Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A milestone week for Trump
Push on wall, taxes, health care comes as 100th day nears
WASHINGTON — The White House urged lawmakers Sunday to make progress this week on a high-profile issue such as health care or tax reform — or at least to avoid the disruption and embarrassment of a federal government shutdown on Friday, a day before President Donald Trump marks his first 100 days in office.
But Trump’s hopes for a tangible win before Saturday’s symbolic milestone appear snagged in a brewing showdown over his efforts to get Congress to also provide up to $5 billion to start building a wall on the Southwest border with Mexico.
That fight could leave the White House with the unpalatable choice of allowing a government shutdown after money runs out on Friday, or publicly backing away from a confrontation with Democrats who have adamantly refused to add border-wall money into a stopgap spending bill.
Even some Republicans say the wall can wait and that the political and economic costs of a government shutdown aren’t worth it.
But Trump also faces a steep uphill fight this week in seeking both to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, after his first attempt collapsed in Congress last month, and to set the agenda for sweeping tax overhaul, as he has promised.
Ever since the 1930s, new presidents have sought to take advantage of their first 100 days in office, traditionally a honeymoon period of public goodwill, to try to notch landmark legislative achievements. Most, including Trump, laid out an ambitious agenda of what they planned to achieve in that period.
Trump, dogged by some of the lowest poll ratings at this point in a modern presidency and a failure so far to get any major bills through the GOP-led Congress, has ridiculed the 100day mark as arbitrary and meaningless.
But he also has planned a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday to tout his initial accomplishments, returning to a political base whose loyalty he has largely retained despite some stinging early setbacks.
Making the Sunday talkshow rounds in advance of a consequential week, senior Trump aides played down the prospects of a government shutdown, while suggesting the president would hold fast to his demand to add money for border security — if not the wall itself — to the catchall measure meant to keep the government afloat until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
“I’m pretty confident we’re going to get something that is satisfactory to the president in regard to border security within current negotiations,” Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly made a similar prediction on CNN’s “State of the Union” about Trump’s determination to build the wall.
“I would suspect he will be insistent on the funding,” Kelly said.
Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, expressed confidence that talks between Republican and Democratic leaders would lead to a solution that will keep the government solvent after Friday.
“I don’t think anybody foresees or expects or wants a shutdown,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump has insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, which is likely to cost tens of billions of dollars. On Sunday, he took to Twitter to declare that was still the long-term plan.
“Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall,” he tweeted.
Mexican officials have repeatedly and angrily rejected Trump’s demand. President Enrique Pena Nieto abruptly canceled a planned visit to the White House over the dispute early in Trump’s term, and relations remain fraught.
Trump also has sought to pivot from last month’s stunning collapse of Republican efforts to bring a GOPauthored health care measure to the House floor to replace the Affordable Care Act. Republican infighting derailed the effort, and GOP leaders in the House pulled the bill before a vote to avoid a humiliating loss.
Although far-right and moderate Republicans apparently have not resolved their disputes over what a new health plan should contain, the president has said he wants a House vote in the coming week.
On Sunday, though, Priebus sought to de-emphasize the notion that a vote had to come before Saturday’s 100-day mark, saying that it did not matter if it came “Friday or Saturday or Monday.”
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he said in the NBC interview.
Trump sought on Sunday to pressure Democrats on health care by renewing a threat to withhold funding for insurance subsidies. The Affordable Care Act, he said on Twitter, is in “serious trouble. The Dems need big money to keep it going — otherwise it dies far sooner than anyone would have thought.”
Democrats, in turn, say they have zero interest in helping Trump eviscerate a health care bill that Democrats had sought for decades and that has helped provide health insurance to more than 20 million Americans since it was passed in 2010.