After taxes, Trump is suddenly expendable

Republicans won’t need him for much anymore

President Trump believes he has just won a great victory with final passage of huge tax cuts in sight. He should not be so cheerful; it could mark the beginning of the end for him and his party.

Signing the tax cuts and some judicial appointments were the only things Republicans in Congress ever needed Trump for. Insider Grover Norquist has long said that GOP presidents tend to muck up the finely tuned plans that Republicans have been working on for decades to downsize government. The perfect Republican president, he has said, has enough working digits to sign his name on legislation and that’s it.

Republicans had a clever plan to abolish Obamacare and replace it with nothing. They always said they had a plan to replace it, but no one was ever told what it was. That’s because it was all a lie, a fig leaf to get rid of Obamacare and, especially, the taxes that financed it. Unfortunately, no one told Trump. He thought Republicans had a replacement ready to go the moment he took office. He messed up by insisting that the replacement be enacted simultaneously with the repeal legislation. In the end, the Republicans failed. Desperate for a win, Team GOP scheduled a game with its easiest opponent, the tax system. Again, there was no bill. It appears they simply sent out a call to every lobbyist in town asking for a wish list. When they added up all the provisions, there was about $6 trillion in lost revenue over a decade. Then Republicans cast about for tax increases to reduce the net revenue loss to $1.5 trillion, the maximum loss they thought they could get away with.

Eventually, they found $4.5 trillion in tax increases that would fall mainly on Democrats or that undermine Democratic programs such as Obamacare.

The extraordinary thing about the tax bill is that it has little support among the general public. Numerous polls have found roughly two-to-one opposition. This is quite amazing because tax cuts are like Christmas — everyone gets a present.

Republicans have been obsessed with getting the tax cuts over the finish line — racing to complete it in the dead of night because they can see the handwriting on the wall. Recent elections and polling data show Trump and the GOP with among the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. When newly elected Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., takes office in the coming weeks, the GOP margin in the Senate will fall from 5248 to 51-49. That means Republicans can lose no more than one vote on any issue as long as Vice President Pence is there to break the tie.

With the end of the GOP agenda in Congress in sight, Republicans want to lock in as much as possible. Tax cuts effectively do that by creating huge budget deficits. The minute the ink is dry on the tax cuts, Republicans will become born-again budget-balancers. Of course, a GOP president guarantees that there will be no tax increases or defense cuts. Because interest on the debt cannot be reduced, that really just leaves “entitlement” programs such as Social Security and Medicare to bear the brunt of the deficit reduction.

I don’t think Trump has any appetite for a big deficit reduction fight. His weariness with the presidency becomes more pronounced daily as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation moves ever closer to the Oval Office. Moreover, Trump will be encouraged to make an early exit by members of his own party, who see him as an albatross around their re-election hopes and can only do so much to protect Trump if the dam breaks and those closest to him, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, must choose loyalty to Trump or going to jail.

Sadly, those who ultimately push Trump over the side to save their own necks will probably be seen as statesmen, like those who delivered the coup de grace to President Nixon after the Watergate scandal made his continuation in office untenable.

But the truth will be that for most congressional Republicans, Trump was never much more than a tissue to be used and disposed of.