Trump, in speech to Congress, calls to ‘restart the engine’ of US economy

President Trump declared Tuesday that a “new chapter of American greatness is now beginning” as he made economic revival the centerpiece of his first address to Congress – issuing a clarion call to “restart the engine of the American economy” through tax cuts, better trade deals, immigration enforcement and a $1 trillion infrastructure program.
He also called on Congress to replace what he called the “imploding ObamaCare disaster” with legislation that lowers costs and expands access, an ambitious goal for GOP lawmakers still trying to come together on a plan.
The president outlined his agenda in an address to a joint session of Congress that lasted roughly an hour and focused largely on priorities at home, more than abroad. He offered a decidedly upbeat vision for the future of the country that stood in contrast to his at-times foreboding inauguration address.
“Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing, and hope,” Trump said, urging lawmakers to "join forces" to deliver.  
Trump for the most part traded the contentious and punchy tone of the last few weeks for loftier – some might say more presidential – rhetoric. Declaring “the time for small thinking is over,” Trump appealed to the country to “believe, once more, in America.”
“A new chapter of American greatness is now beginning. A new national pride is sweeping across our nation,” he said. “And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.”
He described his address as a “message of unity and strength.”
The generally well-received speech could mark an opportunity for Trump to reset his young presidency after a rocky start in which clashes with the media and staffing controversies at times overshadowed action on the jobs front.
In perhaps the most memorable moment of the night, the audience broke out into extended applause as Trump introduced the widow of William "Ryan" Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen last month. Carryn Owens sobbed as lawmakers gave her a standing ovation and Trump said the raid he participated in yielded vital intelligence. His “legacy is etched into eternity,” Trump said.
In between the more dramatic moments were a host of policy prescriptions that could have a big impact on discussions in Congress.
Trump called for a “national rebuilding,” urging Congress to pass legislation that produces a $1 trillion public-private investment in infrastructure.
Speaking to a key campaign promise that has yet to be realized, he said his team is developing “historic tax reform that will reduce the tax rate on our companies so they can compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone.” He vowed a “big, big cut” including “massive tax relief for the middle class.”
And he urged Congress to replace ObamaCare “with reforms that expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and at the same time, provide better health care.”
He outlined “principles” to guide negotiations, including a call for Americans with pre-existing coverage to keep access to care, for states to have “flexibility” with Medicaid, and for Americans to be able to buy insurance across state lines.
Calling education the “civil rights issue of our time,” Trump also urged Congress to pass an education bill funding “school choice.”
While laying out his agenda, Trump touted his early-administration accomplishments while claiming he inherited many problems.
And as he did during the presidential campaign, he pushed a nationalist message, making big promises for what will happen when America puts its citizens first: “Dying industries will come roaring back to life. … Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our very, very beautiful land. … Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.”
He said his job is to represent the United States, not the world.
In calling to “restart” the American jobs engine, Trump said the U.S. must make it “easier for companies to do business in the United States, and much, much harder for companies to leave our country.”
He also defended his stepped-up deportations and other border security plans, casting his immigration agenda as part of the broader economic plan. By enforcing immigration laws, he said, “we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone.” He joined GOP lawmakers seeking reforms to legal immigration – and potentially reopened the broader debate in Congress by saying immigration reform is possible.
Trump's first official status report to Congress came amid a fast-paced opening volley of activity at the start of his term: a slew of executive actions, a forthcoming budget proposal and various side-deals with American companies aimed at creating jobs. Trump was eager to highlight those accomplishments, but also faces early challenges: an order suspending refugee and other admissions on hold by the courts, questions about his team’s contacts with Russia and a Congress that has not yet moved legislation on key priorities.
The biggest task ahead is Republicans’ drive to repeal and replace ObamaCare. As Trump appealed for a comprehensive package, some in the party have been divided over the plans being privately discussed at the Capitol.
House Speaker Paul Ryan played down divisions ahead of Tuesday’s speech. “This is a plan that we are all working on together,” he told reporters. “There aren’t rival plans here.”
After the speech, Ryan applauded Trump for what he called a "home run."
But the official Democratic response offered a reminder of the resistance Trump will face on his legislative agenda, particularly on ObamaCare.
Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear warned those efforts would strip affordable health insurance from Americans. “This isn’t a game. It’s life and death for people,” he said.

