“It’s the difference between succeeding as a party and failing. It’s the difference between having a majority in 2018 or losing it. It’s the difference between one term and two.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by NBC News, on the need to pass the Republican tax reform package.
A new Public Policy Institute of California poll finds that 50% of California’s likely voters think Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) should not run for re-election in 2018, while 43% support another run.
Still, the poll found that Feinstein remains popular. More than half of likely voters — 54% — approve of the job she’s doing, compared with 38% who disapprove.
“The head of the Air Force Academy stood all his 4,000 cadets at attention Thursday to deliver a message on racial slurs found written on message boards at the academy’s preparatory school,” the Colorado Gazette reports.
“Chins in and chests out, the cadets were flanked by 1,500 officers, sergeants, athletic coaches and civilian professors inside cavernous Mitchell Hall. Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria told them to take out their smartphones and record his words.”
Said Silveria: “If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out.”
David Wasserman: “The Alabama Senate special election and the Virginia gubernatorial race are near-certain to dominate political pundits’ attention this fall. But they could be poor predictors of 2018. The former is taking place in a deeply red, racially polarized state that bears little resemblance to most swing House districts. The latter is unfolding in a purple state, but the GOP nominee, Ed Gillespie, holds uncommon appeal with upscale voters who couldn’t stomach Donald Trump.
“The races that could best harbingers of November 2018 aren’t likely to get much national coverage at all: all 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates are up for election this November.”
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is running for the Senate seat held by Jeff Flake (R-AZ), “ending months of speculation about her political future and giving Democrats a top-tier fundraiser with experience on Capitol Hill,” the Arizona Republic reports.
The Cook Political Report rates the race a “toss up.”
“Offering to pay back a fraction of the cost of his private jet travel has not helped Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price climb out of his political hole. If anything, it seems to be getting deeper,” Axios reports.
“Price only plans to pay back only ‘his portion’ of the charter flights he has taken since becoming secretary, HHS confirmed yesterday. That would be about $52,000, or 13% of the $400,000 total… This partial reimbursement will not make Price’s troubles go away. Sure, he only took up one seat on each flight, but everyone else was there because he decided to fly private instead of commercial.”
Meanwhile, Politico reports last night that Price also used military planes for international travel that added up to more than $500,000.
And BuzzFeed reports Price ” wanted to reopen his department’s executive dining room.”
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Rick Klein: “The first two storms, it appears, were only wind-ups to the presidential moment that presents itself now. The crisis in Puerto Rico figures to define President Trump’s responses to this remarkable string of powerful storms. After first seeming to blame Puerto Rico’s poor infrastructure and fiscal crises, Trump is now praising FEMA and expressing his wish that the ‘press would treat fairly.’ But this is one where claims of ‘fake news’ will likely be subsumed by the images and realities.”
“Those realities include millions of American citizens in total crisis. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is warning that the lack of ‘clear command, control and communication’ will cause the situation to ‘deteriorate rapidly.’ The general who oversaw the federal response to Hurricane Katrina is calling the situation – yes – ‘like Katrina.'”
Ryan Lizza: “The Big Six… couldn’t agree on enough reforms to raise revenue. Paul Ryan had one idea, a so-called border-adjustment tax, which would have raised a trillion dollars to offset some of the rate cuts in the plan by taxing imports. But that was nixed by the White House and never replaced with anything as ambitious. In the end, the Big Six also couldn’t agree on as many details as the group originally proclaimed.”
“Instead of doing the hard work of crafting a revenue-neutral tax reform, which requires taking on powerful political constituencies and working with Democrats, Republicans will fall back on arguing that the economic effects of the tax legislation will be so powerful that it will pay for itself with growth.”
“President Trump could cut his tax bills by more than $1.1 billion, including saving tens of millions of dollars in a single year, under his proposed tax changes,” a New York Times analysis has found.
Said Trump: “I don’t benefit. I don’t benefit. In fact, very, very strongly, as you see, I think there’s very little benefit for people of wealth.”
Politico: “Democrats have long been terrified that the Sanders-Clinton slugfest of 2016 would set off a prolonged civil war in the party, forcing incumbents to fight off primary challengers from the left in Senate and gubernatorial races. It hasn’t happened. In a surprising reversal of the post-2008 dynamic — when Republicans were shut out of power, then saw a raft of tea party primary challengers take on their incumbents — Democrats have largely been spared of that predicament.”
“Instead, it’s Republican incumbents yet again facing heat from the right, as arch-conservative Roy Moore’s defeat of incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) this week emphatically showed.”
“Vice President Mike Pence’s outside lawyer met privately with special counsel Robert Mueller at Pence’s request last summer,” Politico reports.
“The meeting, which has not been previously reported, was held at Pence’s request to express his willingness to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.”
New York Times: “Republicans’ release of a sweeping plan to rewrite the tax code has set off a scramble among Washington lobbyists and trade groups to protect valuable tax breaks and other long-ingrained provisions. The plan’s scant details make it hard to know what, exactly, is on the chopping block. But within hours of the plan’s unveiling on Wednesday, flash points emerged over measures that supporters said could hurt the housing market, raise borrowing costs and increase the tax burden on families in high-tax states.”
“A day after announcing their ambitious tax plan, Republicans debated scaling back one of their largest and most controversial proposals to pay for lower tax rates: repeal of the individual deduction for state and local taxes,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Faced with the potential for defections by House Republicans from high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, Republicans are exploring ways to satisfy those lawmakers without backing off the lower tax rates they promised.”
“The fight over the state and local deduction, with more than $1 trillion at stake over a decade, is an early signal of the bruising battle ahead for Republicans trying to pass a tax bill that hasn’t garnered Democratic support and that faces narrow GOP margins in the House and Senate. It is the most obvious case of a bloc of pivotal lawmakers holding a specific concern, but it won’t be the only one.”
Bloomberg: “The fate of Trump’s promise of a historic tax revamp could be determined by six key Republican senators: Bob Corker, John McCain, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Orrin Hatch and Susan Collins.”
New York Times: “Mr. Trump has grown incensed by Mr. Price’s liberal renting of expensive planes, which he views as undercutting his drain-the-swamp campaign message, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking. Through intermediaries and the media, Mr. Trump has let it be known that offering reimbursement as repentance was no guarantee that Mr. Price would keep his job.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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