Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.
We’ll Need to Change the Law – The Trump Administration has started the FY2018 budget passback process, where it was clear that the Administration intends to ask for a significant increase to defense funding at the expense of non defense discretionary funding (or everything that isn’t defense). Such a proposal would be a tough lift for Congress, and it becomes more of a challenge when you realize that Congress would have to pass legislation repealing the BCA to do so. Read more in Roll Call.
Unified Against – Late last week, a House Republican discussion draft for ACA reform was leaked…and now most in Congress are against it. House Leadership have come out this week and have said the draft is a total nonstarter now. Read more in The Hill.
Safe Harbor – President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time this week, and the speech was notably more tempered in delivery while still hitting all the Trump policy points. The Washington Post has the speech annotated.
Trump’s Soft Spot – President Trump’s sympathetic remarks about the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers — “these incredible kids,” he has called them — were a surprising turn for a man who had vowed during the campaign to “immediately terminate” their protections from deportation. But they are unlikely to be the last word. Read more from the New York Times.
Skills Gap – President Donald Trump brought two dozen manufacturing CEOs to the White House on Thursday and declared their collective commitment to restoring factory jobs lost to foreign competition. Yet some of the CEOs suggested that there were still plenty of openings for U.S. factory jobs but too few qualified people to fill them. Read more from the Associated Press.
Travel Ban Update: Delayed Again – President Donald Trump will soon sign a revised executive order banning certain travelers from entering the U.S., but unlike the original version, it is likely to apply only to future visa applicants from targeted countries, according to people familiar with the planning. Read more from the Wall Street Journal.