Trump courts N.D., especially its lone elected Dem
MANDAN, N.D.» President Donald Trump on Wednesday made an overt pitch for Democrats to support his tax-overhaul plan, singling out a North Dakota Democratic senator whose vote would be prized by the White House.
Delivering an outdoor speech to a crowd of hundreds at an oil refinery, Trump called for the state’s governor and congressional delegation to join him on stage, including Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, the only statewide elected Democrat in heavily Republican North Dakota.
“Everybody’s saying: What’s she doing up here?” Trump said of the firstterm senator, adding: “I hope we’ll have your support” and calling her “a good woman.”
Heitkamp, up for re-election next year, traveled to the state with Trump aboard Air Force One as the president sought to frame the tax overhaul as a “once in a generation” opportunity to cut taxes and simplify the tax code.
But while Trump’s White House is talking hopefully about bipartisanship, GOP leaders in Congress have made clear they’re pursuing a go-it-alone strategy on taxes that has shut Democrats out of the negotiations.
Trump used the event to sell his plan, but its details are still to be determined. He said he’d be getting into “great detail” on the plan in the next two weeks. Overall, it calls for a major simplification of the tax code and lowering personal rates, especially for the middle class, by raising the standard deduction, among other changes, and lowering business taxes to about 15 percent.
“It’s your money, not the government’s money,” Trump said.
Trump emphasized that the last time Congress passed a major tax overhaul, under President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Democrats signed on.
“Both of the Reagan tax cuts were passed by a Democratic majority in the House, a Democratic speaker, and a vast majority of Democrats in the Senate, including a Democratic senator from the great state of North Dakota,” Trump said. “So it can happen. Are you listening, Heidi?
“If Democrats don’t want to bring back your jobs, raise your pay and help America win — voters should deliver a clear message: Do your job to deliver for America, or find a new job.”
Trump traveled to North Dakota shortly after a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House in which the president sided with Democrats on a deal to fund the government and raise the federal borrowing limit for three months, all aimed at expediting money to Hurricane Harvey relief.