Public Polling Analysis
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Table of Contents
National Environment ...... 3 Direction of the Country Issue Importance Trump Favorability Trump Job Approval Making Headlines ...... 7 GOP Divided ...... 24 Immigration ...... 38 Tax Reform ...... 47
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National Environment
Direction of the Country
Would you say things in this country today are... The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Total Male Female Right Direction 28% 36% 21% Wrong Track 58% 53% 63% Not Sure 14% 11% 16%
Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track? Reuters/Ipsos, Americans online 10/20-24/17 10/13-17/17, 10/6-10/17 9/26-10/3/1 , N=2,352 N=1,678 , N=1584 7, N=1659 Right Direction 24% 26% 24% 25% Wrong Track 645 63% 64% 63% Unsure 12% 11% 11% 11%
Rasmussen Reports, n=2,500 likely voters Right Wrong Track Direction 10/15-19/17 33% 61% 10/ 8-12/17 31% 63% 10/1-5/17 32% 62%
Issue Importance In your opinion, what is the most important problem facing the US today? Reuters/Ipsos, October 20-24, 2017, n=2,352 Americans online Total Healthcare 17% Terrorism / terrorist attacks 13% Economy generally 12%
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Morality 9% War / foreign conflicts 6% Immigration 6% Education 5% Unemployment/lack of jobs 5% Crime 5%
Which of these is the most important issue for you? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Total Healthcare 18% The economy 14% Social Security 14% The environment 9% Education 8% Terrorism 7% Immigration 6% Medicare 5%
Trump Favorability Do you have a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Men Women Tot al Favorable 39% 45% 35% Tot al Unfavorable 53% 49% 57% Very Favorable 23% 29% 18% Somewhat Favorable 16% 16% 17% Somewhat Unfavorable 9% 9% 9% Very Unfavorable 44% 40% 48% Don’t Know 7% 6% 8%
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Trump Job Approval
Reuters/Ipsos, October 20-24, 2017, n=2,352 Americans online Total Democra Republica Independent t n Total Approve 35% 7% 77% 33% Total 60% 91% 21% 62% Disapprove
The Economist/YouGov,, n=1500 US Adults Total Approve Total Delta Disapprove 10/22-24/17 37% 53% -16 10/15-16/17 37% 52% -15 10/7-10/17 36% 52% -16
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The way Donald Trump is handling is job as president Gallup Poll, n= approx. 1,500 Adults nationwide Approve Disapprove Delta 10/22-24/17 36% 59% -23 10/21-23/17 36% 58% -22 10/20-22/17 36% 57% -21 10/19-21/17 36% 58% -22 10/18-20/17 36% 59% -23 10/17-19/17 35% 60% -25 10/16-18/17 36% 59% -23 10/15-17/17 36% 59% -23
Rasmussen, n=1,500 likely voters Total Approve Total Delta Disapprove 10/25/17 42% 56% -14 10/24/17 43% 56% -13 10/23/17 41% 58% -17 10/20/17 43% 55% -12 10/19/17 41% 57% -16 10/18/17 43% 55% -12
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Making Headlines
Study: Both parties gripped by deep divisions
The country is as politically polarized as it's ever been. And the divisions are almost as bad within the parties themselves.
That's the takeaway from the Pew Research Center’s latest political typology report, released Tuesday, which shows a Republican coalition split over immigration, the nation’s role in the world and whether the U.S. economic system is fair — even if the most vociferous Republicans, despite their differences, approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance. These divergences underscore the challenges Trump and the GOP have had in implementing a legislative agenda.
Similarly, Democratic-leaning groups are in near-lockstep when it comes to disapproving of Trump. But there are important differences in how involved the U.S. should be in global affairs, as well as on religious and social issues.
The most strident liberals — who make up about half of politically active, Democratic leaning Americans — are also the most energized Americans about politics, the report finds: Nearly half say they have contributed to a political candidate or campaign in the past year, and almost four-in-10 say they have participated in a protest against Trump’s policies.
“While partisanship obviously is such a dominant force, (what) we do find really interesting (is) fissures between both partisan coalitions,” said Carroll Doherty, the director of political research at the Pew Research Center. “This presents a lot of challenges to both partisan coalitions, both electorally and in how they attempt to govern.”
Here are the nine cohesive groups into which Pew has sorted Americans — who they are and what they believe — from most conservative to most liberal.
Core Conservatives (15 percent of registered voters): The most traditional Republican group, “Core Conservatives” are also the most politically engaged. More than nine-in-10 — 93 percent — say they always or nearly always vote in elections.
“Core Conservatives” believe strongly in a smaller government with fewer services: 92 percent say stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt
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the economy, for example, compared to only 37 percent of the general public. Ninety percent say the obstacles that once made it harder for women than men to get ahead are largely gone (compared to just 42 percent of all Americans), and 81 percent say the U.S. has made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights with whites (compared to 35 percent).
Two-thirds of “Core Conservatives” are men, and 85 percent are white. While a third of “Core Conservatives” have a college degree, more than the other GOP-leaning groups, 80 percent say colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country.
Country First Conservatives (7 percent): This group makes up a smaller share of the GOP coalition. Like “Core Conservatives,” “Country First Conservatives” believe in smaller government. But they are more socially conservative, more skeptical of immigration and more likely to say that too much openness threatens the nation’s identity.
This is the oldest group — 71 percent are 50 years old or older — and half of “Country First Conservatives” say they attend church weekly. Only about 15 percent have college degrees, and half haven’t attended college at all.
More than three-quarters, 76 percent, say immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care, compared to just 26 percent of the general public. And 70 percent say homosexuality should be discouraged by society, while only 24 percent of all Americans agree with that view. By contrast, “Core Conservatives” are more tolerant of homosexuality.
Market-Skeptic Republicans (12 percent): These Americans lean Republican — only 12 percent identify as Democrats — but are view the U.S. economic system negatively. The vast majority, 94 percent, say the system unfairly favors powerful interests. Only 10 percent say most corporations make a fair and reasonable amount of profit, compared to 82 percent of “Core Conservatives.”
A 55 percent majority of “Market-Skeptic Republicans” are younger than age 50, and only 34 percent attend religious services weekly — a lower rate than other GOP- leaning groups.
A majority, 57 percent, say a friend or family member has been addicted to drugs — larger than other groups, though not much higher than the 46 percent of Americans overall who say that.
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New Era Enterprisers (11 percent): This is the youngest and most moderate GOP- leaning group: 26 percent are younger than 30. And only two-thirds are white, fewer than other Republican groups.
“They’re generally less intense or angry about things,” Doherty says. They have more moderate views on immigration — only 23 percent say immigrants are a burden on our country — and the U.S.’s role in the world.
Bystanders (0 percent): The group of those who aren’t registered to vote and pay little or no attention to politics and government is comprised mostly of younger Americans and racial minorities. Despite their lack of participation, more identify as Democrats (40 percent) than Republicans (26 percent).
Devout and Diverse (9 percent): This group leans Democratic, though not strongly; 59 percent associate with the party. They are older — 60 percent are 50 and older — and majority non-white.
This group is more socially conservative — just 53 percent say homosexuality should be accepted by society — but also want more government services and further action on racial equality.
Disaffected Democrats (14 percent): These Americans aren’t really disaffected with the Democratic Party: Roughly 85 percent still identify as Democrats. But they are disaffected with politics and government. Despite their Democratic orientation, a 63 percent majority says government is almost always wasteful and inefficient.
Virtually all of them, 99 percent, think the economic system unfairly favors powerful interests. That doesn’t mean they are warming up to Trump, though: 91 percent disapprove of his job performance.
Opportunity Democrats (13 percent): “Opportunity Democrats” are socially liberal: 92 percent say homosexuality should be accepted by society, and 99 percent say immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents.
But they are more likely to call themselves moderates (46 percent), versus liberal (32 percent) or conservative (21 percent). Most disapprove of Trump, but fewer strongly disapprove than “Disaffected Democrats” or “Solid Liberals.”
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Solid Liberals (19 percent): This is the largest of all the groups. Among those politically engaged, they represent a quarter of the electorate — and nearly half of all politically engaged Democrats.
Virtually all “Solid Liberals” strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance, 97 percent. And they’re tuned into politics: 97 percent say it matters a great deal or a fair amount which party wins control of Congress next year. Forty-nine percent have donated to a candidate or campaign over the past year, and 39 percent have protested Trump’s policies.
“I think what characterizes them is their intense reaction to Trump and their own political activism,” Doherty said.
“Solid Liberals” are well-educated: 57 percent are college graduates, and 29 percent have a post-graduate degree. Only 15 percent of “Solid Liberals” attend religious services at least weekly, though 72 percent say they enjoy going to museums a lot, and 83 percent enjoy reading books.
How the liberal leanings of Google, Facebook shape the political landscape - Algorithms have become a modern-day Cronkite deciding what news reaches the eyes and ears of many Americans
Robert Epstein tried a simple experiment in the run-up to the presidential election: running searches on Google and Yahoo for political topics.
The results were stunning. Google searches returned twice as many pro-Hillary Clinton news articles as Yahoo searches.
Perhaps even more stunning was that men and blue-state residents saw more than double the number of pro-Clinton articles than women and people living in red states, Mr. Epstein, of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and Robert E. Robertson, a professor at Northeastern University, argued in a report this year.
Mr. Epstein said he is still studying what caused the bias but worries that Google’s search algorithm — a form of artificial intelligence that chooses what results a searcher is looking for — ranked pro-Clinton articles ahead of positive articles about her opponent, Donald Trump.
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Those algorithms have become the modern-day Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, deciding what news reaches the eyes and ears of Americans in an increasingly Google- Facebook-Twitter media environment.
In recent months, the focus has been on whether the companies were able to be manipulated by Russian-connected operatives who attempted to sow “chaos” in the U.S. surrounding last year’s elections.
But the power of the companies to shape American politics goes well beyond that.
