Vice President Mike Pence appears on Beat The Press with Chuck Toad to discuss current events and the administration’s first 100 days.

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Earlier today Vice President Mike Pence participated in the final presidential commission ceremony for a cabinet member of the President Trump cabinet, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta.

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The Senate finally voted 60-38 yesterday to confirm Alex Acosta to the post. Acosta accepts the presidential commission and becomes the 27th labor secretary. The son of Cuban immigrants will lead a sprawling agency that enforces more than 180 federal laws covering about 10 million employers and 125 million workers.

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In Part I we explained why President Trump has not received any legislation:

To Wit: President Donald Trump winning the election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. The modern legislative machine is frozen in place.

The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump are not within the legislative constructs coming from the authors of the legislation.   Congress has no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written are not in line with President Trump policy.

That’s why congress has not passed any legislation for President Trump to sign.

There’s no entity within DC writing legislation that is in-line with President Trump’s economic and foreign policy agenda.  Exactly the opposite is true.  All of the DC pipeline legislative briefs and constructs are antithetical to Trump policy.

There are almost zero organizational entities within K-Street presenting any legislative constructs or legislative briefs intended to advance any of Trump’s policy objectives.

Think about how much money is behind the legislative business when those who control the legislation are willing to spend $3.1 BILLION in a single year to achieve their needs.

♦The “Associated American Southern Border Wall and Security Builders” – special interest and lobbying group – simply doesn’t exist. Nor are there any entities creating legal briefs (bills) to facilitate the southern border wall construction.

♦There is no “Associated Illegal Immigrant and Deportation Enforcement” group lobbying for the removal of undocumented illegal aliens; or writing legislation to fast-track deportation of illegal aliens.

♦There’s also no official corporate political action committee or group office on K-Street creating legislation to repeal ObamaCare, or lobby for the removal of government interventionism into the healthcare system.  etc.

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There has been some confusion, mostly spurred by media falsehoods, about whether or not Secretary Ross had submitted the ‘notification of intent’ letter to congress to begin the clock to renegotiating NAFTA.

Early in this video, yet again, Secretary Ross clearly states he is waiting on congress to accept the letter; ie. it was sent mid-March.

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Republicans control the Senate. Republicans, not democrats in the Senate, do not want the Trump administration to renegotiate NAFTA. This is one of the clearest examples of the UniParty at work and the anti-American principles behind the U.S. Chamber of Commerce corporate lobbyists – lobbying directly against the Trump administration.  “The Big Club”.

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There are many new commentators at CTH, and even more new people taking notice of politics for perhaps the first time in their lives.   There is also some confusion noticed between two distinct groups who appear to be talking above and around each other.  Two groups trying to communicate from two entirely divergent sets of understanding.

Perhaps it is valuable to reset the larger frames of reference and provide clarity.

Many, heck, most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past.

There is not a single congress person who writes legislation or laws.

In 2017 not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct.  This simply doesn’t happen.

Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body.  Here’s how it works.

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Earlier today President Trump and first lady Melania welcomed the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri and his wife Juliana Awada to the White House.

One of the key topics on the agenda for President Macri is trade with the U.S., specifically the Argentinian export of lemons into the U.S.  Understandably California, and to a lesser extent Florida, citrus growers are opposed to large scale imports of competing crops.

Additionally, during the customary Oval Office photo-op President Trump remarks about the ongoing NAFTA trade issues, and the phone calls yesterday between Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and Mexico’s President Peña Nieto:

“If I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States–meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA.”

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The U.S. media are considerably invested in framing NAFTA trade issues around their ever-present need to oppose the White House (Trump Derangement Syndrome); and many of the recent media narratives around NAFTA are entirely false.

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President Trump has a simple economic platform: “Buy American and Hire American“; toward that goal all economic and fiscal policies are now directed to assist U.S. manufacturing companies and retain U.S. workers.  Period.

Two days ago Commerce Secretary Wilbur “Wilburine” Ross announced a 20% tariff, countervailing duties, on imported Canadian soft wood lumber.  Today, Pleasant River Lumber Co. in Jackman Maine announces their wood mills will now expand as a direct result of the beneficial impacts of even trade practices.

This is a big deal for this community.

MAINE – The Dover-Foxcroft-based Pleasant River Lumber company is expanding its Jackman sawmill in anticipation of increased demand for American lumber amid the U.S. government’s plans to levy tariffs on Canadian softwood.

In a media release Tuesday, Pleasant River Lumber said it is expanding its Moose River spruce mill in Jackman to add drying capacity this summer and hire up to 20 new workers for a second shift starting this fall.

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It was only a few months ago when congressional democrat leadership were clutching their pearls because President-elect Trump held a phone call with the political leadership of Taiwan.  House and Senate Democrats rose to defend the honor of China around the precept of the Obama administrations’ acquiescence to the “one china” policy, and Trump’s audacity to call it into question.

Then something weird happened.

President Trump took office January 20th, and after many diplomatic contacts within the administration and their Chinese counterparts, President Trump and President Xi Jinping began to formulate a friendship.

April 5th/6th President Trump and President Xi Jinping met in Mar-a-lago for two days and the outcome has been historic and stunning cooperation between the U.S. and China.  China began pressuring North Korea to stop the military drum-beating. (more…)

In conjunction with the Trump administration releasing a tax reform outline, White House OMB Director Mick Mulvaney gives an interview to PBS to discuss the president’s goal of driving economic growth.

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Contrary to our initial reservations, Mick Mulvaney continues to be a considerable asset to the administration in communicating “big concepts” into portions that are easily digestible and understandable. Transferring big issues to easier points of comprehension is tough, and Mulvaney does a surprisingly good job.

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Today Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Economic Director Gary Cohn held a briefing to outline the tax proposal of President Trump.  The overall plan is essentially the same as the plan he proposed in the campaign with some slight modifications on rates etc.

The biggest structural change is political and regional in the current proposal because the rates are lowered, but deductions are removed – including deductions for state and local taxes.  People who live in states/municipalities with income taxes, and who earn enough to carry a tax liability, would see their ability to deduct those state taxes removed.

Because of the UniParty nature of congress; and specifically because special interest lobbyists will write the final tax plan (if one ever surfaces) CTH is not going to spend much time in the analytics of this.  Personally I highly doubt there will EVER be a comprehensive tax reform package even created; the UniParty [lobbyists/Big Club] will not allow their control over taxation to be diminished.

Tax reform is a noisy issue sure to fill lots of media stories, but the end result will be no action.  If a legislative bill is ever created we’ll discuss then.  More than likely we will see small, individual tax bills targeting specific aspects of current tax policy.

Here’s two articles explaining the possibilities against the backdrop of this proposal:

Zerohedge analysis and CNN Money analysis.

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