WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia (AP) — Congressional Republicans have gathered at a West Virginia resort in search of a winning election-year agenda. The best they have to offer in 2018 may be a recitation of the tax cuts approved in 2017 — and the threat of another government shutdown is looming.
The legislators had forums on topics such as infrastructure, national security and the economy — but noticeably not on immigration, the major issue that bedevils them.
They got a pep talk from President Donald Trump reliving passage of the tax bill and highlighting other GOP victories from his first year in office. But the president offered no clear strategy for resolving the immigration-and-spending standoff that produced a three-day government shutdown in January and threatens a second shutdown next week. And he offered no new policy details on infrastructure, prescription drug prices or other items he’s mentioned as ripe for attention in 2018.
As for an immigration strategy, Trump said: “We have to get help from the other side, or we have to elect many more Republicans.” He then proceeded to take jabs at Democrats just days after calling for bipartisan unity in his State of the Union address.
Trump took a similar tack at a second GOP event Thursday night in Washington.
“You know the Democrats are AWOL. They’re missing in action,” Trump said at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at his Washington hotel. “We’re saying, ‘Where are they?’ We have a proposal. We never hear from them.”
Republicans appear headed into the year with the idea that 2017 was when they got bigger items done and that 2018 will be a time to deal with necessary business, including spending and immigration. Infrastructure would likely require a sustained push from the president. The message for the midterms is expected to be the economy and tax cuts.
“Tax reform is working,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, citing investments by UPS and employee bonuses by Lowe’s as the latest evidence. Take-home pay is going up, while consumer confidence is at a 17-year high and unemployment at a 17-year low, Ryan said.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, gamely told reporters that Trump’s history as a developer makes him the ideal person to push a major infrastructure plan.
Shuster said public-private partnerships such as those used by Connecticut at highway rest stops could be an alternative. Raising the gas tax, a reliable source of funding for highways, is a tough sell with this Congress.
Trump mentioned a “right to try” bill to speed approval of life-saving drugs, but the plan received little or no buzz among lawmakers.
Besides tax cuts and the strong economy, Republicans said they have a not-so-secret weapon: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said the GOP tax bill would provide mere “crumbs” for many taxpayers.
Trump compared the remark to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 description of his supporters as “deplorables,” and Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, chairman of the House campaign arm, said Pelosi’s words will be repeated in TV ads around the country.
“Her ‘crumbs’ comment is something I think we can use pretty effectively,” Stivers said.
Amid the optimism were nagging questions about whether lawmakers will enact immigration changes or deadlock over Trump’s calls for a wall along the Mexican border and a path to citizenship for young immigrants here illegally. Meanwhile Congress faces a Feb. 8 deadline to avert another government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that wouldn’t happen, saying, “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.”
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he doubted there will be a unified Republican approach on immigration, noting that House and Senate Republicans have vastly different visions on the bill. And while there was no formal immigration session on the agenda, Lankford and other lawmakers said the issue has come up frequently in informal talks among lawmakers.
“There’s a lot of dialogue happening in the hallway” on immigration, Lankford said, adding that he hopes the GOP will coalesce around a White House framework Trump outlined last week and reiterated during his State of the Union address.
The White House has proposed creating a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young people living in the county illegally in exchange for billions for a border wall and dramatic cuts to legal immigration. Democrats have blasted the plan and called it dead on arrival.
Trump claimed that if Democrats don’t agree to the immigration framework he’s presented, it will be because they want the issue to animate voters in the 2018 midterm elections.
“It’s now an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit,” he said.
In Washington later, he said: “I don’t think they want to solve the DACA problem. I think they want to talk about it. I think they want to obstruct. … That’s all they do is resist.”
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this story.
The truth and factual history mean little to Repubs when they don’t support their positions-- and the willingness to go with “alternative facts” has only gotten worse. This election is going to be hard-fought and Dems need to up their game against what has traditionally been a much superior spin machine if they want to regain majority status in the House. Expecting to simply ride Trump’s negatives isn’t going to cut it.
The Repubs will also double down on the mythical superior alternative to ObamaCare they would institute if only they had more Repubs/less Dems in Congress and also make outlandish claims about their infrastructure “plan” the Dems are, according to them come summertime, obstructing from passage. I also expect the immigration issue will likely be viewed as a draw between the two parties given how things have gone so far.
[Quote] “We’re saying, ‘Where are they?’ We have a proposal. We never hear from them.”[/Quote] Then you aren’t listening, because their answer to your “proposal” was pretty clearly a big old “fuck that racist bull shit.”
I don’t doubt the GOP will take that path but I do doubt it will do much for them. As the kids say…,reality bites. This morning I heard the mighty fine folks on my TV yakking about 1000 dollar bonuses for Home Depot and Loews employees. And that’s working now. Realty bites. You have to have worked at Home Depot more than 20 years to get that 1000 bucks and no one at Loews is getting that much. Most of those big box store employees will see 350 bucks or less, the majority just 200, and they get it only one time. Buy November those that follow the money will know the tax cuts were just another scam 1% blow job. Gas taxes are horribly regressive. That why GOP’ers like them. But we wouldn’t need them if we didn’t give corporations a huge gift. The message to drive home: “you got 200 bucks in a bonus…you’re going to need it to pay for that bonus”. In the end all it takes is the truth.
In California, House Republicans plan to go after the hike in California’s gasoline tax, because, hey, who needs infrastructure jobs repairing the roads? It costs the average car owner in LA an extra $800 a year because they have to drive over potholes large enough to brake axels and pop tires. David Valadao = Genius, Devin Nunes = Super Genius, Kevin McCarthy = Fucking Einstein.
Just think about how fucked up Bush left things and Donald and his helpers are a thousand time more incompetent. How the fuck did any Republicans, particularly Donald get voted into power after Obama and Democrats pull us out of the nose dive Bush left us in and pushed the US higher than Bush’s best? What the fuck is wrong with white males and how the fuck did we evolve to be at the top of the heap? The old rise to your level of incompetence I suppose.