“The social media companies are the gatekeepers,” said Frank Foer, a writer at The Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic who has authored a book on social media’s power. “Whatever choices these companies make to elevate or bury information is very powerful and will have a big impact on what people read.”
Conservatives say they have long suspected that some of the internet giants discriminate against them and their content. They point to whistleblowers who have acknowledged they were pushed to treat conservatives differently.
The companies have denied the claims. They insist the algorithms are designed to capture the most-read news stories across the political spectrum. A computer program cannot distinguish between liberal and conservative, they say.
Mr. Foer, who says he is concerned about the level of power wielded by the algorithms the tech companies use, dismisses accusations of a liberal bias as “conservative paranoia.”
Studies allege bias But an emerging set of studies suggests there is something to the concerns.
Mr. Epstein and Mr. Robertson, in their research, looked at 4,045 election-related searches on Google and Yahooduring a 25-day period from mid-October through Election Day. They found that the pro-Clinton articles swamped pro-Trump news.
“The algorithms are not programmed with an equal time rule,” said Mr. Epstein, a vocal Clinton supporter. “They are programmed to put one thing ahead of another in a way that is highly secret and ever-changing.”
He said his experiments show the power of news searches to affect politics and has found that he could boost support for a candidate by as much as 63 percent after just
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one Google search session. That is based on five experimentsMr. Epstein ran in two countries in which study participants changed their opinions of a candidate based on a manipulated search engine. He has dubbed this the “search engine manipulation effect.”
A separate study by Nicholas Diakopoulos, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the Google search results on Dec. 1, 2015. He searched for the names of all 16 presidential candidates and discovered Democrats, on average, had seven favorable search results among Google’s top 10. Republican candidates, meanwhile, had only 5.9 positive articles in the top 10.
Mrs. Clinton had five positive search results but only one negative on the first page, according to the study. Mr. Trumphad four positive and three negative search results on the first page. Sen. Bernard Sanders, another Democratic candidate, had nine positive results without a single negative, and Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz had no positive results.
Mr. Diakopoulos ran a second study during the summer before the election and found the vast majority of sources selected for Google’s news box were left-leaning outlets. The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post accounted for nearly 50 percent of Google news sources. Articles from Fox News, the only conservative news source among the 113 featured by Google during Mr. Diakopoulos’ study, appeared about 1 percent of the time.
Google eliminated the news box in November. Company spokeswoman Maggie Shiels said the box’s algorithm picked up news across the internet.
“There are several hundred signals that go into surfacing an answer,” she said. “The algorithm does not focus on political party or ideology.”
The company is secretive about the algorithm and insists it is constantly tinkering with the formula. But it says it promotes articles based on “freshness, location, relevance and diversity.”
“As a result, stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology and you can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story,” the company says on its online explainer.
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Analysts have caught some deeper glimpses over the years, based on testing and on information gleaned from patent applications Google has filed, saying Google judges trustworthiness and importance of a news site, how much content it produces and even length of stories to gauge whether to elevate a site’s content.
News operations, just like other website owners, invest a lot of time and money trying to figure out Google’s system, and an entire industry known as search engine optimization, or SEO, claims to offer shortcuts to earn more eyeballs.
Patents suggest search engines may be increasingly tailoring results to the individual’s history, promoting websites or story themes the searcher seems to select the most.
Mr. Diakopoulos said someone who searches for positive news about Trump is more likely to get exposed to conservative news, while someone who searches for left- leaning topics will receive more liberal news.
And then there is the issue of the press itself.
“If 70 percent of the news media is liberal, you can expect there to be some unequal results to come from a search engine,” Mr. Diakopoulos said.
That means the social media may not be biased, but instead is a reflection of the bias perceived in traditional media, said S. Robert. Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.
“If you are getting a certain perspective from the major news outlets, that is going to be passed on through social media, which is the last link in the chain,” he said.
But Mr. Epstein said the concern about who is creating the algorithm is just as concerning as the program itself.
“When accused of a liberal bias, these companies say, ‘It’s not us; it’s the algorithm,” he said. “That is so hilarious because they programmed the algorithm.”
Facebook workers raise questions
Accusations of an indirect bias may not carry as much weight if not accompanied by accusations of direct bias by the social media companies.
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In May 2016, a group of several former Facebook workers told technology blog Gizmodo that they routinely suppressed news about prominent conservatives, including Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The employees, who worked as ‘news curators,’ also said stories reported by conservative outlets such as Brietbart and Newsmax were dismissed unless The New York Times, BBC or CNN covered the same article.
Facebook denied the accusations and said an internal study found virtually identical rates of liberal and conservative new topics. The company did concede bias could have occurred through improper human actions and it would take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited 16 conservative leaders to the company’s headquarters for a meeting.
Mr. Zuckerberg opened the meeting acknowledging that both he and Facebook are liberal and that he knows little about the conservative movement, according those who attended. But Mr. Zuckerburg conceded that if Facebook wants to be an open marketplace of ideas, then it must be open to conservative viewpoints.
“The meeting opened on a positive, honest note and went that way throughout the whole meeting,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.
Mr. Bozell said Facebook has made a sincere effort since the meeting to include conservative voices.
“We’ve never had a serious problem with Facebook,” he said. “Does that make us the exception to the rule? I don’t know.”
Zachary Moffatt, CEO of Targeted Victory, a Republican political strategy group, agreed that Mr. Zuckerberg was sincere and concerned about the perception of a liberal bias. Mr. Moffatt, who is working with Facebook ahead of the Senate hearings on the Russian ad buy, said Mr. Zuckerberg’s staff has followed up since the meeting.
“I think Facebook is doing more to address the unconscious structural bias than other partners in this space,” he said.
Conservative commentator Steven Crowder was among the voices blocked by the former Facebook workers. He said a social media bias against conservatives is real but sometimes gets obscured by conservatives claiming censorship when, in fact, they
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violated a site’s rules by spreading fake news or using a copyrighted image or song without permission.
“There are too many conservatives screaming censorship, but they need to make sure they are not embarrassing Facebook with false stories or too many pop-ups,” Mr. Crowder said. “That does a disservice to everyone who has been harmed by some of these practices. It does happen, but, unfortunately, the people it happens to are not the ones who scream the loudest.”
Mr. Crowder won a settlement with Facebook after filing a legal action seeking more information about the company’s advertising practices. He claimed Facebook refused to acknowledge his advertising payments. Mr. Crowder said he could not discuss whether the issue came from bias or mismanagement by Facebook’s advertising team because of the settlement agreement.
It’s not just Facebook and Google. Earlier this month, Twitter blocked a campaign ad by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, claiming it included “an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a strong reaction.” In the ad, Ms. Blackburn said she helped stop Planned Parenthood from selling baby body parts.
Twitter initially said it would air the ad for Ms. Blackburn, who is running for U.S. Senate, if the line about the sale of baby body parts is removed. After the congresswoman went public, the social media site backtracked and allowed the ad to run.
“The damage being done to conservatives is almost incalculable,” said Seton Motley, a technology policy specialist and president of Less Government, a conservative organization dedicated to reducing government power. “If network television media bias can give a candidate a 4- to 6-point advantage and social media giants have more power than the networks, can we even quantify a number?”
Google insists there is no truth to Mr. Epstein’s hypothesis that it could secretly influence an election outcome.
“Claims that Google News is biased or favors one political point of view over another are just not true,” Ms. Shiels said. “The whole ethos of the product is to give people access to a rich and diverse world of news, views and perspectives. We are able to do that thanks to the more than 80,000 publications from around the globe that are part of the corpus.”
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Companies are politically active
The companies’ denials are complicated by their executives’ perceived political leanings.
Employees and affiliates of Alphabet Inc., a Google holding company, donated nearly $1.6 million to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential aspirations and about $359,000 to her Democratic primary opponent Mr. Sanders, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, received roughly $23,000 from the company.
In fact, the top 16 candidates who received contributions from Alphabet employees were all Democrats. The top Republican was Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who received just over $23,000.
Mr. Walden is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is reviewing net neutrality legislation. Net neutrality, if imposed, would block internet providers from charging for or blocking online content. Google and other social media companies have opposed such measures.
In total, 63 percent of Alphabet contributions in last year’s election went to Democrats and 22 percent went to Republicans — even though Republicans dominate elected offices at the national and state levels. The remaining 12 percent went to support independent candidates. Ms. Shiels declined to comment on the donations.
Facebook also donated heavily to the Democratic Party. Of the nearly $4.6 million Facebook employees and affiliates spent on last year’s election, 67 percent went toward Democrats and 32 percent went to Republican candidates. Mrs. Clinton received $478,000 from Facebook, while Mr. Trump received about $4,665.
“These companies are shockingly political,” said Scott Cleland, who has authored a book about Google. “They are the gatekeepers of all the world’s information, and everything they do has a political angle to it.”
The relationships were also personal. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was one of those in email communication with John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, according to messages released by WikiLeaks.
“I want HRC to win badly,” Ms. Sandberg said in one missive. In a later email, she told Mr. Podesta she was looking forward to working with him “to elect the first woman
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President of the United States” and she was “thrilled” by the progress Mrs. Clinton was making. A representative for Ms. Sandberg declined to comment.
The leaked Podesta emails also showed that Google had loaned its jet to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign staff on several occasions. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, publicly supported Mrs. Clinton, and the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, Stephanie Hannon, and chief product officer, Osi Imeokparia, were former Google executives.
The Obama administration also built deep links with Google, where 22 former White House officials worked, while 31 Google executives went to work for the White House or were appointed to federal advisory boards, including the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, according to a study by the Campaign for Accountability.
In total, nearly 250 people shuttled from government service to Google or vice versa during the Obama administration.
The same study found that Google representatives attended White House meetings more than once a week, on average, from the start of the Obama presidency through October 2015. During that same period, Google lobbyists visited the White House 128 times, the most of any lobbyist during that time.
“What Google and Facebook lost with a Trump victory is cronyism,” Mr. Motley said.
