Former Republican insider Rick Wilson predicts President-elect Donald Trump's planned legislative agenda will run into a buzzsaw early in his second term.
Writing on Substack, Wilson predicted Monday that Trump would get a border security package passed through Congress relatively quickly. But Trump will run into far greater trouble when trying to get a massive tax package through both chambers shortly afterward, he said.
"That’s where the absolute carnage begins," wrote Wilson. "It will attract an army of lobbyists armed with gold-plated pitchforks while simultaneously splitting the House GOP down the middle."
The major point of contention, Wilson believes, will come in restoring the state and local taxes (SALT) exemption that the 2017 GOP tax package significantly reduced.
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"The Freedom Caucus is hellbent on keeping the SALT cap from the 2017 tax bill—a move that screws over blue-state Republicans who desperately need a SALT deduction to survive politically," Wilson opined. "For GOP lawmakers in the Northeast, this is existential. For the Freedumb Caucus, it’s another chance to spike the football of spite against anything that smells like a win for blue states. This fight is only getting started."
Wilson also thinks Democrats need to step up their efforts to loudly fight against Trump's nominees that will force him to squander political capital, thus leaving him with less time to focus on the more destructive aspects of his agenda.
"Every nominee Democrats block or delay, every legislative loss—it all chips away at Trump’s aura of inevitability," he wrote. "This is one of the reasons Democrats must fight Trump’s nominees in a loud, public, messy, demanding way. It makes him spend his mana points on Pete Hegseth, not on ending birthright citizenship. The war for Trump’s agenda is trench warfare: messy, loud, and brutal, with landmines of timing, personalities, and competing priorities waiting to explode."
