The big news event today will probably happen a few seconds after I get done posting: Robert Mueller will announce his first indictment(s). I’m rooting for Michael Flynn to get the go-to-jail-free card, but it’s a credit to the investigation that nobody really knows. There’s a chance it’ll be somebody whose significance will only become apparent later.
But even without that story, it’s been a pretty eventful week: Jeff Flake denounced Trump on the Senate floor, and then announced he wasn’t running for re-election. Congress passed a budget resolution that sets up tax reform. Trump gave his opioid speech. We found out more about the Steele dossier and Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russians. The Puerto Rico crisis continued. There were a series of the-swamp-is-not-draining stories, beginning with Congress shielding the big banks from class-action lawsuits. The Catalonia-independence story got more contentious.
This week’s featured article will be about tax reform, sort of. I decided to take a step back and consider the larger question of: Why does every major bill the Republican majority tries to pass go through this weird process? You know what I mean: They are rush-rush about everything except writing the bill.
We saw it over and over again with the various versions of ObamaCare repeal — one of the Senate bills was a mystery until the day they voted on it — and now it’s happening again with tax reform. They have an ambitious schedule to pass tax reform by Thanksgiving, but they still don’t have a bill to pass. (By contrast, the first ObamaCare bill was introduced eight months before a later version passed.)
It’s not like the process worked so well with healthcare that they want to do it again, but they’re doing it again. Why? I’ll discuss that in “The Real Reason Republicans Can’t Pass Major Legislation”. That should be out before 10 EDT. The weekly summary should follow by 11 or 12.
The Weekly Sift 