Google and Facebook have increased their lobbying efforts over the past few months as Congress scrutinizes their power. Facebook spent $285 million on lobbyists from July through September, a 41 percent increase over the same period last year. Google spent $417 million during those three months, including hiring Republican lobbyists Jochum Shore & Trossevin PC to fight a bill that would penalize tech companies for content that promotes sex trafficking. The companies are fighting the bill because it weakens some of their legal protections.
Both Republicans and Democrats have come to respect the power and reach of the tech giants. Although Mr. Trump’s Twitter account gets the most attention, his campaign said it was Facebook that helped them win the presidential election.
Brad Parscale, who ran Mr. Trump’s digital team, said in a recent interview with CBS’s “60 minutes” that he asked Facebook employees to be “embedded inside our offices”
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to help craft carefully tailored ads he said reached voters they never could have with television ads.
“I think Donald Trump won, but I think Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on,” he told CBS.
Patrick Hynes, an adviser to the 2008 McCain and 2012 Romney Republican presidential campaigns, said he expects social media companies to double down on their support for Democrats in the 2020 election. He predicted efforts to silence Mr. Trump and others, similar to Twitter’s attempt to ban Ms. Blackburn’s ad.
“The social media companies will engage in full-scale censorship with the approval or rejection of advertising content in the next presidential election,” he said. “Trump’s advertising will be critiqued in a way that they will not do to the Democrats.”
State Races By the Numbers…
NEW JERSEY
October 25, 2017 - Dem Has 20-Pt Likely Voter Lead In New Jersey Gov Race, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Huge Gender Gap As Women Back Murphy By 36 Points
A huge lead among women propels Democrat Phil Murphy to a 57 - 37 percent lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno among likely voters in the race for New Jersey governor, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
This compares to a 58 - 33 percent Murphy lead over Guadagno, in a September 13 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.
In today's result, women back the Democrat 65 - 29 percent while men are divided with 49 percent for Murphy and 45 percent for Guadagno.
Murphy leads 92 - 4 percent among Democrats and 52 - 39 percent among independent voters. Republicans go to Guadagno 89 - 8 percent.
With 13 days until the election, 83 percent of likely voters who name a candidate say their mind is made up, while 14 percent say they might change their mind.
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Murphy gets a 44 - 34 percent favorability rating among likely voters, compared to Guadagno's negative 33 - 41 percent favorability.
Taxes are the most important issue in deciding how they will vote in the governor's race, 36 percent of likely voters say, while 14 percent list the economy. Another 11 percent cite health care and 9 percent say education.
"Lt. Gov. Guadagno could not be in a worse situation. Phil Murphy leads her among most voter groups and the state's electorate gives her an unfavorable rating overall," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
"What's more, politics is a team game. Guadagno's GOP teammates - President Donald Trump, with a 33 percent job approval rating, and Gov. Christopher Christie, with his 15 percent approval rating - are clearly pulling her down."
"The way Republicans occasionally win in blue states such as New Jersey is by attracting some soft Democrats and dominating among independent voters. But only 4 percent of Democrats say they will vote for Guadagno, compared to 8 percent of Republicans backing Murphy. And his double-digit lead among independent voters makes it difficult to find a realistic path to a Guadagno victory."
Guadagno's role as lieutenant governor to Gov. Christopher Christie is heavier baggage than Murphy's work at Goldman Sachs, New Jersey likely voters say.
For 51 percent of these voters, Guadagno's role as lieutenant governor to Gov. Christopher Christie has a negative impact on their opinion of her. Another 10 percent say it has a positive impact and 37 percent say it doesn't matter.
Murphy's 23 years at Goldman Sachs creates a negative impact on the opinion of 30 percent of likely voters. For 6 percent, it has a positive impact and 61 percent say it doesn't matter.
President Trump, Gov. Christie Approval Ratings
New Jersey likely voters disapprove 65 - 33 percent of the job President Donald Trump is doing. Republicans approve 80 - 19 percent and white voters with no college degree are divided, as 47 percent approve and 52 percent disapprove. Every other party, gender, education and racial group disapproves by wide margins.
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Gov. Christie's historic low approval ratings continue, a negative 15 - 80 percent today. Even Republican likely voters disapprove 57 - 37 percent.
Voters disapprove 49 - 31 percent of the job U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez is doing and say 59 - 19 percent that he does not deserve to be reelected next year.
New Jersey likely voters approve 61 - 32 percent of the job U.S. Sen. Cory Booker is doing.
From October 19 - 24, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,049 New Jersey likely voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.2 percentage points, including the design effect. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones.
The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts public opinion surveys nationwide, and statewide polls in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado as a public service and for research.
CALIFORNIA
An internal poll from Harley Rouda, one of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's (R-Calif.) Democratic challengers, shows Rohrabacher and Rouda locked in a close head-to-head matchup more than a year ahead of Election Day.
The Tulchin Research survey shows Rohrabacher getting 48 percent of the vote to Rouda's 44 percent of the vote, with another 8 percent undecided.
The poll does not address the other Democrats seeking to take on Rohrabacher, who will compete with the incumbent in an all-party, top-two primary next year. Hans Keirstead, a stem cell researcher who led Democrats in fundraising last quarter, has received a donation from DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan's leadership PAC, and the field also includes Omar Siddiqui, an attorney who loaned his campaign more than $250,000 of his own money.
On the generic ballot, Democrats lead by a 2-point margin — 42 percent to 40 percent — in a traditionally Republican district that Hillary Clinton carried over Trump by about 2 points in 2016.
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Forty-four percent of those polled view Rohrabacher unfavorably, while 39 percent view him favorably. And President Donald Trump's ratings are lower, with 58 percent viewing him negatively and 41 percent viewing him positively.
Tulchin Research interviewed 401 likely general election voters from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5. The margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
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FLORIDA
Senate race between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson appears to be a virtual tie
Nearly a year out from an expected match-up between Democrat U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott for the U.S. Senate, a new poll shows the race appears to be a virtual tie, with non-partisans leaning toward Nelson.
The survey of registered voters expected to vote in November 2018 found that 37 percent say they plan to vote for Nelson in what may be one of the most high profile races in the nation, while 36 percent plan to vote for Scott, the termed-out governor who is expected to challenge the three-term incumbent.
Not everyone is watching, however. Pollsters found that 20 percent of voters surveyed Oct. 11 through 17 don’t know who their choice will be.
“Like most statewide races in Florida, the senate race between Nelson and Scott is going to be too close to call all the way until Election Day,” said Michael Binder, faculty director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at UNF.
Voter intensity among party affiliates is nearly tied, with 66 percent of registered Democrats saying they would vote for Nelson, and 68 percent of the registered Republicans saying they will vote for Scott. But when it comes to nonparty affiliated voters and other partisans, Nelson has the edge with 32 percent leaning toward him, compared to the 28 percent leaning toward Scott.
Scott, who is coming off widespread television exposure from Hurricane Irma, appears to have the edge when it comes to job approval ratings, however.
He received a favorable job approval rating from 59 percent of voters surveyed, while 28 percent disapprove of his job performance. That is a reversal from February when Scott, who has spent nearly all of his seven years in public office with job approval ratings below 50 percent, had a favorability rating of only 46 percent.
By contrast, Nelson received a favorable approval rating of 35 percent from those surveyed, down from 42 percent in February. While voters appear to know less about the job Nelson is doing, only 15 percent disapprove.
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“The one major concern for Democrats has to be the public’s lack of awareness of Nelson,” Binder said. “When a three-term sitting U.S. senator has almost half of the sample unable to assess his job approval, you have a problem.”
Florida is also deeply divided over the job President Donald Trump is doing.
While 59 percent of those surveyed strongly or somewhat disapprove of how Trump is handling his job, only 37 percent approve. But the divide lies between parties as the vast majority of registered Democrats — 91 percent — disapprove, while 72 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance. Voters with no party affiliation, however, disapprove of the job the president is doing by 63 percent, with only 33 percent approving.
“Donald Trump is just as divisive in Florida as he is across the rest of the country, but as long as he maintains support from Republicans, I wouldn’t expect any major changes in his administration,” Binder said.
The poll of 834 registered voters was conducted Oct. 11 through Oct.17 by live callers via the telephone and in English and Spanish.
Voters were also asked to express their opinions about Confederate statues. While only 40 percent of respondents believe the statues should remain in place, the divide was greatest along party lines. Sixty-six percent of registered Republicans said they believe the statues should stay, while 76 percent of Democrats said they should be moved to museums or moved completely.
“Floridians should take note of the partisan divisions on this issue,” Binder said. “Republicans dominate the legislature, and the Republican voters don’t want the statues moved; this presents a real dilemma for legislators facing public pressure to do something about this issue.”
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GOP Divided
By the Numbers:
Do you approve or disapprove of the way that the United States Congress is handling its job? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Approve 8% Tot al Disapprove 61% Strongly approve 3% Somewhat approve 5% Neither approve nor 15% disapprove Somewhat disapprove 22% Strongly disapprove 39% Not Sure 17%
Do you have a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of the following groups in Congress? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Republicans in Democrats in Congress Congress Tot al Favorable 22% 34% Tot al Unfavorable 59% 47% Very Favorable 5% 10% Somewhat Favorable 17% 24% Somewhat Unfavorable 22% 16% Very Unfavorable 37% 31% Don’t Know 19% 19%
Poll: GOP voters want McConnell to step down
A majority of GOP voters say Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should resign as majority leader, according to a new poll.
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The survey from Harvard-Harris Poll also found that the Republican Party’s approval rating has hit a new low, amid widespread intraparty dissatisfaction with congressional leadership.
The poll found that 56 percent of Republicans say McConnell should resign as majority leader. McConnell has the worst approval rating of any politician in the survey, at 16 percent favorable and 52 unfavorable.
The frustration among Republican voters with McConnell and what they view as the Senate’s inability to deliver on long-standing GOP campaign promises has also dragged the Republican Party’s approval rating to new lows.
