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A common agenda? Some members agree with Trump that they have to move on from health care. Ryan has just promised donors they are not giving up. At the end of his prepared remarks Ryan declared, “Obamacare is a collapsing law. Obamacare is doing too much damage to families. And so we’re going to get this right. And in the meantime, we’re going to do all of our other work that we came here to do.” So are they moving on or not? You got me. More fundamentally, Republicans are unsure if they want to combine tax reform with infrastructure spending; some want to “pay” for tax cuts and others don’t.

Limited government? Ryan’s health-care plan in the eyes of Freedom Caucus members was “big government.” There is no appetite to take on the biggest part of government, runaway entitlement spending.

Ryan apparently has not learned the lesson of health care: Excessive cheerleading, inflated expectations and deliberate blindness to fundamental differences create the conditions for failure. Nevertheless, there he goes again: ““We are also committed to securing our border, rebuilding our military, and fixing our infrastructure.” Meanwhile, back in the real world, it is far from clear that the House is going to pay for the wall, will defy fiscal reality to fund a useless wall, can agree on a meaningful increase in defense spending (Trump’s proposed 3 percent increase has been widely criticized as insufficient by defense hawks) or can address infrastructure while making certain this is “the last tax season Americans have to put up with this broken tax code.”

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