President-elect Donald Trump has finally weighed in on a simmering disagreement between House and Senate Republicans on how best to tackle his agenda — and the way he has chosen to go about it is likely to hit a brick wall, David Dayen argued for The American Prospect on Monday.
Specifically, Trump has come out in favor of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his plan to try to pass all of his major goals in one big budget bill, instead of Senate Republicans' preference to start with one reconciliation bill on energy and border security, and then moving to another to extend the expiring provisions of Trump's 2017 tax cut bill.
The trouble is, Biden already went down this road to try to pass his agenda, and it blew up in his face, Dayen wrote.
"The case for the two-bill strategy was that Republicans have a lot of moving parts to work out on taxes: whether to lower corporate taxes further, how to deal with the state and local tax deduction, how to integrate Trump’s myriad of tax cut promises throughout the campaign (no taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, overtime, car loans, and so on), and how to satisfy budget hawks with offsets to reduce the cost," wrote Dayen. "That will take time, and getting out with a quick win on the border, an issue of high importance to Trump, would supply the funds to engage in deportations shortly after Inauguration Day."
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House Republicans, however, prefer doing it in one big shot because the far-right Freedom Caucus tends to get in the way of budget talks with their demands, and the hope would be that if the bill includes border security too, they would compromise for the sake of not voting against it.
The problem, wrote Dayen, is that "legislative history suggests that the 'one big bill' concept is doomed to fail. Build Back Better was intended to pass in 2021 and it didn’t get done until the following August, in much-weakened form."
Additionally, far-right lawmakers led by tech billionaire Elon Musk killed a bipartisan budget deal ostensibly because they didn't like its page count.
"Guess what, one bill covering tax, border, and energy matters is going to be pretty long!" wrote Dayen.
Making things even more complicated is the looming requirement to raise the debt ceiling, which GOP hardliners are demanding massive budget cuts for. Ultimately, Dayen argued, there are just too many moving parts, and trying to do everything at once will likely lead to much of Trump's agenda failing to pass — or perhaps any at all.
"Setting priorities is an important task of any new administration," wrote Dayen. "Under Biden, the priority was to set no priorities, and it got the administration into trouble in the first two years, promoting a picture of indecision and dysfunction until the late-2022 breakthrough. Trump is wading right into the same shallow end of the pool."