Nancy Pelosi Cartoons

Gregg Jarrett: Pelosi's crazy claims about Priebus' contact with the FBI don't add up

Nancy Pelosi is nothing, if not insane.
She is, of course, the former Speaker of the House who infamously said of ObamaCare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”
And who can forget the time she claimed that “500 million people will lose their jobs each month until we have an economic package" ?  Which is a pretty neat trick since there are roughly 300 million people living in the U.S.
So, it is understandable that Pelosi’s latest statement was met with the usual eye-rolling. She all but accused the Trump White House of obstructing justice when she described Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s conversation with a senior FBI official as “a grave abuse of power…which may also be illegal.” 
Some background is helpful. Priebus says he was approached by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who described as inaccurate a New York Times article about repeated contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign. Priebus allegedly asked the FBI to correct the record by disabusing the story with the truth. Since Justice Department guidelines prohibit the FBI from speaking about an ongoing investigation, the agency declined to comment.
(Of course, FBI Director James Comey, seemed to ignore those same guidelines when he chose to disclose details of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but there is no shortage of hypocrisy in Washington.)    
Pelosi, who is prone to batty remarks, promptly denounced Priebus and convicted the president for his “explosive ties… to Russian intelligence agents.” She demanded a full-blown investigation by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General into felonious conduct which she did not bother to identify. 
The Democratic leader might consider popping a valium before she hyperventilates.
It is not a crime to solicit the truth.  Honesty is not a felony.  Obstruction of justice is clearly defined by 18 USC 1503:
“Whoever corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes…the due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).” 
A companion section, 18 USC 1505, applies the same terminology to “the proper administration of law” before any department or agency of the U.S., which would include the FBI.  
No language in either statute even remotely approaches what Priebus asked McCabe to do. What corrupt act did the chief of staff commit?  Maybe eliciting the truth is corrupt only in Pelosi’s world where facts seem immaterial.    
Obstruction is typically an effort to alter, destroy or conceal the truth and/or physical evidence. There is no suggestion that Priebus ever attempted to do so. To the contrary, reports indicate his sole desire was to refute a false story.  How is that a crime under the law? Decidedly, it is not.
Perhaps Pelosi was inspired by the inflammatory, albeit fallacious, tweets of liberal law professor Laurence Tribe who called for the indictment of Priebus for obstructing justice.  The Harvard Law prof compared it to Richard Nixon and “his staff’s efforts to deflect the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in.”
Seriously?  That’s laughable, professor.  Soliciting the truth was anathema to Nixon and his “dirty tricksters”. Their sole objective was to hide the truth and demonize anyone who sought to reveal it.  It became the legal standard for corrupt political acts.
Reince Priebus may have been naïve to think that the FBI would get involved in rebutting a false narrative.  But Nancy Pelosi is the one who is guilty of making a false accusation.
And peddling the kind of canard for which she is well known.

Key Republican would vote against GOP's ObamaCare replacement

Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., said Monday that he could not get behind the Republican’s current plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
Walker, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, which has 170 members, told Bloomberg that he would recommend that his fellow members reject the plan, too.
“The bill contains what increasingly appears to be a new health-insurance entitlement with a Republican stamp on it,” he said.
With the GOP-controlled Congress starting its third month of work on one of its marquee priorities, unresolved difficulties include how their substitute would handle Medicaid, whether millions of voters might lose coverage, if their proposed tax credits would be adequate and how to pay for the costly exercise.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made their job even dicier recently, giving House Republicans an informal analysis that their emerging plan would be more expensive than they hoped and cover fewer people than former President Obama’s statute. The analysis was described by lobbyists speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with congressional aides.
For many in the party, those problems — while major — are outweighed by pledges they’ve made for years to repeal Obama’s 2010 law and substitute it with a GOP alternative. Conservatives favoring full repeal are pitted against more cautious moderates and governors looking to curb Medicaid’s costs also worry about constituents losing coverage. But Republicans also see inaction as the worst alternative and leaders may plunge ahead as soon as next week with initial House committee votes on legislation.

