Barely two months into his presidency, Donald Trump is risking much of his agenda and his political muscle on the outcome of Thursday’s House vote to repeal and replace Obamacare.
As the president has reminded audiences repeatedly in recent days, he needs Congress to approve the health care legislation before he can move on to the heart of his plan to fuel a stronger economic recovery: tax cuts for businesses and individuals.
The flip side of that political challenge is that tax cuts probably won’t happen this year if the health care legislation goes down to defeat. Tax reform sought by businesses for decades might not happen at all.
With about two dozen Republican lawmakers in the conservative Freedom Caucus still opposing the health care bill Wednesday, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist said Mr. Trump’s presidency is hanging in the balance.
“If a handful of Republicans can double-cross Trump on this issue, then why would they not be free to do the same on tax reform?” Mr. Norquist said. “A handful of people are trying to decide to very badly damage or possibly destroy the Trump presidency. It’s a little difficult to understand why someone would want to hurt taxpayers, screw the economy and insult the president, all in the same day and in one vote.”
Trump ally Rep. Chris Collins of New York wasn’t overstating the case by much when he warned, “They’re about to torpedo our entire party and the presidency of Donald J. Trump.”
With so much at stake, the president and his advisers have been ramping up their sales job with reluctant Republican lawmakers. Mr. Trump has met with small groups of lawmakers at the White House, visited with House Republicans en masse at a closed-door meeting at the Capitol, headlined a record fundraiser for incumbent Republicans on Tuesday night and worked the phones to sway wavering lawmakers.
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a former lawmaker, has been meeting with former colleagues of the Freedom Caucus to allay their concerns as the administration agrees to last-minute changes to the bill. Vice President Mike Pence, also a former House lawmaker, held another meeting with the Freedom Caucus on Wednesday.
The day ahead of the vote, Mr. Trump met with 18 House Republican lawmakers in the Cabinet Room of the West Wing. Asked by reporters what he would do if he loses the vote, the author of “The Art of the Deal” replied, “We’ll see what happens.”
White House aides outwardly expressed confidence that Mr. Trump would win the day.
“He is the closer,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer. “There is no Plan B. There’s Plan A, and there’s Plan A. We’re going to get this done.”
Mr. Norquist said the president’s reputation as a deal-maker also is at risk.
“If this is slowed down, damaged, stopped, it’s a tremendous defeat for the Trump presidency,” he said. “The only way for Trump to win is to win. The only mistake [by the White House] is not having been out [working on the repeal] sooner, harder, faster.”
Corey Lewandowski, a former manager of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, said the health care legislation is the biggest step yet in his transition from campaigning to governing. He said president’s early executive orders that kept campaign promises such as withdrawing from an Obama-era trade deal and building the Keystone XL oil pipeline were gratifying lessons in that transformation.
“I think what the president is learning is those wins you can actually relish for a longer period of time,” Mr. Lewandowski said Wednesday in a forum hosted by The Washington Post. “He is actively engaged with members of Congress to say this [health care bill] is an important piece of legislation. Legislating and governing is, candidly, much more difficult than running for office. The hard part is when you sit in the biggest office in the world and [work on] getting things accomplished.”
Congressional Republicans are pursuing the Obamacare repeal and tax reform in separate budget reconciliation moves, which require 51 votes in the Senate. Republicans have 52 members in the chamber. Congress can’t combine both pieces of legislation in the same reconciliation.
If the health care legislation is defeated or significantly delayed this year, Mr. Norquist said, Mr. Trump’s agenda could be cut short even before the midterm elections next year.
“Everything that didn’t happen in the first two years of the Obama administration never happened,” he said. “Obama was president for two years. After that, he played a lot of golf. The effort by a handful of Republicans to throw marbles at Trump’s feet could be truncating the Trump presidency. You don’t know how long you have. Obama thought he had four or eight years. He had two.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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