Twenty-nine percent approve of the job Republicans are doing, with only a slim majority of GOP voters — 53 percent — saying they approve. That stands in contrast to the Democratic Party, which has a 39 percent approval rating and is viewed favorably by 68 percent of its voters.
Only 39 percent of Republicans say GOP leaders in Congress represent their views, while 40 percent say their leaders have views that are more liberal than their own.
Sixty-eight percent of Republicans say GOP leaders are dividing the party, and 76 percent say the leaders have fallen out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Republican voters.
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and his allies are seeking to capitalize on that anti-establishment sentiment by recruiting challengers to every Republican incumbent up for reelection in 2018, with the exception of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas).
Bannon is asking the candidates he meets with to oppose McConnell as majority leader. But the Breitbart News chairman polls as his Senate nemesis does, with only 16 percent having a favorable view of him and 47 percent viewing him negatively.
Among Republicans, though, 61 percent say they support Bannon’s “movement to oust Republicans who fail to support tax cuts, tough immigration policies, and the repeal of Obamacare.” Fifty-six percent say Bannon’s efforts will make the party stronger.
President Trump has largely escaped the ire of GOP voters. While his approval rating clocked in at 42 percent in October, which is low for a president this early in his first term, Trump’s job approval stands at 80 percent among Republicans.
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“The Republican Party is at war with its traditional leadership and Trump and Bannon are winning in this unprecedented schism,” said Harvard-Harris Poll co-director Mark Penn. “The Republican elites appear broadly out of touch with the base of the party — it explains why Trump so easily beat all the establishment candidates in 2016. But they need each other, and unless they find common directions in tax reform and on investigations, they will both weaken the other.”
Still, Republicans are split over efforts to move the party further to the right, with only 51 percent saying it’s a winning move. Forty-two percent say they’re worried that right-leaning movements could hurt the party’s chances of winning the next presidential election, with 31 percent saying it will help and 27 saying it would have no impact.
That’s the argument McConnell and his allies are making as they seek to reelect GOP incumbents and squash the insurgent candidates they fear could win primaries but lose winnable general election races against Democrats.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” McConnell called Bannon and his allies “specialists in defeating Republican candidates.”
“That’s what this intraparty skirmish is about,” McConnell said. “Our goal is to nominate people in the primaries next year who can actually win, and the people who win will be the ones who enact the president’s agenda.”
The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund spent heavily on the Alabama Senate GOP primary in support of incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), only to see him trounced by the Breitbart-backed candidate, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.
McConnell and his allies, including GOP strategist Karl Rove, who oversees the big- spending super PAC American Crossroads GPS, are furious with Bannon for sowing what they view as needless division and endangering the party’s slim majority in the upper chamber.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last week, Rove accused Bannon of waging a “jihad against incumbent Republicans” and trashed his candidates as a “collection of misfits and ne’er-do-wells.”
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McConnell’s allies are also pushing back at the notion that he is as unpopular as polling suggests or that his leadership has become a flashpoint for GOP Senate hopefuls.
In interviews, McConnell’s supporters have argued that national approval numbers are meaningless for congressional leaders.
Furthermore, they’re frustrated that McConnell has become a point of issue among the GOP’s Senate hopefuls and puzzled about why prospective candidates would be taking positions on hypothetical leadership votes before they’ve even been elected.
The Hill reached out to about two dozen Republican campaigns for Senate, and none of the candidates responded to say they would support McConnell for leader if elected.
“I’m not going to be on the ballot on any of the states, and I don’t think the candidates who are running need to take a position on me,” McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.” “People in those states are interested in what the candidates can do for them and for the country. ”
The Harvard-Harris Poll online survey of 2,159 registered voters was conducted between Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. The partisan breakdown is 36 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 28 percent independent and 4 percent other.
The Harvard-Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard-Harris Poll throughout 2017.
Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard-Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.
Trump relishes fighting enemies in his own party
The president shows no restraint going after fellow Republicans he perceives as opposed to his agenda – even when it's not entirely clear what it is.
Senators left Tuesday’s lunch with President Donald Trump relieved. He read from notecards. He praised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He spoke about his
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brother’s death from an overdose. He didn’t diverge into his usual tangents and stuck to orthodox positions. He boasted less than usual.
“I was really impressed with him today,” said Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch.
But the rest of the day was filled with intra-party skirmishes. Trump spent the morning whacking retiring Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker on Twitter, calling him “incompetent” – drawing a sharp rebuke from Corker, who said he regretted supporting Trump. In the afternoon, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake took to the Senate floor to announce his own retirement and decry the president, drawing a stinging retort from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said she thought it was “probably a good move” for Flake to go.
Those who know Trump best frequently joke at the notion of a “pivot” and the idea that he could ever stick to notecards or a teleprompter for long. They laugh at the idea that chief of staff John Kelly – or anyone else – would instill discipline in a president who likes chaos, sees his success as important above all else and likes a good brawl.
Trump has told advisers that he likes having defined enemies – and that he doesn’t see many Republicans any differently than he sees the Democrats. “If they’re not doing what he wants, he doesn’t really care if there is an R or D behind their name,” one adviser said. “If they attack him, he swings back.”
Another person close to Trump said: “He looks at himself as a member of the Trump Party.”
“I’m not going to blame myself,” Trump said recently of GOP failures.
Former strategist Steve Bannon, White House social media director Dan Scavino and other aides remind Trump that he remains strong with his base in the polls and that Trump’s numbers in Arizona are much higher than Flake’s, according to White House and campaign polls.
“If the story unfolds about turbulence within his own party, I think the president is totally comfortable with that,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.
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In some ways, both the Senate and the White House are at a crossroads, roiled by low approval numbers, distrust and a general sense that something must get done – for fear of everyone getting kicked out.
“In the end, if we don’t get things done, we won’t be far behind Senator Flake,” said North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who leads the Freedom Caucus, in an interview. “When you go home, you realize that our voters think it is all of our faults.”
Members in Congress wish Trump would work quietly, fight less and learn some patience. But the president doesn’t like the slow pace of Congress, which doesn’t like the early-morning tweets and personal attacks from the president. And Trump is always going to swing back. “I sometimes wish the president would ignore some of the stuff,” Hatch said. “But he stands up for himself, and I kind of like that.”
Trump’s top aides and advisers are trying to balance his insatiable desire to fight and be seen as an outsider to Washington with the need to pass a legislative agenda, so Republicans don’t lose the majority.
After Corker said earlier this month Trump wasn’t fit for the presidency, White House aides called McConnell advisers and other members to test the temperature of the rest of the conference.
Aides like Kelly, legislative affairs head Marc Short and Vice President Mike Pence try to take a lighter approach with legislators. Short has called Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul and others to ask what they need for their support. And even as Trump has mocked Corker, other top Trump aides have reached out with conciliatory gestures, White House officials said.
“We’re really making progress on tax reform,” one senior White House official said earlier this month, after a day-long feud between Trump and Corker. “This is not helpful for us.”
Trump tells aides he knows he needs votes on the Hill, where Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Senate. He called several GOP lawmakers last week and said he’d back their campaigns.
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And behind closed doors, Trump often strikes a different tone with lawmakers. He praises South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and others he has mocked publicly.
He gently ribbed Paul at Tuesday’s lunch for not supporting him on health care or the budget.
“We’ll have your vote on taxes, though, right, Rand?” he said, according to one person in the room.
Paul said yes, according to people in the room.
Many Republicans in the Senate share critical feelings of Trump. But after this summer, McConnell and many senators decided it was better off to stop the personal feuding and squabbling over daily stories, ignore Trump’s outbursts and try to get things done.
“Most Republicans have come to the conclusion that setting aside any personal differences for the pursuit of an agenda is where they should be focused,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The irony of both Sen. Corker and Sen. Flake’s news today is that Senate Republicans by and large are more on the same page with the president than perhaps any time previously.”
Hatch and Holmes agreed that Flake and Corker will likely remain outliers openly criticizing the president. Others who intend to remain are likely to follow the footsteps of Texas Republican Sen.
John Cornyn, who was careful not to get crosswise of Trump on Monday when asked about the president’s shifting positions on health care subsidies. “I’m with the president,” he said, then threw up his hands in the air when asked what exactly that meant.
Trump’s day of unity turns into GOP crackup
Trump wanted to rally Senate Republicans around tax reform — but found himself being condemned by members of his own party.
President Donald Trump strode into the Senate GOP lunch Tuesday in what Republicans hoped would be a unified show of force as the party launched its ambitious tax push.
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Instead, the day was bookended with brutal critiques of Trump’s leadership from two adversaries from his own party freshly liberated to speak their minds — overwhelming any attempts to seal the cracks in a deeply fractured Republican Party.
Trump reignited his feud with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee, who ramped up his criticisms of his onetime ally by saying the president will be most remembered for “the debasement of our nation.” As that battle seemed to settle down, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) abruptly announced he would retire and laid into Trump in a searing assessment from the Senate chamber: “Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.”
“None of this is normal. And what do we as United States senators have to say about it?” Flake said in his speech. “I have children and grandchildren to answer to. And so … I will not be complicit or silent.”
The day wasn’t supposed to be like this. And it underscores deepening Republican fears that Trump’s personal spats will undermine GOP priorities, most notably tax reform.
Trump had been mending fences in his oft-tenuous relationship with GOP senators, starting last week by dining with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and inviting members of the powerful Senate Finance Committee to the White House. During Tuesday’s lunch, Trump was exceedingly complimentary — especially toward McConnell — on the Senate’s confirmation of judges, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
The lunch, Trump’s first visit with Senate Republicans on their turf at the Capitol, was supposed to continue that sense of momentum and unity as the GOP gears up in earnest for tax reform.
But rather than looking forward, Trump talked largely about his own accomplishments in his first year and declined to give much direction on the nitty-gritty of policy, particularly on divisive issues on which lawmakers had been clamoring for more direction.
