obstructing,” Trump said of Democrats and the media, a not-so-veiled reference to the potential impeachment charges against him.

He started his speech an hour later than planned, but in so doing managed to take the stage in Charm City at the exact minute that the 2020 Democratic presidential debate got underway.

View the complete September 12 article by Rachael Bade and Paul Kane on The Washington Post website here.

Suburban anxiety drives GOP on guns

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and members of his caucus are tiptoeing toward legislation addressing gun violence amid deep anxiety over eroding GOP support in suburbs across the country.

Expanded background checks and other modest proposals to address gun violence have strong support among swing voters in the suburbs, whom McConnell sees as crucial to keeping control of Republican-held swing Senate seats.

Republican sources close to McConnell say he sees a political benefit to moving a bipartisan measure in response to a spate of mass shootings this year, and that he acknowledges the politics surrounding expanded background checks have shifted in recent months.

View the complete September 10 article by Alex Bolton on The Hill website here.

GOP faces new pressure to act on guns

The Hill logoFor Republicans hoping to run out the clock on gun reform, the weekend’s mass shooting in Texas has complicated the math.

The killings of seven people in Odessa by a lone gunman on Saturday has rekindled the push for stricter gun laws, rousing Democrats and outside reform advocates already energized by the summer’s tragedies.

Walmart, one of the world’s largest retailers, announced Tuesday that it would limit its ammunition sales and request customers not openly carry firearms — a move immediately condemned by the National Rifle Association (NRA) as “shameful.”

View the complete September 3 article by Jordain Carney and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Undermining Medicaid: How Block Grants Would Hurt Beneficiaries

Center for American Progress logoPresident Donald Trump and his congressional allies have repeatedly tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).1 Various repeal bills have included provisions to slash Medicaid funding by eliminating the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and restructuring the remaining program through block grants or per-capita caps.2 By placing caps on federal Medicaid spending, these programs would either reduce enrollees’ benefits or tighten eligibility requirements. Now, after failing to implement these reforms legislatively, the Trump administration is bypassing Congress to cut federal Medicaid expenditures and dismantle key Medicaid expansion provisions of the ACA.

In January, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma was reported to be considering drastic changes to Medicaid’s rules that would allow states to adopt structures similar to block grants or per-capita caps using the Medicaid waiver authority—a mechanism to make alterations to Medicaid services without legislative approval.3 Since then, she has continued to express support for capping federal Medicaid payments to the states.4

Block grants and per-capita caps threaten health care access for the almost 75 million low-income and disabled people enrolled in the program.5 This issue brief outlines the ways in which the administration is encouraging states to use waivers to adopt these alternative funding approaches, thus undermining Medicaid and ignoring the will of voters, who overwhelmingly oppose such programs.6

View the complete August 7 article by Tarun Ramesh on the Center for American Progress website here.

GOP struggles to find backup plan for avoiding debt default

The Hill logoRepublicans are in the dark about their party’s backup plan for raising the debt ceiling amid growing anxiety that they will need to do so in a matter of weeks.

Leadership wants to attach an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit to a budget deal, which would let them consolidate two tough political votes. But while Congress has until January to avoid deep budget cuts, it appears increasingly likely it will have to vote to raise the debt ceiling before leaving for the August recess.

Underscoring the urgency, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent letters to congressional leadership Friday requesting Congress vote before the recess, after first indicating to reporters that it was his “preference” lawmakers act this month.

View the complete July 14 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.