Republican lawmakers are showing "visible cracks” as the party scrambles to find solid footing in its strategy to negotiate a budget ahead of a looming government shutdown, a senior House GOP aide admitted in a Politico report Thursday.
“There have been some unforced errors, clearly,” the senior House GOP aide said, speaking with Politico on the condition of anonymity.
Congress has until Oct. 1 to pass a new annual spending bill but, so far, Republicans have been “painfully divided” as to how to approach the ongoing budget fight, particularly with whether or not to include funding for subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This division has led to inter-party fights on the GOP’s strategy, fights that have begun to raise “internal concerns” within the party.
“Taken together, the visible cracks in the GOP front are raising internal concerns as party leaders face off against Democrats who are largely united behind a plan to focus on health care – particularly an extension of expiring insurance subsidies,” the Politico report reads.
Those “internal concerns” came to a head after President Donald Trump cancelled a previously-planned meeting with Democratic congressional leaders Tuesday at the behest of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Sen. John Thune (R-SD), alleging Democrats in a social media post of wanting to “create transgender operations for everybody,” an accusation that “has puzzled even some fellow Republicans,” the Politico report reads.
And, according to four people familiar with the situation who spoke with Politico on the condition of anonymity, Johnson and Thune urged Trump to cancel the meeting, in part because they were worried they might not be included in the meeting.
Trump’s strategy of tying the extension of Obamacare subsidies to transgender surgeries – with there being five states that require health insurance plans to cover gender-reassignment procedures – has left some GOP lawmakers “confused and caught off-guard,” according to Politico, particularly those in vulnerable districts where Obamacare is overwhelmingly popular.
Trump further muddied the water after his White House circulated a draft memo with instructions for federal agencies to create plans for mass firings in the event that a budget is not adopted by Oct. 1, a memo that only created more confusion among GOP lawmakers.
“That alarmed some Hill Republicans who saw it as an unnecessary provocation that, in the words of one, ‘would give Democrats an excuse to vote against’ the GOP-led stopgap – and muddy their message that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were unreasonable hostage-takers,” the Politico report reads.
