Heritage Foundation's Binion looks at Trump's deal with Democrats
The Heritage Foundation’s Tommy Binion recently joined Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program, where he dove into President Trump’s surprise deal with congressional Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and pass a Hurricane Harvey recovery bill with Hurricane Irma barreling toward Florida.
Q: What the heck happened with this deal?
A: You’ve got the president sort of in the middle and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, all lined up on a couch and House Speaker Paul Ryan on the other couch. The meeting goes on for an hour and they are talking about various options. All of the sudden the president says, ‘I want to deal with Schumer and Pelosi, and we’re going to do everything you were planning on spending September doing. We’re going to tie it all up neatly and in a can-kicking bill and we’re going to announce this. This is a bipartisan bill.’
That took a lot of wind out of the sails of Speaker Ryan and Mitch McConnell. But there’s a there’s a silver lining here: It allows us to focus on disaster recovery, which based on what happened with Harvey in Houston and the fact that Hurricane Irma is bearing down on Florida, maybe it’s OK that we’re focused on disaster recovery.
But certainly, it’s a disappointing missed opportunity. It sets up an epic deadline Dec. 15, 10 days before Christmas. Lawmakers are wanting to go home. A government shutdown is on the line. Default with the debt ceiling is on the line. All of the president’s first-year agenda is still up in the air. That is a huge now-looming deadline right smack dab in the middle of December.
Q: What do you expect to happen with the new December dealine?
A: I’m not terribly sure what the president wants to get out of that. This is a stopgap. It’s a Band-Aid, but at some point, you know he still wants his wall funding. Will that be attached to the spending bill in December? At some point, he has to make nice with the conservatives in Congress. Are they going to be demanding spending cuts and spending reforms on the debt ceiling? So, it’s a small bite, a three-month debt ceiling lift . ... Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has been clear for months about what he needed, what he wanted with the debt ceiling. He did not want it to be a political football. And the president’s deal makes it a political football, and it makes it a political football in the middle of December, which is an even bigger deal. The stakes are really high. I think he kept it alive for a reason. I don’t know what will be attached to it, but I’m sure that he has a good reason for that.