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Trump, top Republicans to plot road map for more legislative victories in 2018

September 5, 2017: House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., right, listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Congressional leaders and administration officials on tax reform, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.  (AP)

President Donald Trump and top Republican congressional leaders will plot the 2018 political agenda in January, gearing up for more legislative achievements in the wake of the successful passage of the tax reform.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will be hosted by Trump at the at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland early January, the White House said.

The focus will be on the possible legislative initiatives in 2018 before the political winds shift to the midterm elections, potentially disrupting the legislative process amid fierce all-out elections across the country.
The gathering follows the first big legislative achievement for the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress who passed the $1.5 trillion tax plan this month that decreased individual tax rates for the middle class and axed taxes on corporations.
It is expected that health care reform will dominate the talks in January, as the passed tax cut bill repealed only the requirement, as part of the Obamacare, that all Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine – while leaving other features of the health care law still in place.
Republicans tried to repeal the Obamacare twice this year – both times coming up short with the votes in Congress to pass the legislation and breaking the promise of swift repeal once the White House is occupied by a Republican.
Already juggling a delicate majority in the Senate, Republicans’ efforts to repeal the law were met with unanimous opposition from the Democrats. But the president expects both sides on the aisle “will eventually come together” to work on creating a new health care plan.
“Based on the fact that the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate has been terminated as part of our Tax Cut Bill, which essentially Repeals (over time) ObamaCare, the Democrats & Republicans will eventually come together and develop a great new HealthCare plan!” Trump tweeted earlier this week.
Other possible ideas for 2018 include an infrastructure bill aimed at upgrading aging roads, bridges and other transportation. The White House reportedly said Trump will release his infrastructure plan in January.
Ryan, meanwhile, might raise the issue of overhauling Medicaid and Medicare and other welfare program, although McConnell was skeptical of such reforms unless they have the support of the Democrats. Trump has signaled that he is open to pursue “welfare reform” next year as “people are taking advantage of the system.”
But as the White House and Republican congressional leaders plot the 2018 agenda, Congress will face a backlog from 2017.
By the end of January, Congress has to agree on a government funding bill to avoid a partial government shutdown. Politicians in Washington will also have to agree on sending additional aid to support the hurricane victims, lifting the debt ceiling, reviving the children’s health insurance program, and coming up with a legislation for the so-called “Dreamers” who were brought to the country illegally as children.

It's Mueller, his team and the FBI who are overdue for an investigation says Florida's Rep. Rooney

If anyone thought the week between Christmas and New Years might provide respite in the war between President Trump and his myriad critics, Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla., has just opened a new and important offensive.

“It’s been very frustrating that the truth about what’s going on with this investigation into President Trump isn’t coming out,” he told me from his hometown on the Gulf Coast.

The topic to which Rooney was referring is Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s increasingly broad, unfocused — and taxpayer funded — probe into what Trump, first as a candidate, then as president-elect, was doing, and who he and his coterie of advisors were  talking to, and about what.
Rooney, like many voters who elected Trump, thinks the investigation has, as he said on MSNBC Tuesday, gone “off the rails.”
The problem is, almost no one who agrees with him watches MSNBC.
To set the record straight, the first-term congressman — and former Ambassador the the Vatican — told Bellwether he thinks a thorough investigation is overdue — but of Mueller, his staff, and the FBI, not the president.
He is particularly alarmed by the negative comments from FBI agent Peter Strzok — whom Mueller had to fire — and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr were texting and saying about Trump, while pretending to be impartial.
In terms as strong as any used so far, Rooney says there are real questions about whether Mueller and the FBI can be trusted to do their jobs in a fair manner.
Mueller’s staff, for instance is composed of individuals who contributed by a 12-1 ratio for Hillary Clinton’s campaign over Trump’s.
That has given rise to suspicions that a so-called “deep state” of Obama-era holdovers in positions of authority is determined to hound Trump out of office.
“I would say maybe the deep state is more pervasive than Mueller realized, and as a result he is having a hard time finding the proper people,” Rooney told me.
He also lauds Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s pledge to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s complicated, and possibly improper, campaign contributions.
A supporter of Trump’s tax bill and his rollback of excessive regulations, Rooney concedes that the president’s bombastic public style both enrages and emboldens his critics, some of whom have called — less than a quarter of the way through his term — for his impeachment.
“It’s very unsettling that they are talking in these careless  terms about impeachment,” Rooney laments. “All they’re doing is continuing to undermine faith in our great American institutional solidarity.”
Such strong language from a freshman congressman is both unusual and welcome. If Rooney thought his time at the Vatican put him in closer contact with the Divine, he may soon conclude his current gig is more about encountering just the opposite.

