The Trump administration reversed course earlier this month and said it would back a “clean” raising of the debt ceiling, meaning it would not be tied to other policy measures.
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WASHINGTON ― After regularly proclaiming that Mexico would pay for his signature campaign promise ― a wall along the USA border with its southern neighbor ― President Donald Trump on Tuesday night threatened a government shutdown if Congress refused U.S tax dollars for it.
Trump has made clear for months he wasn’t happy with the last bipartisan spending deal in May because it didn’t fund a new wall on the southern border, his signature campaign promise.
“At this point the range of uncertainty is really high”, said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and worldwide studies. Worsening Republicans’ conundrum, the shutdown will be extra bad when Trump tells his base to blame the mess on the GOP Congress.
Even the leadership of Trump’s party rejected his dare.
Trump acknowledging he’s willing to force a shutdown actually increases Democrats’ strength heading into the negotiations.
According to Politico, Trump called Sens.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin decided against tying the measures together, Trump said in a series of Twitter posts Thursday. Congress faces an October deadline to increase the government’s borrowing authority and avoid defaulting on USA obligations. “I don’t think it’s in our interest to do so”.
And Jeff Flake, the senator the president says no one knows, is nearly as “Never-Trump” as anyone in Congress right now.
Early in his term, Trump requested that then-FBI Director James Comey pledge his loyalty to the president, and urged Comey to go easy on Michael Flynn, who was at the time serving as Trump’s national security adviser.
Ryan argued the House had already passed funding for border security but that the narrowly divided Senate – where Democrats have considerably more sway over what gets into funding bills – would need more time to act.
To many tax policy experts, reconciliation is “a trick” in the sense that it’s very hard to craft tax legislation that can be enacted into law permanently.
House Republicans voted last month to provide $1.6 billion in seed funding for the border wall as part of a larger spending package.
Ryan added that the border wall was a necessary tool to curb immigration, but continuing government did not have to be sacrificed to make it happen. He supported the earlier shutdown as a Republican congressman from SC and doesn’t shy away from the possibility of one next month.
Republicans now hold 52 seats in the Senate.
The bill needed 50 votes to pass but garnered support from only 49 of 52 GOP senators as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of ME joined McCain in opposing it.
But guess which two Republicans Trump has gone after? Trump has asked Congress to extend the limit with a “clean” bill that excludes any other provisions.
President Donald Trump called Thom Tillis after the senator from North Carolina introduced legislation aimed at providing protection for special counsel Robert Mueller in the event Trump fired him.
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With that in mind, one might have expected the White House to have provided an update by now on the one-page, double-spaced, bullet-point tax “plan” it released in April, which might as well have simply read “tax cuts!” over and over again in 16-point font. John McCain, who shocked his party by voting against the skinny repeal.
