Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who announced last week that he won’t seek re-election next year, told NBC News he will not vote for a tax reform package if “we’re adding one penny to the deficit.”
He added: “I am not going to be for it, OK. I’m sorry. It is the greatest threat to our nation.”
“Republicans on Capitol Hill are focused on one thing this week: the budget. The House and Senate need to pass budgets — and sign off on a single product in conference — in order to get a bill ready to pass tax reform,” according to Jonathan Swan.
“House GOP leaders have the votes needed to pass their budget this week, according to sources throughout the conference.”
“The Senate will have a tougher time with its Budget, which is being marked up in committee this week. Senators Bob Corker and Pat Toomey struck a budget deal that pleasantly surprised tax reform advocates – but with 52 Republicans every vote is on a razor’s edge. Republicans are paying close attention to the perennially-challenging senators: John McCain, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul.”
Out today: Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News by Bob Schieffer.
Schieffer explained the book’s premise on Face the Nation:
“We’ve never been through anything like this probably since the invention of the printing press. You know we talk about the invention of the printing press — how it improved literacy, it caused the reformation, the counter-reformation — but there was also 30 years of religious wars that followed the printing press and it took about three decades for the world to reach equilibrium. We’re at the very beginning of what’s going on now in this digital age that’s taken the place of print. It’s affected nothing more than the way we get the news.”
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“If the party can’t be fixed, I’m not going to be able to support the party. Period. That’s the end of it… But have I given up? No.”
— Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), in a CNN interview, saying a time could come when he no longer supports the Republican Party.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told a group of high school students “that they don’t have a right to health care, food and shelter,” WISN reports.
Said Johnson: “I think it’s probably more of a privilege.”
He added: “Do you consider food a right? Do you consider clothing a right? Do you consider shelter a right? What we have as rights is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Past that point, we have the right to freedom. Past that point is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us to afford those things.”
“President Trump signaled Sunday that he does not believe that attempts at direct communications with North Korea are worth the effort despite escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang,” the Washington Post reports.
“A day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the United States maintains ‘lines of communications’ with Kim Jong Un’s regime, Trump wrote on Twitter that Tillerson is ‘wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man’ — his nickname for Kim.”
“The Supreme Court, which was shorthanded and slumbering for more than a year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, is returning to the bench on Monday with a far-reaching docket that renews its central role in American life,” the New York Times reports.
“The new term is studded with major cases likely to provoke sharp conflicts. One of them, on political gerrymandering, has the potential to reshape American politics. Another may settle the question of whether businesses can turn away patrons like gay couples in the name of religious freedom.”
“I actually love football… People say I remind them of a football player because I’m combative, I like to win, and I might have a degenerative brain disease.”
“We didn’t win the elections, but we’ve won every fight.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in an interview with the New York Times.
Stan Collender: “While they say they expect that some Democrats will support the tax cut, the decision to exclude them from the planning process — the Big Six consisted of four congressional Republicans and two members of the Trump administration — means that it is anything but bipartisan. Because of that, and given the lack of any economic imperative and the substantive problems with the proposed tax cut (especially that it would harm taxpayers in blue states), House and Senate Democrats are far less likely to support the plan in its current incarnation than Trump, Ryan and McConnell are hoping.”
“That will make every GOP vote critical to passing the Trump tax cut and, as of a last Friday, significantly large groups of Republicans in both houses of Congress had already made it clear that they could not vote for the plan as drafted. Without any Democrats supporting the bill, McConnell will only be able to lose two Republican senators and still pass the bill. As of last Friday, there were more than two who were expressing doubts about their support.”
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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