There wasn’t much from Trump on what a tax overhaul should look like except that it should be focused on the middle class. “He said wealthy people don’t need the help,” recalled Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, “but we need to get jobs back in
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this country, which means we need to deal with the business rates, the corporate tax and pass-through rates.”
But Cornyn added: “We know what the job is, what we have to do. It wasn’t a whole lot about taxes.”
Rather than talk specifics, Trump’s message on taxes, according to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), was more: Let’s get it done.
On health care, it was more of the same: Trump praised Sen. Lamar Alexander (R- Tenn.) — who has crafted a bipartisan bill to stabilize Obamacare markets — yet didn’t say whether he actually backs the legislation, senators said.
And inside the lunch, it was as if the caustic spat between a president and a powerful committee chairman of his own party hadn’t even happened. Corker and Trump had no interaction during the hourlong lunch, senators said, and no other lawmaker brought up the elephant in the room. Trump and Flake didn’t talk during the lunch, either.
Also left unmentioned: Senate Republicans’ ongoing battle with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has vowed to try to unseat nearly all Senate GOP incumbents on the ballot this cycle.
The lunch agenda was largely focused, the mood mostly businesslike and even, at times, lighthearted. Trump called at least two dozen of the Republicans by their first names, adding to the cordial tone, Roberts said.
Trump ribbed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — who has bucked Republicans on the budget and Obamacare repeal — and asked him, “But you’re going to be with us on taxes, right, Rand?”
The senator responded: “I’m with you on taxes,” according to the source familiar with the lunch.
In one unusual moment, Trump asked for a show of hands from Republicans on whom they favored as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, senators said. Trump also seemed to step away slightly from his hard-line immigration stance — Cornyn said the president remarked that his long-prized border wall could be a fence in some places, particularly where it’s important to be able to see through to the other side.
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“It was a very positive meeting,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “Nobody called anybody an ignorant slut or anything.”
Trump tweeted late Tuesday, “So nice being with Republican Senators today. Multiple standing ovations!”
But outside the lunch, Republicans were again overcome with questions about the internal GOP feud — which was inflamed further Tuesday with Flake’s retirement announcement and accompanying floor speech.
Hounded with numerous questions about senators’ criticism of Trump, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Flake and Corker as “petty” and said their respective decisions to retire were “right.”
Some of Flake’s closest allies leapt to his defense.
“Jeff Flake is entitled to say whatever the hell he wants to say,” said frequent Trump antagonist Sen. John McCain, clearly emotional over his fellow Arizona Republican’s decision not to run for a second Senate term.
Corker added: “I hate to see somebody like Jeff leave, I really do.”
“But I also believe that when you come up here in more of a missional way, that you’re here for a period of time, you’re able to speak about things with I think a clearer voice than otherwise,” Corker said. “And Jeff’s done that the entire time. He did it from Day One.”
Most other Republicans hesitated to wade into the GOP civil war.
McConnell deflected multiple questions about Corker and other Trump critics during a news conference following the lunch, dismissing the intra-GOP fight as “distractions.” And Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune, like other GOP leaders, refused to criticize Trump.
Instead, the South Dakota Republican made the same “bottom line” argument that GOP lawmakers have made since Trump was sworn in. They may not like Trump, and his public spats with Corker and other Republicans may infuriate them, but he is the president and they need him in order to pass legislation.
When asked whether he agreed with Flake’s assessment, Thune wouldn’t go there.
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“That’s his conclusion. Mine is that it doesn’t matter what I think,” Thune said. “We’ve got a job to do, and we’ve got to try to get it passed for the American people.”
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who sat at a table with Trump during the lunch, said, “We were talking policy.”
“There’s always distractions going on,” she added. “I try to focus on the policy.”
Flake announces retirement as he denounces Trump
The Arizona lawmaker was one of the most vulnerable Republican senators up for reelection in 2018.
Embattled Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake will retire after his current term expires, he announced on Tuesday in a decision that further roils a 2018 Senate landscape marked by multiple Republican retirements.
Flake was one of the most vulnerable Republican senators up for reelection next year. A vocal critic of President Donald Trump throughout and since the 2016 campaign, Flake said it became clear that that opposition would make it impossible for him to get through a Republican primary.
He took to the Senate floor to deliver a full-throated denunciation of Trump.
"We must never adjust to the coarseness of our dialogue, with the tone set up at the top," Flake said. "We must never accept the deadly sundering of our country. The personal attacks, threats against principles and freedoms and institutions, and flagrant disregard for decency."
"Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified," Flake continued. "And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy."
Flake’s criticism of the president had damaged his standing with the GOP base without winning over Democrats or independents, and his poll numbers had been in decline since the beginning of the year. Public polls had him trailing former state Sen. Kelli Ward in a GOP primary and Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in a general election.
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Ward is an archconservative who recently won the endorsement of former White House strategist Steve Bannon, but mainstream Republicans consider her unelectable in a general election. Sinema, a progressive-turned-moderate with an inspiring life story and an impressive campaign war chest, is the likely Democratic candidate in the contest.
“Steve Bannon adds another scalp to his collection,” said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to the pro-Trump nonprofit Great America Alliance and a top ally of Bannon’s.
The White House also indicated it wasn't sad to see one of Trump's most prominent GOP adversaries leave the Senate.
"I haven’t spoken with him directly since the announcement by Sen. Flake, but I think that, based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, it’s probably a good move,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked for Trump's reaction to Flake's decision.
Establishment Republicans said they hope Flake’s retirement will increase their chances of defeating Ward, allowing them to unite behind an establishment candidate without a history of attacking the president, who remains sacrosanct with GOP primary voters.
It's not clear who else might enter the GOP primary, though operatives mentioned state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, Rep. Martha McSally and Rep. David Schweikert as possibilities who could unite both wings of the party. One top Republican strategist said Gov. Doug Ducey would likely play a leading role in finding a candidate.
Flake refused to endorse Trump during the 2016 election and wrote a book criticizing the president as insufficiently conservative. The continued potshots at the president eroded Flake’s own support among GOP primary voters, but he refused to back down and had begun hiring campaign staff, raising additional money and preparing his reelection bid.
"We’ve taken a banner that is not familiar to us as Republicans. And I don’t know how long this will last,” Flake told POLITICO in an interview last week, referring to the Trump-led GOP.
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Flake informed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) of his decision earlier Tuesday. “I knew that he was thinking about it but very sorry it’s happened," McCain said. "He’s one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known.”
Democrats echoed that sentiment, speaking to Flake's popularity in the Senate among members of both parties.
"He is one of the finest human beings I've met in politics. He is moral, upright and strong, and he will be missed by just about everybody in the Senate," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.
Flake's retirement upends what was pegged as one of the most closely watched Senate races in 2018, but it's unclear exactly what the effect will be.
Steven Law, president of the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, predicted that Flake’s departure would guarantee Ward’s defeat.
"The one political upshot of Sen. Flake’s decision today is that Steve Bannon’s hand- picked candidate, conspiracy theorist Kelli Ward, will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018,” Law said.
A top Republican strategist said Flake’s team had been polling the race since the beginning of the year and had repeatedly found no path to victory in either the GOP primary or the general election. About a month ago, Flake’s team delivered that news to the senator, the strategist said, and Flake had been considering retirement ever since.
“He basically lost to all comers,” the GOP strategist said. “There wasn’t a Republican or a Democrat you could put next to him on the ballot who he wouldn’t lose to.”
Flake’s major problem was with the center of the electorate. Independents were either unfamiliar with Flake or disliked him. While McCain shared Flake’s problems with the right wing of his own party, independents adored McCain, helping him easily win reelection last year over then-Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
If Flake's floor speech — and retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker's scathing criticism of the president earlier Tuesday — was any indication, Trump could be in for a long year of vocal opposition from prominent members of his own party before they leave the Senate.
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"I'm aware that there's a segment of my party that believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect," Flake said. "The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined, and as alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters — the notion that we should say or do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior — is a historic and profoundly misguided."
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Immigration
By the Numbers:
How likely is it that Congress will pass immigrations reform legislation? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Likely 41% Tot al Unlikely 38% Very likely 11% Somewhat likely 29% Somewhat unlikely 22% Very unlikely 16% Not sure 22%
How important is immigration to you? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Im port ant 80% Tot al N ot Im port ant 20% Very Important 46% Somewhat Important 34% Not very Important 14% Unimportant 6%
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling immigration? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Approve 40% Tot al Disapprove 48% Strongly approve 24% Somewhat approve 16% Somewhat disapprove 9% Strongly disapprove 39% No opinion 12%
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Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling immigration? Reuters/Ipsos, October 20-24, 2017, n=2,352 Americans online Tot al Approve 39% Tot al Disapprove 55%% Strongly approve 19% Somewhat approve 10% Lean towards approve 9% Lean towards 7% disapprove Somewhat disapprove 8% Strongly disapprove 40% Don’t know 6%
Top border official says illegal immigration at 45-year low - Credits Trump ‘messaging’ for success in cutting flow
The acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday that illegal immigration across the southwest border will be at a 45-year when final 2017 numbers are fully tallied, and he credited President Trump with the success.
Kevin K. McAleenan, who is acting commissioner and has been nominated to take the job permanently, said that while the numbers look good, he still wants to see parts of President Trump’s 70-point immigration enforcement plan go into effect to make still more progress.
The border success this year is all the more surprising because fiscal year 2017 started off terribly, with a massive new surge of illegal immigrants caught trying to sneak in during the final months of the Obama administration.
But after Mr. Trump took office the numbers dropped dramatically, in what Mr. McAleenan said “was due to very clear messaging” by the new president that immigration laws would be enforced.
“We are fully tallying our 2017 results but in all likelihood it’s going to be the lowest level of illegal crossings between ports of entry in over 45 years,” the acting chief told the Senate Finance Committee.
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The number of people caught at the border is believed to be a yardstick for the overall flow, so fewer people caught means fewer people getting through, border officials say.
Those that are still coming, however, are increasingly difficult to dislodge from the U.S., having learned to exploit protections in U.S. law to gain tentative status and work permits allowing them to gain a foothold here.
