EXCLUSIVE: Ivanka Trump teams up with conservatives to push Democratic themes

Eliza Collins | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption A day with Ivanka Trump USA Today reporter Eliza Collins spent the day with Ivanka Trump and here's what she got out of it.

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Ivanka Trump showed up in Washington last year with a to-do list of policies straight from the Democratic Party playbook. The president's daughter — a former Democratic donor — wanted the administration to tackle paid family leave, equal pay for women and affordable childcare.

She thought Democrats would join her in trying to move the agenda forward — after all, these were issues they had been championing for years and the president had just campaigned on some of them. But Democrats said her plan did not go far enough and while still discussing the issues with her, they have largely avoided teaming up with her. So the former businesswoman has turned to conservatives to try to make a deal.

“I’m no longer surprised,” Ivanka Trump said about the partisan lines in Washington. “I think that there are always people that will not move off of their talking points and then there are a lot of people who will. You have to find the people who will; that’s how you build coalitions.”

USA TODAY took an exclusive day trip with Trump to deep-red South Carolina late last month for a tax event with Republican women hosted by GOP Sen. Tim Scott. The pair worked closely on the tax bill, including pushing for a doubled child tax credit, that passed late last year.

Stopping for coffee before the event, Trump was swarmed by fans who wanted a picture with her and to give their gratitude to the Trump administration — she stayed and took every last one.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Ken Orbeck, a proud supporter of the president, said when USA TODAY asked what he thought about Ivanka Trump's push for paid family leave. “What has destroyed the United States? A loss of our family.”

Kenneth Beattie said he is “very right-wing” but he believes in “reaching across the table, some” and Ivanka Trump is the person to do it.

“I think it’s possible (she) may be our president in the future,” Beattie continued.

A single protester USA TODAY saw ahead of the event with Scott — dozens more showed up by the end — said her main criticism of Trump was that she supported her father despite his "inexcusable" behavior. But, she said the president's daughter “has tried to do some good things,” including an expansion of the child tax credit.

Scott, who describes Ivanka Trump as a friend and ally, is thrilled with the child tax credit success and excited to team up with her on family policies moving forward.

“I’m not sure why in the world we would allow the Democrats to control family issues, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Scott said.

On a morning American Airlines flight from Washington to Greenville, USA TODAY was seated next to Trump two rows from the back bathroom in coach.

She talked about her approach to policy efforts, noting that her first meetings on a topic are always with the people she expects to be “most resistant, because I want to understand what their arguments are.”

“There are a myriad of solid arguments for child tax credits. There are some that liberals will respond more strongly to. There are some that conservatives will respond more strongly to,” Trump said. “You have to know your audience and adjust your arguments.”

"It’s always easier to be for something and not get it done than to accommodate another perspective and get it done," Trump said when USA TODAY asked why she thought she wasn't getting more collaboration from Democrats who have been broadly vocal about their support for the policy.

"I think a lot of people get burned, actually, by trying to move legislation forward, and it’s actually much easier not to engage and to say ‘This is what I want and anything else is short of that,'" she continued on the shuttle between the airplane and baggage claim.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a conservative who leads the House Freedom Caucus, told USA TODAY that he’s had multiple meetings with Trump about topics “that conservatives would normally not be in favor of. … She makes very compelling cases.”

Meadows, who is close to President Trump, spoke to USA TODAY just two days after the president called broadly for a paid family leave program in his State of the Union address.

“I would say in the past, I wouldn’t have given it any chance (of passing), but Ivanka’s advocacy for that particular issue at least makes it a question that has to be answered,” Meadows said.

“There is no substitute for the bully pulpit of the president" advocating for your issue and Ivanka Trump is "obviously a critical adviser" to Trump and his agenda, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told USA TODAY.

Trump’s 2018 budget called for six weeks of parental leave (including mothers, fathers and adoptive parents) as part of the unemployment insurance program. States would be in charge of adjusting their tax structure to accommodate the program. That could result in tax increases, something Republicans have been reluctant to do.

The administration is actively exploring whether it can be funded separately from the unemployment insurance program, but officials are more interested in getting parental leave passed than how it's funded.

While Republicans are open to discussing policies such as paid family leave, particularly if the president is pushing for it, they worry about the details.

Penny Nance is the CEO and president of the conservative advocacy organization Concerned Women for America and she met with Ivanka Trump, who tried to get her to support paid leave because she said it was a "pro-life" idea.

“We agree with that. The question is, how do we do that? How do we do that so it doesn’t make it more difficult for women to be hired and to be promoted?” she continued.

Rep. Mimi Walters, R-Calif., has a bill that would provide incentives to businesses to give paid leave and flexible work arrangements by nixing mandates at the state and local level if they participated in the program. She wants Ivanka Trump to support a bill like hers instead of one that forces companies to provide leave.

“As Republicans ... we don’t believe in mandates, because when you put a mandate on a business it makes it that much more difficult for a company to survive and to thrive," Walterssaid.

Rubio also is floating an idea that would allow people to draw on their Social Security benefits early in case of emergency and delay retirement based on how many weeks they took off. Democrats said such an idea was a non-starter.

But Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., wants Ivanka Trump to support her bill, which would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and people with personal or family health issues. It would be funded by a shared pool built by payroll contributions made by employers and employees.

“We are so far from the gold standard in what we are looking for, it is a minimum,” said Ellen Bravo, the co-director of Family Values @ Work, which advocates for paid family leave for both new parents and caretakers funded by a social insurance pool like the one proposed by DeLauro and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Rubio said he believes that some of the pushback from Democrats comes from “the political side of the Democratic party that doesn’t want the president to be successful, because they want to defeat him in 2020 and they want to take control of the House and Senate in 2018.”

“Seeing a Republican president and a Republican Congress pass something that solves an issue that they have long talked about is probably something that their political wing is not excited about,” he continued. Then he added that the reverse “would probably be true” for Republicans if a Democrat had the White House and majorities in both chambers.