‘Tax, healthcare, immigration’

Trump to move quickly on goals

NEW YORK, Dec 2, (Agencies): The Trump administration plans to move quickly on its goals to overhaul taxation, healthcare and immigration laws, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said in an interview published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan 20, is preparing 100-day and 200-day plans aimed at fulfilling his campaign promises and stimulating economic growth, Pence said.

The administration’s first priorities would include curbing illegal immigration, abolishing and replacing Obama’s signature healthcare program, nominating someone to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court and strengthening the military, he told the newspaper.

Pence was interviewed after introducing Trump at a rally in Cincinnati on Thursday. It was the start of what Trump aides have billed as a thank-you tour of battleground states that helped the Republican defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Nov 8.

Reform

The Trump administration would work with congressional leaders by next spring “to move fundamental tax reform” meant to “free up the pent-up energy in the American economy,” Pence was quoted as saying by the Journal.

This would include lowering marginal tax rates, cutting the corporate tax rate “from some of the highest in the industrialized world” to 15 percent and repatriating corporate cash held overseas, Pence told the newspaper.

Both chambers of the US Congress are controlled by Republicans.

“I think the only thing that will surprise them is that Washington, DC, is going to get an awful lot done in a short period of time,” Pence told the newspaper when asked what might surprise voters about the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the congressman named by Donald Trump to oversee the country’s health care system would also have an impact on another top issue: immigration. It’s an area where Georgia Republican Tom Price has been at odds with the Obama administration.

If Price is confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he would head an office responsible for both resettling refugees in the United States and caring for immigrant children caught trying to cross the border on their own.

The five-term lawmaker has joined his Republican colleagues in objecting to President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement policies, including those at the border. He co-sponsored a bill that sought to let states block Syrian refugees from settling in their communities. A look at some of the immigration issues Price would deal with if confirmed:

Refugees

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) helps refugees who move to the US by the tens of thousands every year. Though the program is primarily managed by the State Department, with the Homeland Security Department leading the screening effort, the office offers financial help and other resources to these immigrants once they are in the country.

Republican lawmakers, including Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice to run the Justice Department, have objected to Obama’s expansion of the refugee program and specifically to allowing more than 12,500 Syrian refugees into the US during the 2016 budget year.

Price joined in Trump’s call to end, at least for now, refugee processing from Syria. Price was among more than 50 co-sponsors of a failed bill last year to prevent refugees from being resettled in states that do not want to take them.

As president, Trump will have the power to decide how many refugees are allowed into the US.