For the Record: FNG issues
Good morning, For the Record peeps! Let’s ignore the horse race for a moment and talk about all the things the next president will get to do. After all, why do today what you can leave for the FNG tomorrow?
… Hey, maybe that could be Jeb(!)’s new slogan. It’s truth in advertising, at least.
Big, hairy issue 1: The border
Like he who must not be named, there’s a word new House Speaker Paul Ryan dare not say: Comprehensive. As in, comprehensive immigration reform. *shudder* Ryan put the kibosh on addressing comprehensive reform for the rest of Obama’s term, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd that he doesn’t trust the president on the issue. So, should a Democrat win the presidency next year, will Ryan be willing to trust him or her? Don’t bet on it. “I was elected Speaker of the House to unify the Republican Congress, not to dis-unify the Republican Congress,” he said. In other words: We’ll talk a lot about building taller walls. But when it comes to actually passing anything, we’ll defer and blame it on those darn open-border liberals.
Big, hairy issue 2: The budget
Stop the presses: Congress actually did something bipartisan. It passed a resolution suspending the debt ceiling until March 2017, which in theory should make budgeting more predictable until the new president takes office (though the whole thing could unravel in a shutdown in December, once the next round of bills to spend money come up for votes). The latest deal also commits to eventual entitlement reform, which inches us toward the third rail of budget politics: Making big money sucks, like Social Security, Medicare and health care, more sustainable. Good luck with that.
Big, hairy issue 3: The court
There are a lot of old people on the Supreme Court, and that’s not just an insensitive thing to say about the three octogenarians wading through issues no one else wants to address. As Paste BN’s Richard Wolf reports, the next president will likely have several seats to fill because of impending retirements (or other, um, unfortunate events). Depending on who wins the election, the new president’s appointments could swing the court right or left, impacting rulings for decades.
OK, we lied. Here’s a little of the horse race
We’d be remiss not to bring you President Obama’s thoughts on Republican dissatisfaction with MSNBC debate moderators. “If you can’t handle those guys,” the president told a group of Democratic donors, “I don’t think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you.”
And speaking of donors, billionaire Charles Koch (the talkier half of the Koch Brothers, which, sadly, is not a ‘90s boy band) says he’s generally unimpressed with his GOP choices. Oh, he’ll still funnel plenty of cash into Republican campaigns. But that doesn’t mean he’ll like it, he told MSNBC’s "Morning Joe." Paste BN’s Fredreka Schouten has more from the interview.
Oh, and btw
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