Mr. Trump earlier this month proposed a 70-point plan designed to cut down on those avenues, including reforming the asylum system to make it tougher to lodge a protection claim.
Mr. McAleenan said those are the kinds of changes needed to make sure this year’s border gains are lasting.
“The clear intent to enforce immigration law has resulted in a significant reduction of crossings, but there are still some fundamental aspects of the system that need to be addressed,” he testified.
The acting commissioner also said his agency is making progress on tracking visitors to make sure they leave when they’re supposed to. The government collects information on arrivals, but is more than two decades delinquent in the goal of tracking departures.
Pilot programs are being tried at airports, but Mr. McAleenan said they will soon begin testing at land ports of entry, alerting foreigners departing the U.S. that they need to stop and give biometric information before the leave.
“We’re not going to forget the land border,” the acting chief said.
Republicans quietly craft Dreamers deal - GOP senators are getting closer to an immigration agreement that might pass muster with both Democrats and Donald Trump.
Key Senate Republicans have begun privately discussing the contours of an immigration plan to shield the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who will lose work permits and deportation protections starting early next year.
Preliminary talks show that influential GOP senators are eager to devise a legislative fix for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that could pass muster with both
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Democrats and President Donald Trump, who said he will start winding down the Obama-era program in March to force lawmakers to come up with a permanent DACA measure with significant border security and enforcement provisions attached.
In an interview, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, has convened a working group on immigration that includes himself and GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and James Lankford of Oklahoma, as well as other lawmakers. Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Jeff Flake of Arizona also are among the Republicans who have been engaged in the talks, according to sources.
“There’s a solution to be had there,” Cornyn said. “But we just need to get on with it.”
A bipartisan DACA deal is in no way imminent. Democrats are waiting for Republicans to offer their list of demands in exchange for legalizing Dreamers. And an immigration package that gets through the Senate, even with GOP sweeteners, may have trouble in the more conservative House.
But some outlines of an agreement are becoming clearer. For instance, the senators have all but ruled out including a mandatory workplace verification system known as E-Verify in a final DACA agreement, according to multiple lawmakers engaged in the talks.
Ideas that do remain in contention among this circle of Republicans include beefed-up border security provisions, limiting some chain migration and measures that one senator described as a “down payment” on shifting the U.S. immigration laws into a merit-based system, according to GOP senators. A spokesman said Grassley is gathering suggestions from other Senate Republicans on not only a DACA fix but enforcement provisions to “address the root cause of illegal immigration.”
“It’s a Rubik’s cube with five dimensions,” Perdue said.
The quiet movement toward a DACA deal comes amid a significant public rift between the parties — particularly between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats — over the fate of nearly 700,000 current DACA beneficiaries.
Trump appeared to strike a tentative agreement in September with Democratic leaders that would pair modest border security measures (and no border wall)
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withpermanent status for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. But his administration has since taken a sharp turn on its DACA demands — unveiling an extensive list of hard-line immigration provisions that are nonstarters with Democrats and even many Republicans.
“Most of [the Dreamers] went through our system. Many of them don't speak the language of their country because they've never been to their country. We are going to try and solve that,” Trump said in a Fox News interview this month. “In order to solve that, we want a wall and we want great border security.”
Behind the scenes, Senate Republicans involved in the talks essentially ignore some of Trump’s top demands — the workplace verification system, for example — yet are finding other ways to accommodate the White House’s immigration wish list to appease conservatives but not alienate Democrats.
A handful of Republicans have run ideas by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Senate Democrat who first wrote legislation that gives Dreamers a pathway to citizenship in 2001. Durbin and Graham have been pitching the latest iteration of the DREAM Act, although Graham says he’ll need to secure some concessions from Democrats to lock down enough GOP votes. The DREAM Act, for instance, covers a much broader population than the estimated 690,000 immigrants who currently hold DACA permits.
Graham wants to begin transforming the U.S. immigration system to one based primarily on economic needs rather than family ties, without slashing the number of green cards as some conservative senators have proposed.
Legislation from Tillis and Lankford tries to address so-called chain migration concerns by barring Dreamers who benefit from their bill from sponsoring relatives until they obtain U.S. citizenship. Under current law, green card holders can sponsor spouses and children for permanent residency.
“We gotta deal with that issue somehow and we just can’t single them out,” Graham said. “So we’re gonna have to start making a down payment on moving toward a merit-based [system], a down payment toward rebalancing green cards.”
Even though they’re aware Republicans will want some concessions, Democrats are wary about accommodating an extensive list of GOP demands and prefer to abide by the narrower deal that Trump seemingly agreed to last month.
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“We cannot put comprehensive immigration reform on the backs of these kids,” Durbin said in an interview. “That is unfair and the long list of things that Republicans want to do include many things that need to be saved for a later debate on a comprehensive bill.”
Still, Durbin expressed some optimism: “I think we’re at critical mass here in terms of the number of Republican senators once we reach an agreement. We haven’t reached an agreement yet.”
Several of the GOP senators involved in the immigration discussions are fine with punting negotiations over a nationwide mandatory E-Verify system, particularly since Democrats will not accept any policy provision that will help identify other immigrants here illegally.
Republicans also acknowledge that insisting on E-Verify will only set off another complicated negotiation over agricultural worker visas and want to keep the DACA talks tightly contained.
“There are large segments of some important sectors, like agriculture, where we need to do E-Verify with immigration reform to make sure that there’s an adequate legal workforce,” Cornyn said. “And if we start adding too much stuff to the DACA- border security approach, then we get back into comprehensive immigration reform and nothing happens.”
But there are other interior enforcement provisions that Democrats — who will reject not only E-Verify but a dramatic boost in immigration enforcement agents, another Trump demand — would find palatable.
Flake is pitching his own measure that would combine a DACA fix with about $1.6 billion in more border security and language making it easier for immigrants affiliated with gangs to be deported. The veteran immigration deal-maker has shared his plan not only with Democrats but with Vice President Mike Pence, he said in a recent interview.
“That is something we can do, we can achieve,” Durbin said of the gang-related provisions in Flake’s legislation. “But the interior enforcement we’re worried about is more ICE agents swooping up people and arresting them who’ve been here for years, causing no problems.”
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Trump signs new order restricting refugees from 11 countries
President Trump imposed new restrictions on refugees from 11 mostly-Muslim target countries Tuesday, saying they still pose too much of a danger to be admitted without a compelling national interest.
Mr. Trump issued a new executive order re-starting general worldwide refugee processing, updating the policy after a 120-day pause he ordered earlier this year as part of his “extreme vetting” policy.
But refugees from 11 countries — reportedly Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — will still be tightly restricted, with those applying having to prove they would contribute to the national interests of the U.S. in order to get an exemption.
The new order updates Mr. Trump’s original travel ban, which included the 120-day pause, while the State Department and Homeland Security did a full review of the refugee program.
“The U.S. refugee admissions program takes seriously its commitment to ensure the security and integrity of the program,” said Jennifer B. Higgins, associate director for refugee and asylum operations at USCIS.
She and other administration officials declined to identify the 11 countries, but officials said they came from an interagency process known as SAO.
The new move comes just a month after Mr. Trump announced a major cut to the number of refugees the U.S. could accept in fiscal year 2018, reducing the cap from 110,000 to just 45,000.
Immigrant and refugee advocates, already angry at the lower number, said the new restrictions Tuesday were disappointing and would hurt needy people.
“This will add months, or potentially years, to the most urgent cases — the majority of which are women and children in heinous circumstances who need the permanent and proven solution of resettlement,” said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president at the International Rescue Committee.
The administration briefed reporters on the new order Tuesday afternoon, but said many of the details are too sensitive to divulge. They refused to name the 11
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countries, but said they were determined by an interagency process that dates back to 2001, with the most recent list dating back to 2015, during the Obama administration.
“It is those individuals we believe a more in-depth review is needed to assess the current threat,” a senior official said.
Reuters reported the names of the 11 countries that were on the list as of that previous update.
Mr. Trump during last year’s campaign had been harshly critical of U.S. refugee admissions, saying it marked a vulnerability in security.
The issue became more acute in 2015 when then-President Barack Obama set a goal of admitting 10,000 refugees from Syria, despite concerns voiced by his own top security officials that the U.S. couldn’t properly vet them.
Mr. Trump promised to fix that problem in office.
In January he issued his first “extreme vetting” executive order, creating his temporary travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries and also imposing the 180- day halt on all refugees. Courts blocked that original policy and then severely limited a second attempt.
Last month Mr. Trump announced a revised travel ban, and Tuesday’s refugee announcement fills out the third iteration of extreme vetting.
