December 20, 2017 SnyderTalk: Why Corker flipped on the tax bill

“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

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Chanukah Ends Today

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Politico—Why Corker flipped on the tax bill:

Days before his surprise announcement that he would support the GOP tax bill, Sen. Bob Corker had been summoning administration officials and economists to his office to see if he could ultimately get on board with the plan.

One was Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former Congressional Budget Office director and adviser to GOP presidential campaigns who painstakingly went through varying analyses of the tax measure as Corker — accompanied by at least a half-dozen aides and stacks of spreadsheets — drilled him with questions.

“He said, ‘look, we’re not going to change the outcome. This thing is becoming law, but we have to feel good about our vote. So we have some questions,’” Holtz-Eakin recalled in an interview Monday. “I didn’t walk out saying, ‘Oh, he definitely switched.’ But when he announced that, I was unsurprised.”

Yet the mystery over Corker’s flip quickly swirled into a political firestorm over suggestions that the senator decided to support the tax measure only after winning a provision that could personally enrich him. Liberal activists and lawmakers declared it the “Corker Kickback,” in a last-ditch bid to derail the bill — or at least further tarnish Republicans’ big tax win this week.

Corker denied the accusation, as did the chief tax-writers in the House and Senate.

“I had obviously nothing whatsoever to do with that and I think that’s part of the public record,” Corker told reporters at the Capitol on Monday.

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SnyderTalk Comment:

President Trump and Senator Corker had a brouhaha a while back.  The long and short of it was that Corker wanted to be secretary of state, and the president turned him down.  That incident created what I think is Corker’s determination to pay the president back.

Since that day, Corker has been an archenemy of the president in the Senate.  He’s smart enough to try and hide his juvenile behavior by couching his criticism of the president in terms that appear on the face to be politically acceptable.  He’s good at that.  His shenanigans on the tax bill reveal a kink in his armor.

Corker denies any wrongdoing on his part, but anyone who believes that the senator didn’t withhold his support for the tax bill until he figured out how to manipulate the process so that he could enrich himself at taxpayers’ expense hasn’t spent time in that kind of political environment.  It doesn’t pass the smell test.  Since he’s not running for re-election, Corker thinks it doesn’t matter.  I hope he’s wrong.

Democrats won’t support anything the president does.  They offer no good ideas, and they make up lies about what the president has done, is doing, and will do.  They are grenade-throwing obstructionists and nothing more.

Establishment Republicans are just one step behind Democrats.  With a few notable exceptions, GOP senators are doing as little as they can do to help the president implement his agenda even though he is the leader of their party.  It’s so bad that almost one full year into his first term, the president still can’t staff his administration with his own people because the Senate won’t move their confirmations along.  Despite those problems, President Trump is doing remarkably well, and the American people are the beneficiaries.

Let there be no doubt.  We have problems with establishment politicians—Republicans and Democrats.  The swamp is deep and wide and swamp creatures are red and blue.

See “GOP senators rally to defend Corker over tax bill provision”.  As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise.”

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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.

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