“I believe they have left themselves no choice. Politically they must do something,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist and health analyst, said Monday.
President Trump spoke about health care’s complexities on a day he held White House talks with dozens of governors worried Republicans could shift a huge financial burden to the states by curbing Medicaid, the federal-state program that helps low-income people and those in nursing homes pay bills.
Trump also met with insurance company executives concerned that uncertainty about possible GOP changes could roil the marketplace. Insurers said they remain committed to working with the administration and the GOP-led Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Monday that Republicans have yet to win any Democratic support for their effort and said “the odds are very high” Obama’s law won’t be repealed.

Dems already cranking up Trump impeachment talk

Even before Donald Trump had taken the oath of office, some House Democrats, apparently stunned at the election results and bruised by being left entirely out of the Washington power structure, were suggesting impeachment was in order. The movement has only grown stronger more than a month into the Trump presidency.
It is centered around two alleged violations that Trump critics maintain rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
"I mean on day one he was in violation of the Emoluments Clause," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN.) said in a recent CNN town hall.
The Emoluments Clause  to which Ellison refers, reads in part, "...no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."
Ellison's charge is based on Trump's children now running his businesses.  With no blind trust in effect, some believe there is a risk of bribery. "I think a reasonably strong case can be made and a number of constitutional scholars have  made that case, says  Julian Epstein, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment.
Bruce Fein, a Deputy Attorney General during the Reagan Administration, agrees. "If you can prove bribery by circumstantial evidence or something that a foreign government is patronizing the Trump Hotel in exchange for some benefit in trade or military sale, that's bribery. That clearly satisfies the impeachment standards, leaving open the possibility of bribery," he says.
The second potential violation is the charge Trump team's had Russian connections. "This President absolutely was in collusion with the Kremlin and Putin and Russia during the campaign," alleges Rep. Maxine Waters,D-Calif.
Fein believes  Waters' argument is weak, noting Trump had not been sworn into office when the alleged violation occurred. "Obviously what  he did wasn't corrupting government, he wasn't even president yet exercising presidential powers. It verges on frivolity, in my judgment," he says.
Indeed, Republicans say the charges of a Trump-Putin collusion thus far are based on anonymous leaks and hearsay. "We don’t have any evidence that they talked to Russians," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said during a press briefing on Monday.
But impeachment is more than a legal process, it's a political one, too, something that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted in a panel discussion with radio talk show host Mark Levin at last week's CPAC Convention.
"Do the Democrats understand that they need to control the House of Representatives to impeach somebody?" Levin asked of Cruz.
Cruz replied to uproarious applause, "The Democrats right now are living in an alternative universe."
Epstein believes that may change."The president's support is a mile wide but an inch deep," he says. "If the president's approval numbers, which are in the low 40s right now, dip into the mid- 30s or the low 30s or the high 20s, then you could foresee a situation where  Republicans could begin to think that Mike Pence is a much better alternative," he says.
Epstein cautions against impeachment, citing his own experience. "Impeachment is a little like war," he says.  "People tend to romanticize the idea of impeaching a president when the opposition party is in the White House. I have lived through an impeachment and it's an incredibly divisive fight that leaves wounds that sometimes takes years and years to heal," he says.