Roy Moore challenges Alabama Senate election defeat, alleges rampant voter fraud

Roy Moore filed an election complaint late Wednesday, claiming voter fraud altered the outcome of Alabama’s Senate race, paving the way for Democrat Doug Jones’ victory.

The Moore campaign said in a statement that the purpose of the complaint is to delay the certification of the election results until “a thorough investigation of potential election fraud, that improperly altered the outcome of this election, is conducted.”

The request came just a day before the State Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet and certify the results of the election.
“This is not a Republican or Democrat issue as election integrity should matter to everyone,” Moore said. “We call on Secretary of State Merrill to delay certification until there is a thorough investigation of what three independent election experts agree took place: election fraud sufficient to overturn the outcome of the election.”
The statement cites three Election Integrity experts saying that “with a reasonable degree of statistical and mathematical certainty … election fraud occurred” and noted the irregularities in 20 precincts alone could reverse the results of the election.
According to the results from earlier this month, the Republican candidate lost the election to Jones by a margin of 21,000 votes. Jones became the first Democrat in over two decades to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, the deep-red state that Trump carried by about 28 points during the 2016 presidential election.
The election complaint also includes an affidavit from Moore saying that he underwent a polygraph test and confirmed that the allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls are “completely false.”
Moore’s reluctance to concede the election prompted an intervention by President Donald Trump, who backed the Republican candidate, urging him to concede the election.
"I think he should (concede)," Trump said earlier this month. "I want to support the person running. We need the seat. We'd like to have the seat."

Trump ends 2017 with big wins on economy, taxes, ISIS and more

When congressional Republicans joined President Trump for a tax bill celebration at the White House just before Christmas, a triumphant Mitch McConnell began ticking off the president’s first-year accomplishments. 

The boasts from the Kentucky Republican, who's had a rocky relationship with Trump at times, underscored how – despite the internal squabbles that captivated the media – the Trump administration has given his party plenty to crow about in 2017.

From the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to regulation rollbacks to Wall Street gains to the passage of the tax bill and the routing of ISIS in the Middle East – as McConnell put it, “This has been a year of extraordinary accomplishment for the Trump administration.”
To be sure, there have been plenty of campaign promises that Trump did not fulfill in his first year: a wall has not yet been built on the border with Mexico, ObamaCare hasn’t been repealed (though the individual mandate has) and an infrastructure package hasn’t yet passed in Congress. Meanwhile, Trump's White House has been hampered at times by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and daily drama, often the result of tweets fired off by the president himself.

“This has been a year of extraordinary accomplishment for the Trump administration,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.  (AP)

But Republicans inside and outside of the White House contend that the media, which hammer Trump on every misstep, aren't giving him due credit for the 2017 gains his administration has made in a combative political environment.
A senior administration official said that while tax reform has been widely described as Trump’s first major legislative win, they have counted 81 pieces of Trump-backed legislation that are now law.
“That's in addition to 15 congressional review acts whereby the president took a look at laws that were passed without the benefit of congressional review, and decided to reverse or undo them,” the official said.
Before leaving for Florida for the holidays, Trump took to Twitter to tout his administration's “long & beautiful list” of accomplishments. He predicted the “Fake Mainstream Media will NEVER talk about our accomplishments in their end of year reviews.”
Here’s a look at some of the president’s biggest policy victories in his first year in office:
TAX CODE OVERHAUL
With just days left in the year, Congress handed Trump his biggest legislative win by sending a $1.5-trillion tax package to his desk. He signed it in the Oval Office just before leaving Washington for the holidays. Trump, who had been traveling the country for months calling on Congress to act on taxes, calls it “the largest tax cut in the history of our country.”
WHAT THE TAX OVERHAUL MEANS FOR YOU

President Trump signed the tax bill in the Oval Office just before leaving Washington for the holidays.  (AP)

The tax bill cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and reduces the rates for most of the seven individual tax brackets.
While critics panned the law as a big tax break for the wealthy and corporations, the overhaul doubles the standard deduction, which the Trump administration argues is a boon for the middle class.
TRUMP PREDICTS MANDATE REPEAL WILL KILL OBAMACARE
The legislation also allows Trump to say he’s working to dismantle ObamaCare: the bill includes a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance or face a penalty.
REGULATORY ROLLBACK

