Stopping Trumpcare Will Derail GOP Legislative Plans, Even Ryan Admits
Josh Marshall at TPM makes the important point that the next few weeks will be critical in deciding whether Republicans will be able to pass Trumpcare and now is the most important time for intense and relentless resistance to pressure your legislators. Despite the horrific CBO score, there is still enormous pressure on Republicans to still get Trumpcare passed and make good on their promise for the last seven years.
As Marshall notes, “Here’s the key. No one wants to be the last one holding on for an unpopular or dead bill. The more electeds pull their support, the more perilous the situation gets for those holding on.” It is like a wave that builds and as more and more GOP members of the House and Senate pull away from the bill, that wave gets bigger and the rest of Congress will not want to stand in the way. That’s why now is the time for a full court press.
As I’ve written before, stopping Trumpcare will actual derail the rest of the GOP agenda. Paul Ryan said as much last week in his interview with Hugh Hewitt. According to Ryan, “Think of legislation as one train track with a bunch of trains on the track. If you don’t get these trains through the system, it slows everything else down. So if we didn’t get this done in time, according to our schedule — and we’re planning five weeks over this, this is a five week process of passing this bill, which is fairly lengthy. It slows absolutely everything down, pushes tax reform off past the summer.”
More importantly than pushing tax reform back on the calendar, not being able to pass Trumpcare throws a spanner into the whole process of tax reform. That’s because the current GOP plan for tax reform relies on already having been able to implement cut of $1.2 billion from federal revenues. That $1.2 billion reduction in revenue comes from Trumpcare, repealing the taxes that fund the ACA and defunding Medicaid by over $800 million. Now the new baseline revenue number for tax reform is $1.2 billion lower than it would have been, with the added bonus that the top 1% also already received a $600 million tax break. From there, Republicans plan to use tax reform to cut taxes by another $1.8 billion. But, under Senate rules, any new tax cuts cannot add to the deficit in 10 years. Republicans could possibly close enough tax loopholes and use dynamic scoring to actually make that $1.8 billion cut work. It’s true that nothing would stop the GOP from pursuing the $1.8 billion cut on its own without the lower baseline or simply use the same tactics as the Bush tax cuts by letting them sunset after 10 years. And, with the real divisions in the Republican party, that may be all they can do with tax reform. But, currently, the entire GOP plan relies on that lower baseline revenue number achieved by passing Trumpcare.
In addition, not being able to pass Trumpcare will weaken two GOP leaders. Paul Ryan will be under sever pressure if he can not pass this bill even through the House and the knives will be out for his Speakership. Trump will also be severely weakened and that will make it more likely that Republicans in Congress will finally stand up to him on Russia and corruption.
Now is the time for intense and relentless resistance. Stopping Trumpcare will derail the GOP legislative plans for this year and weaken two of the three most important Republican leaders.