Los Angeles Times: “Even as Senate leaders seek to enhance their tax package to make it more attractive to middle-class Americans, they are proposing making the new individual benefits expire at the end of 2025 in an effort to avoid adding to the long-term federal deficit.”
“Proposed cuts to corporate taxes would be permanent, under the revised Senate plan.”
First Read: “But even if the legislation does pass (and it seems like Senate Republicans are doing whatever it takes to pass it) they won’t have an easy time selling it to the American public. Higher premiums, fewer who are insured, tax cuts for corporations, estate-tax repeal for the wealthiest of Americans – the TV ad attacks in 2018 are easy to envision.”
“And pairing repeal of the individual mandate makes it all but impossible to get some Senate Democrats (West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly) to support the GOP’s tax plan. And we’ve seen how partisan legislation plays with the American public at the ballot box.”
“Bottom line: Senate Republicans may have solved their math problem by repealing the individual mandate, but they’ve now added other problems to their tax plan – a week after health care was the most important issue in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, per the exit poll, and after Maine easily passed Medicaid expansion. What’s more, only 27 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s handling of health care, according to last month’s NBC/WSJ poll.”
“Fox News anchor Shepard Smith debunked what his own network has called the Hillary Clinton uranium “scandal,” infuriating Fox viewers, some of whom suggested that he ought to work for CNN or MSNBC,” the Washington Post reports.
“Smith’s critique, which called President Trump’s accusations against Clinton ‘inaccurate,’ was triggered by renewed calls from Republicans on Capitol Hill for a special counsel to investigate Clinton.”
A new WBUR poll in Massachusetts finds that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Gov. Charlie Baker (R) both retain wide leads over challengers who are struggling to gain broad public attention.
Key finding: “All of Elizabeth Warren and Baker’s current challengers suffer from a lack of name recognition; for each of the seven, most voters polled had never heard of them.”
“North Korea gave its version of a diplomatic verdict Wednesday on President Trump’s recent trip to Asia: He’s a coward who deserves to die,” USA Today reports.
“Pyongyang’s state media slammed Trump for insulting North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un while on a five country tour of Asia. It said the American president, who Kim has feuded with for months, deserves the death penalty.”
After two years of mending fences after a failed presidential bid, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “has clawed his way back. His numbers have inched up each of the past four quarters, and his approval rating is now back in the mid-to-high 40s,” according to James Hohmann.
“As the GOP primaries continued without him from New Hampshire to South Carolina and beyond, Walker convened the first of more than 100 ‘listening sessions’ in all 72 of Wisconsin’s counties. His advance team would set up two whiteboards in the front of every room. The governor would spend the first 20 minutes asking attendees to say something positive about the state, which he’d write down. Then he’d spend the next hour asking how Wisconsin could be better, filling up the second whiteboard. He tried to talk as little as possible.”
“The governor offered several concrete proposals in his budget around the themes that came up again and again, such as opioid abuse and broadband access, but he said the most important result of the sessions was conveying to Wisconsinites that he had not ‘moved on.'”
“Democrats wrested control of New Mexico’s largest city from the GOP on Tuesday as New Mexico State Auditor Tim Keller (D) easily won a race to become Albuquerque’s next mayor,” CBS News reports.
Keller beat Albuquerque City Councilor Dan Lewis (R) with 62% to 38% “in a race that centered on the city’s raising crime rates and its struggling economy.”
“Sources tell Page Six exclusively that the shortest-ever-tenured White House communications director has been meeting with publishers about a planned tome that’s being repped by Trident Media Group… While the Mooch has previously penned finance books, a source tells us of the new project: ‘It’s about his time at the White House — all 10 days of it!’”
Fox News host Sean Hannity walked back his original remarks insinuating that the five women accusing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) of sexual assault when they were teenagers might be lying, Politico reports.
Said Hannity: “For me, the judge has 24 hours. You must immediately and fully come up with a satisfactory explanation for your inconsistencies that I just showed.”
In a prospective 2020 match up, a new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump in a possible presidential race, 46% to 35%.
“Biden’s 11-point margin is actually smaller than the poll’s previous question, in which voters are asked whether they will vote to reelect Trump, or for a generic Democrat. The generic Democrat leads Trump, 48 percent to 34 percent, the poll shows.”
Sam Baker: “Senate Republicans’ latest tax proposal includes a provision to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. It’s a risky maneuver, but one that GOP leaders waded into with at least an outward projection of confidence, saying they believed they had 50 votes for the overall tax package.”
“Remember ‘skinny repeal’? The repeal bill that all but three Senate Republicans voted for on the express condition that it not become law? Because, as Sen. Lindsey Graham put it, ‘the skinny bill as policy is a disaster’? The policy is basically the same this time around.”
“That said, none of the three senators who killed skinny repeal — Susan Collins, John McCain or Lisa Murkowski — has said repealing the individual mandate would be a deal-breaker for their tax votes.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 56% of voters think President Trump and the company he built will benefit from proposed changes to the tax code, but fewer than three in 10 expect those changes to help them.
“Steve Louro, a Republican donor who hosted an event for Donald Trump at his Long Island home last year, abruptly quit his post as regional finance chairman for the state’s Republican Party over objections to the Republican-led tax bill advancing through Congress,” the New York Times reports.
Said Louro: “The bill that’s going to get passed is not going to take care of the American people. It’s a disgrace.”
He added: “The Republican Party took control of the government against all odds, and the bottom line is they fucked it up. It’s a disgrace. It’s going to hurt a lot of middle-class Republicans.”
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) “revealed that two current members of Congress, who she wouldn’t name, have sexually harassed staffers,” Fox 5 News reports.
Said Speier: “These harasser propositions such as ‘are you going to be a good girl,’ to perpetrators exposing their genitals, to victims having their private parts grabbed on the House floor.”
“Between 1997 and 2014, a little known Congressional fund paid out $15.2 million to 235 people who made sexual harassment claims in Congress.”
A new FOX10 News/Strategy Research poll in Alabama conducted just yesterday finds Roy Moore (R) leading Doug Jones (D) in the U.S. Senate race. 49% to 43% with 8% undecided.
Key finding: “Of those who indicated they would vote in the December 12 election, Moore lost 3 percentage points from the poll two weeks ago while Jones showed a 2 percent increase in support. Undecided voters went from 7 percent to 8 percent.”
“The Republican National Committee is withdrawing its support for besieged Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, leaving him increasingly isolated as he confronts charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers,” Politico reports.
“Even before allegations surfaced against Moore, the committee believed he was in trouble. Internal RNC polling conducted around a week ago showed him leading his Democratic opponent by just two percentage points.”
At least one person in WKRG-TV‘s viewing area received a robocall seeking more damaging information about Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R).
Here is the text of that voicemail message:
Hi, this is Bernie Bernstein, I’m a reporter for the Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5000 and $7000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims however we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at albernstein@washingtonpost.com, thank you.
The Washington Post issued a statement: “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post. The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”
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.