“Michael Cohen, one of President Trump’s closest business advisers, said on Sunday he would testify on Tuesday to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, as the panel investigates alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election,” Reuters reports.
CNN: “Cohen is not expected to be under oath during the appearance, but all witnesses appearing before congressional committees are required to tell the truth or potentially face criminal charges.”
“The company that owns WJAR-TV is mandating the broadcast of multiple programs favorable to President Trump on the state’s most-watched television station,” the Providence Journal reports.
“Sinclair Broadcast Group, a rapidly growing media company that bought Channel 10 in 2014, produces ‘must-run’ segments and distributes them to its local stations nationwide. They must air during daily news programming.”
“The most challenging task in Washington, these days, is finding somebody who’ll enthusiastically endorse Rex Tillerson. In just nine months, the Secretary of State has managed to alienate nearly every constituency that matters,” Jonathan Swan reports.
Said a former top Bush administration official: “He’s got no support from the left on management and no support from the right on policy.”
“Tillerson alienated his natural constituency — moderates who view him as a restraining influence on Trump — by what he’s done, or failed to do, managerially at the State Department. He’s surrounded himself by a tiny circle and hasn’t sought much advice from outsiders. And he’s got no ideological constituency on the right because he doesn’t embrace the forward-leaning posture on human rights, or the aggressive stance on Russia, that Republicans typically expect of their top diplomats.”
Politico: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his leadership team are seriously considering voting on a bill that would scale back the federal government’s role in the health care system and instead provide block grants to states. It would be a last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare before the GOP’s power to pass health care legislation through a party-line vote in the Senate expires on Sept. 30.”
“No final decision has been made, but the GOP leader has told his caucus that if the bill written by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has the support of at least 50 of the 52 GOP senators, he will bring it to the floor.”
“Being a former U.S. president brings the ability to pull down millions in speaking fees and book deals. And yet American taxpayers are still on the hook for providing those individuals with an annual pension, as well as picking up the tab for office furniture, travel expenses, staff salaries and communications costs,” the Omaha World Herald reports.
Said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) wants to end the payments: “They can make in an hour what our taxpayers are generously subsidizing them, so that’s completely unnecessary.
“Ernst’s bill does not curtail the Secret Service protection and security for former presidents. It would set their annual pension at $200,000 and cap the currently unlimited allowances for office space, staff, cellphones, etc., at a total of $500,000. That cap would be reduced over time, to $250,000.”
“The current model of the Democratic Party obviously is not working. Republicans control the House, the Senate. They control the White House. They control two-thirds of the Governors’ offices throughout this country… What we need to do is reach out to Independents.”
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), in an interview on Meet the Press.
“That’s a false report. The president decided to pull out of the Paris accord because it’s a bad deal for the American people and it’s a bad deal for the environment.”
— National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, quoted by the Washington Post, denying the Trump administration would stay in the Paris climate deal.
“I think under the right conditions, the president said he’s open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue.”
— Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, quoted by The Hill, saying Trump could stay in the Paris climate deal under the right conditions.
Stan Collender: “There’s just one thing you really need to know about whether tax reform will happen by the end of this year: It’s about to take a very small group of senior policymakers more than six months to agree on the broadest of principles for what a tax reform plan should do…and the broad principles will be the easy part.”
“In spite of the nuanced optimism you hear from The Gang of Six, it’s very likely to take much longer than it did for those six people — only four of which actually have votes — to agree on the generalities.”
“Every one of the 535 members of Congress has individual and corporate taxpayers in his or her district or state and the nitty gritty, deep-in-the-weeds details will be extremely important to each representative and senator. At the very least they will all want to appear to have had an impact on the final product so there will be multiple time-consuming amendments offered both in committee and on the House and Senate floors.”
NY1 has learned that former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) “will run for his old seat, less than 16 months after he was released from federal prison.”
Sources said Grimm will hold a rally Oct. 1 where he is expected to announce his candidacy for next year’s Republican primary against current Rep. Dan Donovan.
