The failure of Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act confronts President Donald Trump and his party with the once-unthinkable possibility that the year will end without a single significant Republican bill becoming law.

By zeroing out all of Obamacare’s taxes, health care repeal was meant to grease the skids for the GOP to rewrite the entire tax code, the combined effect of which would be to overwhelmingly benefit high earners.

But as the Trumpcare process dragged on, and once it ultimately collapsed, a conventional wisdom began to gel that Republicans would have to settle for large, temporary tax-rate cuts, much like those George W. Bush passed in his first term, rather than a more thoroughgoing and lasting tax reform.

From where I sit, though, it seems unlikely that Republicans will be able to muster even that. It is true that Republicans love to cut rich people’s taxes, and most of them are eager to do so before the end of the year. But it is also worth recalling that Bush Republicans didn’t have the easiest time in the world passing its first round of tax cuts—it briefly cost them control of the Senate—and, in many ways, today’s Republicans face more obstacles than their predecessors did.





The following complications either didn’t exist in 2001 or weren’t as severe then as they are today: