President Donald Trump’s flirtations with Democrats and fixation on divisive campaign promises have paved the way for hazardous, rolling deadlines over the next six months on spending, the debt ceiling and immigration.

The debt and spending bill approved by Capitol Hill on Friday averted imminent fiscal disaster, but it’s added more misery for a Republican Party whose agenda has floundered even with unified control of Washington for the first time in a decade. It’s also given Democrats significant leverage to imperil tax reform, the GOP’s best hope at a major legislative victory.


Rather than dictating the agenda of Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers oftentimes find themselves at the whims of a capricious White House, Democrats in the minority and a calendar that’s getting increasingly packed ahead of campaign season next spring.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) predicted in January that tax reform, Obamacare repeal and a border wall would all be done by now. Instead, Obamacare repeal may be completely dead at month’s end, there are just broad strokes on tax reform, and many Republicans oppose the border wall being pushed by their own president.

Now GOP lawmakers across the party’s ideological spectrum are agonizing about the party’s stark lack of achievements after getting rolled by Democrats in debt ceiling negotiations this week.

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“If we get to December and we’ve not repealed and replaced Obamacare, we've not built the wall, we've not done tax reform, let me just tell you it is not going to be pretty,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).

“I’m extremely worried,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who’s urging him to cancel an October recess to get more accomplished. “My gosh, why were we not here in August doing all of this?”

The crush of deadlines and internal GOP feuds only begins to describe the obstacles facing Republicans this fall. The most immediate decision is whether to revisit the painful health care debate that seemingly ended when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted down a repeal bill in July. The Senate parliamentarian recently ruled that the GOP loses its powerful party-line repeal powers to dismantle the 2010 health care law after Sept. 30.

The quick passage this week of the deal brokered by Trump and Democratic leaders to provide Hurricane Harvey relief, fund the government and lift the debt ceiling into December could open a hole in the Senate’s schedule in late September to take one more shot at Obamacare, depending on how quickly the chamber can pass a defense policy bill this month.

No health care plan seems likely to get 50 votes, but there is immense pressure from the White House and its congressional allies for the Senate to try again — a battle beleaguered GOP leaders are wary of fighting again.

And for all the talk about tax reform, the GOP is nowhere close to passing a budget resolution for the next fiscal year — a critical step to unlocking procedural tools to allow Republicans to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

The GOP leadership is considering bringing a budget to the Senate floor in the first week of October, according to Republican sources. But drafting a fleshed-out fiscal blueprint with policy details, rather than a “shell” resolution that Republicans did last year for Obamacare repeal, may also prompt internal GOP battles over spending priorities.

“This budget process is broken,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who is close to Trump. “I’ve been screaming about it for two years.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, the House’s point man on tax reform, said there’s still no time frame for the budget to pass or for lawmakers to release substantive details of a tax reform package.

“I don’t know what that schedule is,” the Texas Republican said. He added, "We’re just focused on delivering [tax reform] to the president’s desk by the end of the year.”

Democrats, high on their victory this week with the fiscal deal, hope to build on their momentum and throw another wrench into the Republicans’ ambitious agenda, particularly on tax reform. They believe the pressure of the new December deadline will make it difficult for the GOP to juggle both a spending bill and a partisan tax code rewrite.

“I certainly hope it makes it more difficult to carry out an agenda of trickle-down economics,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of the internecine GOP fight in a conference call with reporters on Friday.

Still, Republicans remain outwardly optimistic for a tax overhaul’s prospects, viewing it as a political imperative for the party after the GOP crashed and burned on its push to dismantle Obamacare. Ryan has vowed to complete a tax overhaul by the end of the year, and other Republicans also view Dec. 31 as a drop-dead date.

Without action on tax reform, Republicans risk ending the year 0 for 2 on their major priorities, potentially presaging a difficult midterm campaign next year.

“It’s just going to be more difficult to have a spending debate in three months. We ought to do a longer-term [spending stopgap]. That’s my biggest concern,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “We can still get [tax reform] done, though. Let me say that definitively.”

Trump administration officials have also insisted that the three-month fiscal deal, which set up a massive year-end deadline in Congress, actually cleared the decks for doing tax reform — comments that puzzled some Republicans.

“I’m not quite sure what they mean,” said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

“I don’t like to see the big train wreck in December,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “I like to clear everything so we don’t have everything hitting at the same time. My preference was to have a longer deal on the debt ceiling.”

Republicans are now hoping the Treasury Department’s practice of extending the government’s borrowing capacity through “extraordinary measures” will give them at least until early next year before another painful debt ceiling vote. But that is uncertain and based on tax revenues and macroeconomic factors out of Congress’ hands.

Complicating matters further is how to address hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants whose future in the United States was thrown into question when Trump announced that he would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Work permits and deportation protections for so-called Dreamers will begin to expire in early March unless Congress codifies the Obama-era executive action into law. That’s another cliff Republicans had not previously anticipated.

Democrats want to pass legislation creating a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers as soon as possible, and believe the year-end deadlines give their party significant leverage on immigration. But Republicans are pumping the brakes, insisting that tax reform has to come before immigration fixes.

“Regardless of the six-month deadline, I think [for] people on our side of the aisle, tax reform is the thing that has to be dealt with first,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

Republicans started the year aiming to ram through Trump’s Cabinet, his Supreme Court nominee, Obamacare repeal and tax reform all along mostly party-line votes.

Now there is concern among Republicans that Trump’s growing closeness with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) could complicate the party’s efforts to move tax reform with only GOP votes.

"Many in the Republican Party are now saying: 'Hey, the president just made a deal with the Democrats. What’s our path forward?'" McCain said.