“Twitter has shut down 201 accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook, the company told congressional investigators Thursday and revealed in a blog in the afternoon,” the Washington Post reports.
“The company also found three accounts from the news site RT — which Twitter linked to the Kremlin — that spent $274,100 in ads on Twitter’s platform in 2016.”
Politico: “If any believers in the Myth remain after the brutal week McConnell just endured, which capped off an unbelievably brutal eight months, they should take this challenge: Name one major legislative accomplishment to McConnell’s credit over the more than 30 years he has been in the Senate. (Last minute deals don’t count.)”
“You can’t do it: Unlike former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (my former boss) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, McConnell has never authored a single piece of major legislation that became law, nor has he successfully shepherded a single major bill to passage as leader. Reid, Pelosi and former President Barack Obama were all party to the last-minute deals, but they all have a trove of historic accomplishments to show for their leadership: insuring millions of Americans through the Affordable Care Act, reforming the post-crash financial system with Dodd-Frank and ending the Iraq war, for starters. McConnell has nothing.”
“His failure to log even a single major achievement is without precedent in recent American history.”
“Despite President Trump’s push for tougher immigration enforcement, U.S. agents are on pace to deport fewer people in the government’s 2017 fiscal year than during the same period last year, the latest statistics show,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump took office pledging to round up as many as 3 million drug dealers, gang members and other criminals he said were living in the United States illegally. But the most recent figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicate the government may be having a hard time finding enough eligible ‘bad hombres,’ as the president described them, to quickly meet those targets.”
John Cassidy: “On Wednesday, Lindsey Graham, who had just watched his bill die, said that the Party would return to health care immediately after passing tax reform. But a legislative window for pushing through a health-care measure with just fifty votes is closing, and, going forward, the Republicans will need sixty votes to break a Democratic filibuster. Unless, of course, they pass another budget-reconciliation bill, which would give them another chance at a fifty-vote victory. Or they could get rid of the filibuster altogether, a step which Donald Trump urged them to do on Wednesday.”
“For now, it looks like the next repeal effort will have to wait until after the 2018 midterms. But another thing we’ve learned in the past few months is that you should never underestimate the determination of the Republicans, and of their wealthy donors, to dismantle Obamacare, or their eagerness to embrace practically any tactic that might help them achieve their goal.”
For members: Obamacare Isn’t Safe Yet
New York Times: “Using a website called Factbase, we reviewed nearly all the president’s remarks since his election, searching for references to specific time frames, like ‘soon’ or ‘very soon’ (a full list of such words is at the bottom of this article). Factbase transcribes, sorts and tags nearly every public statement made by President Trump – spanning official White House releases, speeches, interviews and even tweets.”
“Like most politicians, the president makes plenty of claims that are imprecise, mundane or not easily checkable. But many claims were very specific. Among more than 100 specific policy predictions Mr. Trump said would happen soon, we found that at least 75 percent of the time, they did not – or had not, as of this writing.”
“It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led. It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.”
— Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), quoted by The Hill, on the urgency of the federal budget deficit and national debt.
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“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice.”
— Michelle Obama, quoted by the Boston Globe.
Bruce Bartlett: “Four decades ago, while working for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY), I had a hand in creating the Republican tax myth. Of course, it didn’t seem like a myth at that time — taxes were rising rapidly because of inflation and bracket creep, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the economy seemed trapped in stagflation with no way out. Tax cuts, at that time, were an appropriate remedy for the economy’s ills.”
“Tax cuts became the GOP’s go-to solution for nearly every economic problem. Extravagant claims are made for any proposed tax cut…”
“That’s wishful thinking. So is most Republican rhetoric around tax cutting. In reality, there’s no evidence that a tax cut now would spur growth.
New York Magazine: “Warren is the candidate who many cited in 2016 as the anti-Clinton: the outspoken, uncompromisingly progressive woman they would have supported unreservedly had she only run. Yet now, as many hope and speculate that she might run in 2020, the right is investing in a story line about Warren that is practically indistinguishable from the one they peddled for years about Clinton.”
Karl Rove: “Passing tax reform has now become an existential imperative. The electoral disaster that might visit Republicans if they can’t get tax reform done ought to galvanize leaders at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue and reinforce a bit of old wisdom: that the perfect should not be allowed to be the enemy of the good.”
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn told ABC News that he can’t guarantee that taxes won’t go up for some middle-class families under the administration’s sweeping tax overhaul.
Said Cohn: “There’s an exception to every rule. I can’t guarantee anything. You can always find a unique family somewhere.”
“We made sure we’re on the same page… we made sure we did the hard lifting and the tough work ahead of rollout. We are all in on this… this is it. This is the game changer for our economy.”
— Speaker Paul Ryan, in an interview with CNBC, on the Republican tax plan.
Joshua Green: “Bannon, who’s been consulting with Henry Kissinger and other foreign policy veterans, is preparing a project to sound an alarm about what he views as the primary economic threat to America: China.”
Said Bannon: “If we don’t get our situation sorted with China, we’ll be destroyed economically. The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time. Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony—our Jamestown to their Great Britain, a tributary state.”
In case you missed it: We recently spoke with Green on Political Wire Conversations about his excellent book about Bannon.
Amy Walter: “At this point, Democrats have a 10-point ‘enthusiasm’ advantage over Republicans – 44% to 34%. What’s more, this gap is considerably larger than the one Republicans had at this point in 2009. Back in late October of 2009, Republicans had a one-point enthusiasm advantage.”
James Hohmann: “More than 50 million ballots were cast by Floridians in the seven presidential elections from 1992 through 2016. If you add them all up, only 18,000 votes separate the Republicans from the Democrats. That is 0.04 percent.”
“Florida is rightfully considered the swingiest of swing states. Control of the White House in 2000 came down to a few hundred hanging chads – and one vote on the Supreme Court. The past four statewide elections – two governor’s races and two presidentials – were all decided by a single percentage point.”
“So it could be quite politically significant that tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, maybe more, are expected to permanently move into Florida as the result of Hurricane Maria.”
NBC News: “The clearest windfall comes from ending the estate tax, which only affects individual estates larger than $5.49 million and $11 million for couples. The estate tax is currently 40 percent. Trump has claimed in the past he is worth $10 billion. If his children inherit that amount, they’d save $4 billion in taxes.”
“In addition to a lower top rate on income tax, the proposal ends the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is designed to prevent wealthy filers from using deductions to wipe out their tax bill entirely. Trump has not released his taxes, but a leaked return from 2005 showed he paid $38 million in taxes on $150 million in income, $31 million of which was due to the AMT.”
New York Times: “For years, Republican lawmakers lamented the soaring national debt, pressing for spending cuts and clinging to the mantle of fiscal responsibility. But last week, Senate Republicans hammered out a deal to allow for as much as $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, betting that supercharged growth will make up for lost revenue, a potentially dubious prospect.”
“This month, the majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate voted to raise the debt limit without doing anything to rein in spending.”
“Republican lawmakers are pushing to increase military spending by tens of billions of dollars, topping even Mr. Trump’s request for a beefed-up military… And as Congress mulls large tax cuts, the tabs for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria keep rising.”
Associated Press: How do you pay for an estimated $5.8 trillion tax cut?
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.