Now Trump wants to be friends?
DNC Chairman Tom Perez doubts it, doesn’t expect much of an olive branch
House Speaker Paul Ryan may have nothing to worry about.
The Wisconsin congressman warned fellow Republicans on Thursday that the White House might turn to Democrats to cut deals if the GOP can’t get its act together on health care and other big issues. But Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez says Democrats have neither the trust level nor the common ground with President Trump to make that a realistic prospect.
“If you want to talk about expanding health care, the public option; if we want to talk about the 2014 immigration bill that passed in a bipartisan fashion in the Senate and want to bring that up for an up-or-down vote, we would welcome that,” Perez told Capital Download. But Trump has “shown no evidence in anything he’s done throughout the campaign or after the campaign to do anything but hurt working people.”
Perez made it clear Democratic leaders see little reason to throw the president a lifeline on big issues.
The irony: Ten weeks after Republicans gained control not only of the House and Senate but also the White House, the GOP is struggling to hold together while Democrats, vanquished at every level of politics, have been able to hang together. Not a single House Democrat expressed support for a White House-backed plan to re-
peal and replace the Affordable Care Act while defections by both conservative and moderate Republicans forced Ryan to sandbag the bill last week.
Trump made his annoyance clear in a tweet he posted just after 9 a.m. ET Thursday: “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast,” he wrote. “We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” A bit earlier, in an interview on CBS This Morning, Ryan had cautioned that GOP’s inability to unite could “push the president into working with Democrats.”
In an interview Thursday with USA TODAY’s video newsmaker series, Perez seemed skeptical about that, ticking through the major issues ahead for the White House.
uNegotiate a new health care plan? “You look at what is likely to be the next version of their health care reform, it’s going to hurt even more people.”
uHelp the GOP pass a crucial spending bill needed by the end of April? “If the government shuts down when you have the White House, the Senate and the House, this is totally on” the GOP.
uPair a tax overhaul plan Republicans favor with a big infrastructure bill Democrats want? “The tax bill that they’re talking about is more tax breaks for wealthy people, more trickledown economics.” And while “infrastructure done right can help working people, infrastructure done wrong is just more money for private equity.”
Perez expressed doubts about whether the White House and congressional Republicans would be willing to do more than rely on tax breaks and public-private partnerships for an infrastruc- ture bill; Democrats support federal funding. “This is another example of where the Freedom Caucus and the far right of their party is holding the rest of the party and by extension the House of Representatives hostage — because they only want it done one way,” he said, adding, “You can’t eat cake and lose weight.”
And on the nomination of federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, he endorsed a filibuster by Senate Democrats. That move would force Republicans either to win the support of eight Democrats to get the 60 votes needed to end debate, or to deploy the so-called nuclear option and change the rules to block filibusters on Su- preme Court nominees.
“I don’t think they will get the requisite number of Democrats to meet 60,” he predicted.
Perez, 55, the son of Dominican immigrants and a Labor secretary in the Obama administration, became the first Latino leader of the Democratic National Committee when he won a hard-fought campaign last month against Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison. In some ways, that became a proxy battle between those who had backed Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016 (as Perez did) and those who supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (as Ellison did).
Minutes after being elected, Perez named Ellison a deputy chairman of the party, and he has promised a review of the convention superdelegates that Sanders had derided as part of a system rigged for party insiders.
Perez downplayed Democratic prospects in the special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district to chose a replacement for Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
Some analysts say Democrat Jon Ossoff might be able to capitalize on Trump’s troubles and be able to win 50% of the vote in the April 18 primary, avoiding a runoff.
“That’s Newt Gingrich’s old seat, so we’re undeniably the underdog,” Perez said, though he added there was “a ton of energy” among Democrats in the district. “We’re going to swing the bat.”
“If the government shuts down when you have the White House, the Senate and the House, this is totally on” the Republicans. DNC Chairman Tom Perez