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Tax Reform
By the Numbers:
Do you think Donald Trump has a plan for tax reform? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Yes, he has a plan 43% No, he does not have a plan 32% Not sure 21%
How likely is it that Congress will pass tax reform legislation? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Likely 48% Tot al Unlikely 29% Very likely 15% Somewhat likely 33% Somewhat unlikely 19% Very unlikely 10% Not sure 22%
Do you favor or oppose cutting tax rates for everyone? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Tot al Favor 55% Tot al Oppose 26% Favor strongly 28% Favor somewhat 27% Oppose somewhat 14% Oppose strongly 12% Not sure 19%
If the tax reductions caused an increase in the deficit, would you still favor reducing taxes across the board, or not? (Asked of those who favor cutting tax rates for everyone) The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=794 US Adults
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Yes 47% No 20% Not sure 34%
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Do you favor or oppose cutting tax rates for everyone? (Combined) The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Favor, even if it increases the deficit 25% Favor, but only if it does not increase in the 11% deficit Oppose 26% Not sure 38%
When you file your taxes, do you itemize deductions or do you take the standard deduction? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults Itemize deductions 25% Standard deductions 43% Not sure 20% Prefer not to say 12%
Do you support or oppose eliminating XXX if Congress raises the standard deduction? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults The deduction for The home mortgage state and local taxes interest deduction Tot al Support 24% 20% Tot al Oppose 27% 41% Strongly support 9% 7% Somewhat 15% 13% support Somewhat oppose 14% 17% Strongly oppose 13% 24% Not sure 49% 38%
How important are the following issues to you? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults The The budget Taxes economy deficit Tot al Im port ant 95% 82% 92%
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Tot al N ot Im port ant 6% 18% 9% Very Important 69% 40% 57% Somewhat Important 26% 42% 35% Not very Important 4% 13% 6% Unimportant 2% 5% 3%
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Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling these specific issues? The Economist/YouGov, October 22-24, 2017, n=1500 US Adults The The budget Taxes economy deficit Tot al Approve 41% 32% 39% Tot al Disapprove 42% 44% 44% Strongly approve 22% 13% 21% Somewhat approve 19% 19% 17% Somewhat disapprove 11% 13% 11% Strongly disapprove 31% 31% 33% No opinion 17% 23% 18%
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the following issues? Reuters/Ipsos, October 20-24, 2017, n=2,352 Americans online The US Taxation economy Tot al Approve 43% 39% Tot al Disapprove 49% 51% Strongly approve 19% 16% Somewhat approve 12% 11% Lean towards approve 12% 12% Lean towards 9% 9% disapprove Somewhat disapprove 7% 7% Strongly disapprove 33% 35% Don’t know 8% 10%
Fewer than a third of Americans back Trump tax plan: Reuters/Ipsos poll
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer than a third of Americans support Donald Trump’s tax- cut plan, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, as the U.S. president went to Capitol Hill looking for Republican backing for his proposal to slash tax rates for individuals and companies.
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People listen as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about tax reform in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
As the 2018 midterm congressional election campaigns grow nearer, the poll found that more than two-thirds of registered voters said reducing the U.S. federal budget deficit is more important than cutting taxes for the wealthy or for corporations.
Trump’s plan would balloon the deficit and add to the $20 trillion national debt, according to critics and independent analysts, but Republicans say the tax cuts proposed in the plan would be offset by economic growth that would generate new tax revenue.
Among Republicans surveyed, 63 percent said deficit reduction should take priority over tax cuts for corporations, while 75 percent said deficit reduction should take priority over tax cuts for the wealthy.
Democrats oppose Trump’s plan, unveiled on Sept. 27, and say it is unfair to the poor and the working class.
The plan is still only a nine-page “framework.” It was drafted in secret by Trump administration and congressional leaders. Formal legislation is in development.
Congressional leaders and Trump are trying to lock in support for the plan from rank- and-file Republicans, who were uninvolved in the framework drafting process.
Trump, who has yet to score a major legislative win since taking office in January, wants his plan to become law before year’s end, a timeframe that some policy analysts doubt is realistic.
More than half of the adults surveyed in the poll agreed that “cutting taxes for the poor is more important than reducing the federal deficit,” with 68 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans in accord with that statement, the poll showed.
The Oct. 20-23 poll found that only 15 percent of registered voters said Republicans in Congress should prioritize tax reform over other issues. About a quarter of those polled, including 23 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans, agreed that Congress should continue working on a healthcare bill.
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Of those adults who said they had heard of the “tax reform plan recently proposed by congressional Republicans,” just 28 percent said they support it, while 41 percent said they oppose it and another 31 percent said they do not know.
The poll found opinions on Trump’s plan were sharply divided along party lines, with 56 percent of Republicans and just 9 percent of Democrats supporting it.
Of those who had heard of the plan, 14 percent said it would cut their taxes, while 30 percent said it would increase their taxes. Another 35 percent said their taxes would not change and 20 percent said they did not know how it would impact them.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It gathered responses from 1,862 people, including 1,079 people who said they were aware of the Republican tax plan. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.
Main Street to Trump: These are the key tax reforms we need to keep the American dream alive
As President Donald Trump and the GOP rush to push tax reform, small-business owners and advocates are speaking out on what taxing issues are crippling them and the reforms they would like to see. With the sector creating two-thirds of U.S. jobs, freeing up money to help them invest more in their business is critical, say many experts.
"Smaller businesses really are, in a lot of ways, the drivers of the economy," says CPA Robert Bernstein, a partner in Grassi & Co., a New York City area accounting firm.
Taxes consistently emerge as the No. 1 issue for small business in the CNBC/ SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey. In the recently released third-quarter edition, taxes once again topped the list of "critical issues," ahead of health care and regulation. The survey, which had more than 2,200 respondents, was released in late September.
That same month, Trump proposed a variety of tax-reform measures, both for individuals and business. The reforms to individual tax rates would affect small- business owners, who are often taxed on their income at individual tax rates. The Senate last week approved a Republican-backed fiscal 2018 budget that will enable Republicans to pass tax legislation through the Senate with 50 votes or more.
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"The vast majority of small-business owners pay taxes through their individual return," says Dave Yeske, CFP, managing director of Yeske Buie, who works out of the firm's San Francisco office. He is also the director of Golden Gate University's financial planning program.
When it comes to individual taxes, the president has proposed reducing the number of tax brackets from seven to three, with tax rates of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. Current rates range from 10 percent to 39.6 percent.
On the business side, the corporate tax rate would be reduced from 35 percent to 20 percent, a move many say will make American companies more competitive with those around the world. Trump is also proposing a 25 percent tax on sole proprietorships and partnerships — known as pass-through businesses — which would be lower than the individual tax rates many currently pay.
Simpler is better But is Trump going far enough? Many in the business community say they welcome the ideas for simplification and tax cuts that have been proposed so far — but the big questions are whether they will take effect and, if so, when.
The percentage of business owners who expect changes in tax policy to have a positive effect on their business in the next 12 months declined from 42 percent to 31 percent quarter-over-quarter, according to the CNBC/SurveyMonkey survey. There was also an increase in small-business owners who said tax policy would have "no effect" from 33 percent to 40 percent; 27 percent predicted a "negative effect."
One area where many await changes from Trump is in making it easier to file their tax returns. "Tax simplification would be a boon to small business owners—and a boon to everyone," says Yeske.
At present, taxes are so complicated that a small business owner can easily spend two weeks of time every year on activities related to preparing their returns, notes Hall. "The number one asset small business owners have is their time," says Hall. "Any tax proposal that simplifies compliance and simplifies returns is beneficial."
But what many small business owners really want to see is a tax cut that goes beyond helping big business. "If you are going to do it for corporations, do it for the self- employed people as well," says Hall.
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Keith Hall, a CPA who is president and CEO of the National Association for the Self- Employed, dreams of day when taxes are simplified to the point that small business owners could take standard deductions for common expenses, like depreciation and meals and entertaining. That would save time over the meticulous tracking now required.
To keep things fair, he says, the expenses could be pegged to industry and region. For instance, there might be a standard amount of mileage that a real estate broker could take, but it if the broker lived in a part of Texas where a lot of on-the-job driving is required, that deduction might be greater than for a broker in Manhattan, N.Y., who drives less and relies on other ways to get around town.
"The IRS has a per diem rate schedule that says you can take a standard amount for travel meals," says Hall. "There is already a precedent."
Fueling business expansion Currently, many small business owners find it is hard to grow their firms as much as they would like, because their tax bills leave little left over to reinvest. "Any business owners has a certain pot of money they can spend on expansion, hiring new people, whatever the case may be," says Roger Harris, president and COO of Padgett Business Services, a professional tax payroll and compliance firm specializing in servicing small businesses. "If taxes creep into that pot of money, there's less money available for those types of things."
Rohit Arora, CEO of Biz2Credit, a matchmaker between business borrowers and lenders in New York City, finds that many small business owners spend inordinate amounts of time looking for ways to lower their tax burden.
"TAX SIMPLIFICATION WOULD BE A BOON TO SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS — AND A BOON TO EVERYONE."-David Yeske , CFP and managing director of Yeske Buie
"Instead of thinking about how do I reinvest the money into my business you are thinking about 'How do I lower my tax bill?" he says.
To lower their tax bills, owners must generally find ways to reduce the profits they are showing on their tax returns—but when they are successful in doing so, he notes, it hurts their ability to get business loans that would help them expand.
Bob Shoyhet, CFO of Melillo Consulting, a 70-employee IT solutions firm in Somerset, N.J., says if taxes get cut, his company will invest the money freed up in growth. "The
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money you invest in the company by hiring people is going back into the economy," he notes.
As many owners point out, employees hired for newly created jobs would ultimately pay taxes on their earnings. "To me it makes absolute sense to have a tax cut," Shoyhet says. "You're not hurting the government—you're generating more money for it."
One idea Trump has put forth—allowing businesses to accelerate depreciation on machinery and equipment purchases is also generating support. If businesses could write off such expenses in full in the year they were incurred, they would have better cash flow, explains tax attorney Anthony Parent at IRS Medic in New York City. "It's going to have a huge effect," he says.
Taxing issues Some owners would like to see more tax breaks for business owners.
Cindy Collins, CEO and founder of Euphoric Herbals in Harrington, Delaware, says it has been easier to grow her business—which sells products such as teas, supplements and salves-because she gets a $15,000 tax benefit through the Domestic Production Activities Deduction, which is for businesses that manufacture in the U.S.
"Considering how you have to pay in taxes, that is a great incentive," she says. "I can create jobs in my community that desperately needs them." She currently employs three people part-time. Collins would also like to see a tax break for businesses that don't carry debt, like hers. "I know growth gobbles up cash," says Collins, but she believes such a break would encourage a healthier mindset for business owners.
By all accounts, one thing that will benefit all business owners is certainty about what tax rules will apply. "They want to know what the rules are so they can plan accordingly," says CPA Michael Greenwald, partner and corporate and business tax practice leader in accounting firm Friedman LLP in New York City.
The timing of any tax reform will be very important, says Kimberly Temple Schrant, managing director at Kansas Money Coach, a financial coach in Wichita, who was previously a managing director at Grant Thornton. "If they want to get it done before the end of the year it's possible to make changes," she says. "If they don't pass it until the beginning of the year and retro it back there is nothing that can be done."
