DON OF A NEW DAY
BEFORE the 2016 election, Paul Ryan said he wouldn’t defend Donald Trump. Now Ryan is surprised Trump doesn’t support him? Welcome to American politics 2017.
Trump won the GOP nomination by running against Ryan and the Republican Party. So when Trump cut a deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi last week, the only question was: What took so long?
The Paul Ryan Party espouses open borders on immigration and right-wing economic policies. That’s not what elected Trump,. Instead, he appealed to our sense of nationalism, which meant protecting our borders and looking out for fellow citizens that need our help.
Nationalism has a gravitational force that draws people to the center on economics. Religion has the same effect, since the sincere believer in the Jewish-Christian tradition is obliged to care for others, at the risk of being labeled a hypocrite if he doesn’t. He’s not going to be an Ayn Rand fan, like Ryan.
What I’ve just described, a party of nationalists who are mostly religious believers, is Trump’s Republican Party, which he labeled the Republican Workers Party.
On social issues, they’re very different from Chuck Schumer’s Democrats. On economic issues, they’re very different from Paul Ryan Republicans. On immigration, they’re very different from both Schumer and Ryan. They’re the party that elects our presidents.
That’s where we are today, three different parties squaring off, like the gunfight scene at the end of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” If you remember the movie, you’ll recall that it ends when two gunfighters join up against the third.
That’s the solution a two-hour movie requires. But politics is different. Nobody gets killed off, the game simply goes on and on. The three parties — Trump, Schumer and Ryan — and the constituencies they represent will continue to deal with each other.
What’s new, however, is that Trump has signaled to Ryan that he’s not the only game in town. Trump deferred to congressional Republicans on his reform agenda, and we know where that got him. Now he’s reaching out to the Democrats, who know something more than congressional Republicans about the art of the deal.
So what might we expect from a Trump-Schumer alliance? First, tax reform that creates jobs. In other words, corporate tax reform only. Nothing would create jobs faster than reducing the corporate rate down to 15 percent, which is the rate for many of our first-world competitors.
A special 10 percent rate to bring back the $2.5 trillion US multinationals have parked offshore would be huge, too. And that’s it. No changes to income-tax rates, which wouldn’t do all that much to create jobs. Ryan might want that, but Democrats would demagogue it to death.
Then immigration. Let the Dreamers stay, but only if this is coupled with the Cotton-Perdue RAISE Act, which would replace the 1965 Immigration Act. By itself, Obama’s executive order on the Dreamers was a nullity. It was going to be reversed by a Supreme Court to which Neil Gorsuch is now a member.
Sure, there’s an argument to be made for the Dreamers, but only if the trade-off involves getting rid of the 1965 act and adopting the Canadian-style RAISE Act. Trade-offs are what the art of the deal is all about. That also would be a jobs bill, jobs for Americans that is. Which might even appeal to Paul Ryan.
Finally, health care. I laugh when people try to portray our pre-Obama Care system as free market. It is already 49 percent singlepayer, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid, and the tax incentives for health insurance are a major distortion of free-market principles.
As for Obama Care, the problem of excessive premiums arose because participants in the exchanges were required to cross-subsidize 400,000 Americans with severe pre-existing conditions. The exchanges can be rescued without bailing out the insurance companies if the 400,000 are supported from the government’s general revenues. Single-payer, in short.
Those are the deals waiting to happen. (I’ll let you decide which of them — Trump, Schumer or Ryan — is the Clint Eastwood character.)