Blue State Blues: 2019 Will Be a Year of Confrontation — and, Perhaps, Cooperation
As long as he holds firm on the policy priorities most important to his base — especially border security — Trump will have flexibility to negotiate on other issues.

As long as he holds firm on the policy priorities most important to his base — especially border security — Trump will have flexibility to negotiate on other issues.
“The Budget Agreement today is so important for our great Military,” he wrote on Twitter. “It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America Great.”
The United States Treasury Department revealed new estimates last week that show the country set to double borrowing in the current fiscal year, a total $995 billion that would nearly double last fiscal year’s $519 billion.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin argued on Fox News Sunday for a “clean” hike in the debt limit. Mnuchin also pushed a strategy of attaching the debt limit as an amendment to a bill to provide $7.9 billion in temporary relief to victims of Hurricane Harvey.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there is “zero chance” Congress will allow the country to default on its debts by voting to not increase the borrowing limit.
Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee determined that the Department of the Treasury and the Obama administration misled the American people on its plans to deal with the risks to the debt ceiling.
John McCain is taking heat back home for voting yes on the massive budget and debt limit suspension bill passed around 3 a.m. Friday morning.
Paul Ryan’s previous criticism of the deal to his Republican colleagues was quite pointed, including a declaration that the process “stinks.” But now he expresses optimism that the deal will include “meaningful reforms to strengthen our safety net programs, including significant changes to bolster Social Security,” and fund the military, as well as providing an opportunity to “return to regular order in our budget process.” His evaluation has been upgraded from stinky to “some good, some bad, and some ugly.”
A huge stock market rally kicked off when the U.S. Treasury was forced to pay out a net $32 billion last week after the Republican Congress failed to raise the legal debt ceiling on the U.S. government’s $18.113 trillion Ponzi debt scheme.
Multiple conservative groups rebelled right out of the gate to Senator John McCain’s announcement that he will indeed seek re-election in what is expected to be a historic 2016 election cycle.