President Donald Trump is terrified that a Democrat-controlled Congress would batter him with investigations and possible impeachment — and he has a plan to avoid it.
So wrote MSNBC's Hayes Brown Sunday. Unfortunately for Trump, his own party may have just thrown a wrench into his scheme.
Brown wrote that Trump is extremely nervous about the GOP potentially losing control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.
“Trump is already “hyper-engaged in the fight to keep the GOP’s majorities in Congress” and stave off a repeat of his first term,” he wrote, quoting an earlier report from Politico.
He continued, “But the president would still rather not lose control of either chamber to Democrats, preferring not to spend his last years in office fighting off investigations and the possibility of another impeachment.”
As a way to avoid that, he’s been handing out very early endorsements to GOP candidates to avoid messy primary fights and focus on the main race.
He’s also been trying to hide the unpopular aspects of the budget bill he’s currently pushing to get through Congress.
“At the same time, the president and his team have been deeply reticent about an all-out assault on the social spending that has fueled the conservative movement for decades,” the columnist wrote.
“Trump’s staff offered caution on a plan to shift the cost for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to the states. They’ve been similarly wary about the kinds of steep cuts to Medicaid archconservatives had been seeking. And they’ve been less enthusiastic than most congressional Republicans about any other moves that would strip Americans of health care — at least while Trump is still in office.”
The hesitance was to limit damage the unpopular moves would likely have on voters' sympathies.
“While targeting 'DEI' programs and firing government workers is easily defensible to the MAGA base, potentially stripping those same GOP voters of benefits that they’ve grown accustomed to receiving would be much harder to sell,” he added.
“ … The painful bits intended to pay for all that new spending were slated to be strung out much further down the line — funnily enough, right around the time the new benefits are due to end. For example, the bill wouldn’t shift the costs of SNAP benefits to the states until fiscal year 2028. The Medicaid work requirements that Republicans are counting on to save $300 billion — at the cost of millions losing their insurance — aren’t due to begin until 2029. “
Unfortunately for him, rebels in his party have thrown up a “surprise roadblock," Brown wrote.
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Several conservative Republicans have balked at the bill — specifically they were frustrated by the timeline of the proposed cuts, wanting to see the trillion dollars in cuts happen much sooner.
Their no votes stalled it on Friday.
“The dishonesty of claiming to cut spending while raising the deficit, only to punt the actual cuts to much further down the line, was too much for [Texas Rep. Chip] Roy and other conservatives to bear,” wrote Brown. “His protest likely succeeded in at least bumping up the Medicaid work requirements at least to start much sooner.
“That alone would throw a wrench into Trump’s scheme to bribe voters now and flee before the pain of what he’s done really hits them.
“There are no heroes in this story, but I’d prefer Roy’s honest cruelty to the con job that Trump would much rather pull to keep Congress in Republican hands.”