Was Flake fooled into voting for tax reform?

Sen. Jeff Flake said he voted for the Republican tax-reform bill only after he was able to “to obtain a firm commitment from the Senate Leadership and the administration to work with me on a growth-oriented legislative solution to enact fair and permanent protections for DACA recipients.” Ha!

It appears the senator may have gotten scammed. Skunked. Bamboozled.

Or maybe he was just looking for an excuse to vote for the monstrosity that is the tax bill, a law that mostly will benefit people like President Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies in the Cabinet. Along with the many, many multimillionaires in Congress. And corporations.

And it will do so forever. Meantime, working people will get a few crumbs, which expire, so that middle-class folks will face tax increases by 2027, while the massive increase in the federal deficit will lead to billions and billions cut from Medicare.

There have also been reports that House Speaker Paul Ryan already is talking about plans to cut Social Security, as well as Medicare, and to use the massively increased deficit, which the Republicans who control Congress just created, as an excuse.

But, hey, Flake said he received an assurance that something will be done for “dreamers.”

Or did he?

Because Trump doesn’t sound like he got the memo about that.

The president tweeted: “The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!” Democrats?

What about Flake? I don’t recall him saying anything about a DACA deal tied to building Trump’s wall.

Flake said the deal he made would finally get Congress to stabilize the legal status of hundreds of thousands of young people brought into the U.S. as children. “This was a hard-fought commitment to get,” he said.

That commitment came from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to Flake.

But the buck doesn’t stop with McConnell.

It stops with Trump. (Millions more bucks will stop with him and his family after the tax bill Flake said he received an assurance that something will be done for “dreamers.” Or did he?

kicks in … but that is another story.)

Flake may look at dreamers and see committed, determined, patriotic, American-raised and -educated young people eager to work and serve their country.

Trump sees bargaining chips to get his multibillion-dollar boondoggle of a wall.

Flake tweeted: “We can fix DACA in a way that beefs up border security, stops chain migration for the DREAMers, and addresses the unfairness of the diversity lottery. If POTUS wants to protect these kids, we want to help him keep that promise.”

Now that the president already got Flake to vote on the tax bill, I’d guess Trump would say ... Promise? What promise? Reach Montini at 602444-8978 or ed.montini@ arizonarepublic.com.