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Trump tells Senate to fix taxes — not Obamacare - The bipartisan effort to stabilize insurance markets gets pushed to the end of the year.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday steered Senate Republicans toward tax reform and away from health care, pushing off any deal to fund controversial Obamacare subsidies to the end of the year at best.
Trump joined Senate Republicans at their weekly policy lunch, but gave no direction on what he wants to see in a health care bill. He praised Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R- Tenn.) work on a bipartisan deal meant to stabilize the Obamacare markets but his emphasis on taxes led senators in the room to believe Trump doesn't want a stand- alone Obamacare vote any time soon.
"There isn't anything else other than taxes," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
A filibuster-proof majority backs the bipartisan deal Alexander brokered with Sen. Patty Murray, but conservatives and the White House oppose it, meaning it won’t even come up for a vote in the Senate.
Without a clear directive from the president, Republicans are still floundering about whether to work with Democrats to fund the Obamacare’s “cost-sharing” program, which help low-income people pay their out-of-pocket medical bills. Trump abruptly cut off the subsidies — the subject of a court battle — earlier this month. Insurers still have to make the payments, and many boosted their premiums for 2018 to take those costs into account.
Alexander’s stabilization bid got even more muddled when a pair of top Republicans said they would release a different bill — rivaling the bipartisan proposal — to fund the subsidies. But their version would neuter the individual mandate for five years, a non-starter for Democrats who would be needed to get a bill through the Senate.
The new version “proves that we should be focused on tax reform right now because obviously we haven't gotten our act together on health care,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
Republicans are increasingly confident that the subsidies will get rolled into a large, year-end bill to fund the government and raise the nation’s debt limit. But there is no agreement on what exactly that will look like, and leadership-level negotiations on the year-end bill are weeks away.
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The lack of clarity left Senate Republicans with enough wiggle room to interpret Trump’s Obamacare comments as they see politically fit.
Cornyn saw a “shout out” by Trump to Alexander as encouragement for his bill. "He wasn't specific but that's the way I interpreted it," he said.
But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — an Alexander-Murray skeptic — said Trump didn't offer any clear support for the proposal over the GOP's competing ideas.
"There was not significant discussion on Alexander-Murray," Cruz said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), another foe of Alexander-Murray, walked away with the same conclusion.
“He didn’t get into that in great depth — put it that way,” Hatch said. “All I can say is that he wasn’t too definitive.”
During the lunch meeting, Trump focused more on getting tax reform done so that the GOP can take another shot at repealing Obamacare in the future, instead of what should be done to stabilize the health law in the interim.
"If we get taxes done, we'll have momentum for health care," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), summing up Trump's position. "He talked a lot about doing health care again." Trump has repeatedly stated recently that the GOP now has the votes for repeal in the Senate — but senators say that's not the case, that no one has flipped.
The meeting marked Trump’s first visit to the Senate GOP’s weekly policy lunch as president and it came amid a rift with Sen. Bob Corker and growing concern within the GOP that they’ll go into the 2018 mid-term election without a legislative accomplishment. That's amped up the pressure in the GOP to do tax reform.
But many Republican senators said after the lunch meeting that there was no discussion of petty politics and that Trump was focused on notching some GOP wins.
"It was the complete opposite of what I thought it would be — the atmosphere in the room and his complete focus," said one senator.
The conservative Obamacare bill introduced Tuesday came from Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady.
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That bill, which would fund the cost-sharing program for two years, is designed to appeal to Republicans who want to fund the Obamacare program but feel like Alexander didn’t get enough conservative concessions in his negotiations with Murray (D-Wash.).
It would eliminate Obamacare's individual mandate penalties through 2021 and expand the use of health savings accounts. The Hatch-Brady bill will also exempt businesses from the employer mandate for 2015 through 2017 and apply certain "pro- life protections" to the cost-sharing funding.
"We must include meaningful structural reforms that provide Americans relief," Hatch said. "This agreement addresses some of the most egregious aspects of Obamacare."
Some of the provisions in the proposal — like the expansion of HSAs and employer mandate exemption — mirror the changes that the White House requested be made to the Alexander-Murray bill.
Alexander said he was encouraged by a growing consensus Congress should fund the payments to insurers for two more years.
“We've gone from a position where everybody was saying we can't do cost sharing to responsible voices like Sen. Hatch and Chairman Brady saying we should,” he said.
But any cost-sharing bill will need 60 votes to get through the Senate, meaning Republicans will have to get at least eight Democrats to sign on. Undoing the mandates in the future would be a non-starter for many Democrats.
"If it were just a matter of getting Republicans to agree with each other, we would have repealed and replaced Obamacare by now," said a Senate GOP aide.
GOP leaders scramble for tax deduction fix before budget vote - A handful of Republicans are threatening to vote against the budget unless GOP leaders retreat from plans to eliminate a key federal deduction.
House Republican leaders are in a mad dash to resolve a dispute between GOP tax writers and Republicans from high-tax states that has the potential to make Thursday's budget vote a real nail-biter.
A handful of New York Republicans, along with a New Jersey lawmaker, are threatening to vote against the budget unless GOP leaders retreat from plans to
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eliminate a key federal deduction that people can take for the state and local taxes they pay.
Scrapping the deduction would bring in an estimated $1.3 trillion in new tax revenue over a decade, which could be used to cover some of the cost of other tax breaks Republican leaders are eyeing. But Republicans from high-tax districts in New York, California and New Jersey say millions of their constituents rely on the deduction and would face a tax hike without them.
Some of those lawmakers say they won’t commit to backing the budget until they receive assurances from GOP leaders to protect the benefit. The high-stakes vote on Thursday is the final hurdle to unlocking a filibuster-proof tax overhaul this year.
“There would need to be more progress made in figuring out the solution on this issue in order for me to vote for the resolution on Thursday,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican who’s close to President Donald Trump. “As of right now, I don’t have enough answers to vote ‘yes’ on the budget.”
Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) said that despite a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence at the White House on Tuesday, his concerns were not assuaged and he needs more of a guarantee before supporting the budget.
“Didn’t make the progress that I hoped for today, but we have another meeting late tomorrow and we’ll see,” he said.
Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) has gone even further and is calling for Republican donors to cut off all contributions to national Republican groups in the absence of any commitment from GOP leaders not to tamper with the deduction, or at least compromise.
“Keep it all or a very high cap,” demanded King, suggesting he might be open to getting rid of the deduction for only the wealthiest of earners.
Even then, he wasn’t happy: “The budget attacks SALT [state and local tax]. … I want a commitment. … All the indications are we’re going to get screwed on SALT.”
Senior Republican lawmakers and staff have repeatedly said this week that they’re not worried about the budget vote, predicting it will pass easily. House Budget Chairman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said, “I think the whip count looked pretty good,” upon leaving the GOP Conference on Tuesday morning. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a
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senior budget panel member who also serves on the whip team, called it “the easiest whip I've ever had.”
But even before the last-minute revolt from the New York lawmakers and MacArthur, the House’s vote on Thursday was expected to be narrow.
Nineteen Republicans voted against the House budget earlier this month. Faced with a vote on the Senate’s budget Thursday, several more House Republicans privately told leadership they preferred to keep pushing their own fiscal blueprint.
Senior Republicans know the vote could be tight if New York members like Zeldin and King, who typically vote with leadership, actually vote “no.”
The growing heartburn within the House GOP led to a swift intervention from Trump, who has phoned several GOP lawmakers who were withholding support.
Trump also urged House Republicans on a rare Sunday afternoon conference call to back the budget measure, which unlocks a fast-tracking tool to bypass Senate Democrats.
The budget measure also took on more urgency after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady announced he’ll release legislative text of the tax reform as soon as the House adopts the budget.
GOP leaders, Brady and the lawmakers from high-tax states huddled in the whip office Tuesday afternoon to try to resolve the dispute. No deal was reached, but members who left felt confident the issue would be resolved in the coming days.
“We’re making progress, we’re not there yet,” Brady said Tuesday evening. Asked whether he would reach an agreement by the Thursday vote, Brady said he hasn’t “set a timetable.
“I feel confident that we will have the votes to pass the budget,” Brady said.
Not all Republicans from New York are drawing a red line. Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who also sits on the Ways and Means panel, said he’s a “yes” on the budget — though he would like to see the issue resolved as well.
NATIONAL POLLING MEMO !61 Baselice and Associates | National Research Inc | the polling company, inc./Woman Trend
“I do know that a compromise on state-and-local [tax] is in the works, so that gives me comfort that I can support the budget because I believe we’re going to be able to get to a good-faith compromise position on this.”
From the start, Trump and GOP leaders have sought to scrap the deduction to help pay for more generous individual and corporate tax breaks. But that precious pay-for is also one of the most sacred tax breaks in history. The same deduction also escaped the no-holds-barred tax code rewrite in the Reagan era.
Senate Republicans have already hinted they’ll have to lower their sights on fully repealing the deduction. During last week’s budget vote, the Senate adopted an amendment from Republican Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia that allows the GOP’s tax plan to cap the deduction.
Capito said she'd be open to the idea of capping the deduction for taxpayers with incomes below a certain threshold, such as $250,000 and $400,000.
"I think that's a discussion we need to have," Capito said. "I wouldn't be necessarily in opposition to something like that, but I would rather keep everything on the table right now."
During the same budget vote, Republicans rejected an amendment from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) that would have protected the state and local deduction in full.
The feud over state and local deductions is just the latest headache for Black. Over 11 months, the first-term budget chief has been forced to delay work multiple times so that GOP leaders can twist arms on the tax plan.
House leadership was personally working on a fix with GOP tax writers and the frustrated New York lawmakers Tuesday afternoon, at the same time that Black made her final pitch before the House Rules Committee.
NATIONAL POLLING MEMO !62 Baselice and Associates | National Research Inc | the polling company, inc./Woman Trend