“Deep-pocketed supporters of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other GOP leaders have resolved to fight a protracted battle over the next year for the soul of the party in congressional primaries,” the Washington Post reports.
“But the task will not be easy. Strategists from both sides of the party’s divide say recent focus groups and polling have shown that the frustration within the Republican base has only grown since the 2016 election, stoked by an inability to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health-care law. President Trump, meanwhile, has continued to cast his presidency in opposition to the current ways of Washington, which could encourage primary voters to buck the system in a way that endangers House and Senate incumbents.”
President Trump announced on Twitter that he will hold a rally in Alabama to boost Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) against his anti-establishment challenger Roy Moore.
Jonathan Swan: “If Moore wins, Trump will look like a fool. It’d suggest to members of Congress — whom Trump must occasionally intimidate in legislative fights — that he’s a weakened force in Alabama, a state he carried by nearly 30 points in the 2016 election.”
“If Strange, wins, Trump can do a victory lap. But by supporting him he’s boosting the establishment candidate, backed by Mitch McConnell (with whom Trump is currently at war.) Trump loses points with the most hardcore elements of the Republican base by supporting Strange, and he’s now setting up a direct clash with Breitbart, which has been campaigning hard for Moore.”
The RealClearPolitics average shows Strange trailing Moore by 11 points.
Washington Post: “The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, has long been a target for tax-policy wonks who see it as an unwise federal subsidy that is mainly claimed by the wealthy. But politics have always intervened: Thanks to the opposition of lawmakers in high-tax states, the deduction has survived every effort to clear out loopholes, including the last federal tax overhaul of similar ambition in 1986.”
“Now, Republican leaders have made clear the SALT deduction is on the table, and it has shaken up a number of blue-state GOP legislators who are warning that it could derail the ambitious tax plan Trump is now pushing.”
Max Boot: “This ambiguity, indeed downright incoherence, makes Trump the most maddening politician anyone has ever tried to analyze. He contradicts himself constantly and unashamedly… The only constant is Trump’s egomania and impetuosity. He will say or do anything that, at that very moment, is likely to stoke his ego. The next moment he may do something entirely different. Like a small child, he seldom seems to think about the consequences of his actions or plan ahead. He just acts and hopes for the best.”
“You can make the case that Trump’s incoherence is his greatest strength because it allows him to appeal to all sides—and his greatest weakness because it means that no one trusts him. Because just about anything you say about him is both true and false.”
“Trump administration officials said Saturday the U.S. wouldn’t pull out of the Paris Agreement, offering to re-engage in the international deal to fight climate change,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The shift from President Trump’s decision in June to renegotiate the landmark accord or craft a new deal came during a meeting of more than 30 ministers led by Canada, China and the European Union in Montreal.”
However: “The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”
“Republicans spooked world markets in their ardor to cut spending when Democrat Barack Obama occupied the White House. Now, with a GOP president pressing for politically popular tax cuts and billions more for the military, few in the GOP are complaining about the nation’s soaring debt,” ABC News reports.
“The tea partyers and other conservatives who seized control of the House in 2010 have morphed into Ronald Reagan-style supply siders while the GOP’s numerous Pentagon pals run roughshod over the few holdouts. Tax cuts in the works could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt while bipartisan pressure for more money for defense, infrastructure, and domestic agencies could add almost $100 billion in additional spending next year alone.”
“Republicans are cheering on the Democrats’ embrace of single-payer health care, believing the move to the left will be an albatross for candidates in next year’s elections,” The Hill reports.
“After playing defense on health care for months as they failed to fill a promise to repeal Obamacare, Bernie Sanders’s increasingly popular ‘Medicare for all’ gives the GOP new momentum to blast Democrats. And they’ve got plenty of targets, with 16 Democratic senators backing Sanders’ effort and a similar House measure supported by half of the party’s caucus.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told Politico that he will endorse Roy Moore (R) over Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in the U.S. Senate race.
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.