Trump's first budget calling for $54B increase in defense spending faces GOP hurdle

The White House said Monday that President Trump's upcoming budget will propose a whopping $54 billion increase in defense spending and impose corresponding cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid.
The result is that Trump's initial budget wouldn't dent budget deficits projected to run about $500 billion.
White House budget officials outlined the information during a telephone call with reporters given on condition of anonymity. The budget officials on the call ignored requests to put the briefing on the record, even though Trump on Friday decried the use of anonymous sources by the media.
“The president will propose and the Congress will dispose,” Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., told Politico. “We’ll look at his budget, but at the end of the day we in Congress write the appropriations bills, and I am not one who thinks you can pay for an increase in (military) spending on the backs of domestic discretionary programs, which constitute 13 or 14 percent of all federal spending.”
Trump's defense budget and spending levels for domestic agency operating budgets will be revealed in a partial submission to Congress next month, with proposals on taxes and other programs coming later.
The big, approximately 10 percent increase for the Pentagon would fulfill a Trump campaign promise to build up the military. The senior budget office official said there will be a large reduction in foreign aid and that most domestic agencies will have to absorb cuts. He did not offer details, but the administration is likely to go after longtime Republican targets like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Tentative proposals for the 2018 budget year that begins Oct. 1 are being sent to agencies, which will have a chance to propose changes to the cuts as part of a longstanding tradition at the budget office.
Trump's budget, once finalized and sent to Congress in mid-March, is sure to set off a huge Washington battle. Democrats and some Republicans are certain to resist the cuts to domestic agencies, and any legislation to implement them would have to overcome a filibuster threat by Senate Democrats. A government shutdown is a real possibility.
Trump's budget also won't make significant changes to Social Security or Medicare, according to an administration official.
Capitol Hill aides confirmed details of the upcoming blueprint on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that's not yet been made public.
Trump's first major fiscal marker will land in the agencies one day before his first address to a joint session of Congress. For Trump, the primetime speech is an opportunity to refocus his young presidency on the core economic issues that were a centerpiece of his White House run.
The upcoming submission covers the budget year starting on Oct. 1. But first there's an April 28 deadline to finish up the unfinished spending bills for the ongoing 2017 budget year, which is almost half over, and any stumble or protracted battle could risk a government shutdown then as well.
The March release is also expected to include an immediate infusion of 2017 cash for the Pentagon that's expected to register about $20 billion or so and contain the first wave of funding for Trump's promised border wall and other initiatives like hiring immigration agents.
The president previewed a boost in military spending during a speech Friday to conservative activists, pledging "one of the greatest build-ups in American history."

Kimmel Cartoons

Spicer checks WH staffers' phones for leaks, vows more searches coming

As the Trump administration hunts for the source of a series of politically embarrassing leaks that have plagued the young administration, dozens of White House staffers have had their phones searched in what is being termed “recess” compared to what may be planned, two top administration officials told Fox News.
One official told Fox that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called nearly two dozen staffers into his office and demanded the staffers’ cell phones in order to check for evidence of leaks. Spicer warned that the initial search would be “recess” compared to what awaits staffers in round two of the investigation, if the leaker – or leakers – aren’t discovered.
A second senior administration official confirmed the first official's account to Fox, adding that staffers were instructed to place their phones on a desk as soon as they walked in.
Spicer also deleted the Confide app from his phone to show that high-ranking officials weren’t immune to rules and regulations, Fox News learned.
Spicer's action was first reported by CNN.
Confide is an encrypted messenger app that does not allow forwarding of a message or for screenshots to be taken of messages. It also deletes a message after it’s been sent. According to CNN, Spicer told the group of aides that using the app for White House communications violates the Federal Records Act.
The entire cellphone search and lecture on communications was done with White House counsel Don McGahn standing by, according to CNN. Politico reported that Spicer consulted McGahn prior to calling the “emergency meeting,” Politico reported.
Staffers had not only their work phones searched, but also whatever other electronics were on them when they entered Spicer’s office, according to Politico.
Ironically, Spicer’s warning about leaking quickly leaked to the press.
President Trump and his top advisers have grown increasingly frustrated as unnamed and anonymous sources continue to populate a deluge of negative press. Politico reported that the mood inside the communications department has grown tense, with a Spicer deputy being driven to tears during a recent meeting. Spicer and the deputy denied the report.