President Trump holds up a chart on highway regulations during an event on federal regulations in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, in Washington.  (AP)

Gridlock in Congress has not stopped the president from unraveling former President Barack Obama’s executive action legacy, especially through regulatory rollbacks.
“You've ended the overregulation of the American economy,” McConnell told him during the White House celebration.
Trump's EPA has moved to roll back the Clean Power Plan and he has used the Congressional Review Act, an obscure rule-killing law, to wipe out a wave of last-minute regulations pushed through before he took office.
STUDIES BEHIND OBAMA REGS UNDER FIRE
After taking office, the president signed an executive order mandating that two regulations must be eliminated for every one created. The White House says the administration has surpassed that ratio, claiming to have eliminated 22 regulations for every new regulation.
Trump has taken other actions to please conservatives, including moving to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, green-lighting the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines and withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
PACKING THE COURTS

Trump often cites his successful nomination of Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch when discussing his accomplishments as president.  (AP)

Trump often cites his successful nomination of Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch when discussing his accomplishments as president. Gorsuch had been on the list of potential nominees that Trump released during the campaign, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
TRUMP MAKES HISTORIC MARK ON FEDERAL BENCH
But Republicans are also thrilled about his nominations to lower courts. The Trump administration has been intentionally choosing young conservative judicial nominees who could stay on the bench for many years to come. As of mid-December, 19 of Trump's 66 total nominees this year have been confirmed by the Senate.
“We've cemented the Supreme Court right-of-center for a generation,” McConnell said. “Mr. President, thanks to your nominees, we've put 12 circuit court judges in place -- the most since the circuit court system was established in 1891.”
DECIMATING ISIS

In this Nov. 9, 2017 photo, aerial view of the damaged hospital complex and surrounding areas in Mosul, Iraq. The complex, located in Mosul’s al-Shifaa neighborhood, was the main medical center for the Islamic State group during its rule and was heavily damaged during fighting when Iraqi forces wrested Mosul back from the militants.  (AP)

As the Islamic State orchestrated terror attacks and established a caliphate in Iraq and Syria during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously promised during to “bomb the sh-t” out of ISIS.
The gains cannot be ignored.
U.S. military officials said this week that ISIS has lost 98 percent of the territory it once held -- with half of the terror group's "caliphate" having been recaptured since Trump took office. The latest American intelligence assessment says fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters now remain in Iraq and Syria, down from a peak of nearly 45,000 just two years ago.
ISIS HAS LOST 98 PERCENT OF ITS TERRITORY, OFFICIALS SAY
In October, after the liberation of Raqqa in Syria, the president boasted that “more progress” had been made “against these evil terrorists in the past several months than in the past several years.”
Earlier this month, Iraq’s leaders declared victory over ISIS.
The White House recently credited Trump’s “leadership” in noting that ISIS has “lost nearly all of its territory and its most important cities and towns in Iraq and Syria, including Mosul and ISIS’s declared capital in Raqqa.”
ECONOMY GROWING

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit record highs more than 60 times during Trump’s presidency.  (AP)

Trump is never shy about taking credit when the stock market is doing well, and closed the year by predicting the tax bill will spur another year of growth in 2018.
"Will be a great year for Companies and JOBS! Stock Market is poised for another year of SUCCESS!" he tweeted Tuesday.
The Trump administration has indeed been good for Wall Street: the Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit record highs more than 60 times during Trump’s presidency.
The White House cites statistics saying more than $5 trillion in wealth has been added to the U.S. economy since Trump’s election.
Other indicators show the economy has improved under Trump.
The country’s 4.1 percent unemployment rate is the lowest since December 2000.
And the economy grew 3.2 percent from July through September, the highest quarterly economic growth in three years.
CONSERVATIVE-PLEASING MOVES

Trump has pleased his base by appointing conservatives like EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.  (AP)

Trump has pleased his base by appointing people like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Education Secretary Betsy Devos and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to high-profile government positions. In a less than a year, these officials have enacted conservative policy at departments and agencies after eight years of liberal governance under the Obama administration.
The president also officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital earlier this month, following through on a promise to put in place a plan to move the United States embassy to the holy city.
He pardoned ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in June, a move that was welcomed by supporters of a tough stance on illegal immigration.
In October, Trump decertified the 2015 Iran nuclear deal -- though did not kill it -- calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”