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.”
John Podhoretz: “If any figure in the United States bears watching over the next couple of years as our political culture continues the radical transformation that led to the election of Donald Trump, it’s Oprah. I believe she’s uniquely positioned, should she wish to commit herself, to seek the Democratic nomination for president and challenge Trump in 2020.”
“If you think that Trump can be beaten by a two-term governor of a Midwestern state with really good ideas about health care, or by a senator who really attracts young people, think again. The idea that a relatively conventional elected official will differentiate herself from Trump by dint of her seriousness or that an unconventional elected official can out-populist Trump is crazy.”
“President Trump lately, and oddly, has taken to blaming Republicans’ failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act this week on the false claim that a GOP senator has been ‘in the hospital’ and couldn’t make the vote,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said Trump: “We have one senator who’s a ‘yes’ vote, a great person, but he’s in the hospital.”
He added: “We have the votes to get it done. You can’t do it when somebody is in the hospital.”
“A new Republican group launching Thursday has budgeted $35 million to strengthen the party’s influence over the next round of redistricting, the complicated process of drawing favorable political boundaries for state and federal legislative districts,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“The National Republican Redistricting Trust, overseen by Guy Harrison and other senior party strategists, was formed as a counterweight to the new Democratic group backed by former President Obama and led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.”
“In his closed interview with the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, White House senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner did not share the existence of his personal email account, which he has used for official business,” CNN reports.
“The chair and vice chair of the committee were so unhappy that they learned about the existence of his personal email account via news reports that they wrote him a letter via his attorney Thursday instructing him to double-check that he has turned over every relevant document to the committee including those from his ‘personal email account’ described to the news media, as well as all other email accounts, messaging apps, or similar communications channels you may have used, or that may contain information relevant to our inquiry.'”
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will reimburse taxpayers for his use of charter jets, The Hill reports.
Said Price: “Today, I will write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes. The taxpayers won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes.”
Tom Tancredo said that he “sat down with former White House strategist Stephen Bannon and hinted that the two hard-right agitators discussed the possibility of Tancredo running for Colorado governor next year,” the Denver Post reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map 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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