A procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate means the House of Representatives will return on Wednesday to vote on a slightly modified version of the tax bill it passed Tuesday. After House speaker Paul Ryan gleefully gaveled the vote, but before the Senate parliamentarian determined three provisions had to be stricken from the bill, President Donald Trump tweeted this:
Congratulations to Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin Brady, Steve Scalise, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2017
At the risk of repeating the Rose Garden victory party after the House passed Obamacare repeal earlier this year, the president has every reason to celebrate. The tax bill may be polling poorly as it heads to Trump’s desk, but he and the Republican party head into next year’s midterm election cycle with a substantive legislative accomplishment they can argue is helping boost the economy.
Tax reform isn’t the cure for the GOP’s precarious electoral outlook in 2018—Trump’s overall low approval rating and the historical rejection a president’s party gets at the first midterm remain problems. But it’s hard to see how Republicans hold on to both houses of Congress without a big victory like these tax cuts.
Mark It Down—“We anticipate that they’re going to go up as more and more of these things continue to happen and particularly as more and more people start to feel the impact of the booming economy, the tax cuts that will take place later tonight and go into effect in the first part of February.” —White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on President Trump’s low approval ratings, December 19, 2017
It’s no secret that the GOP tax bill is good news for businessmen like Donald Trump, who stand to benefit from a modest cut to the highest federal tax bracket, a reduction to the estate tax, and dramatic cuts to business income. But on Tuesday, as the House was voting on the package, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not refute Trump’s repeated insistences that the tax bill was going to “kill” him financially.
“We expect that it likely will—certainly on the personal side—cost the president a lot of money,” Sanders said.
Trump, in contrast with the GOP messaging on the tax bill (and the text of the bill itself), has spent the last few months describing its impact on the rich in apocalyptic tones.
“My accountant called me and said, ‘you’re going to get killed in this bill,’” Trump said in November. “The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something.”
UFO Watch—So what is President Trump’s position on UFOs? The White House won’t say.
“Several media reports have disclosed the existence of a secret Pentagon program that was researching UFOs,” the Hill’s Jordan Fabian asked, referring to a New York Times story from last week. “Funding ran out for that in 2012. Does the president believe in UFOs? And would he be interested in restoring funding for that program?”
“Somehow, that question hasn’t come up in our back-and-forth over the last couple days,” a grinning Sanders replied, “but I will check into that and be happy to circle back.”
The Washington Post’s story from late last week that the Trump administration was banning the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using certain words in budget request documents went viral (pardon the pun). But over at National Review Online, Yuval Levin, a former staffer at both the Department of Health and Human Services and the George W. Bush White House, pours cold water on the hot take that the Trump administration was exerting some sort of censorship on the CDC.
Levin, after talking with officials at HHS, concludes the style guide was most likely a way for bureaucrats to not “raise red flags among Republicans in Congress” in their budget request. Here’s more:
Movie Trailer of the Day—I’m a big fan of the Vegas heist film Ocean’s 11 and was skeptical when I heard there would be a female-casted spin-off. But I have to say, I’m intrigued by the new trailer, mostly thanks to a stellar cast including Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. Watch the trailer below:
Obamacare Watch—The editors have a new editorial warning Republicans against supporting a year-end Obamacare bailout bill that creates new funding for elective abortions. “We hope Republicans would not be so foolish and unprincipled as to affirmatively send tax dollars to fund insurance plans that cover elective abortions,” reads the editorial. “The issue could be easily addressed by adding Hyde amendment language, or by putting any new health-care funding in laws to which the Hyde amendment is permanently attached.”
Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert told reporters Tuesday morning that the WannaCry virus, which encrypted files on infected computers and demanded the user pay a ransom to recover them, bore evidence of “technical links to previously identified North Korean cyber tools, tradecraft, operational infrastructure.”
“North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade,” Bossert said. “Its malicious behavior is growing more egregious, and stopping that malicious behavior starts with this step of accountability.”
Bossert said that the White House had taken its time blaming the Kim regime in order to make sure their accusation was reliable.
“I think the most important thing is to do it right and not to do it fast,” Bossert said. “We had to examine a lot. And we had to put it together in a way that allowed us to make a confident attribution.”
Other allied nations, including Australia and the United Kingdom, joined the United States in attributing the attack to North Korea Tuesday.
Song of the Day—“Can’t Stand It” by Wilco
