The approval by the Senate of the fiscal reform has allowed President Donald Trump to add today his first great victory after almost a year occupying the White House, in which until now he had not been able to fulfill any of his great electoral promises.
Despite having a majority in the two chambers of Congress, in his first months in office the president had received a real lesson from what in the eighties was called “Realpolitik” that led him to discover that it is not enough win the elections to be able to govern.
For this reason, it is not surprising that Trump, who in the early hours of today thanked his co-religionists for their “commitment”, will soon take credit for the fact that the tax reform has passed this penultimate obstacle, before it is unified with the version of the House of Representatives, and may be vetoed.
“We have to use the word ‘rebate.’ I told everyone that reform may be that taxes go up,” said a plump Trump during a fundraising event held today in New York in which he explained his arguments to convince the republican bancada of the need to give the go-ahead to his proposal.
For its part, the White House also welcomed the approval of the tax reform through a statement in which he described the project as “a unique opportunity in life to claim the great destiny of the United States.”
But his approval was far from being a path of roses.
However, the project was approved at dawn, after a long day of negotiations and concessions by the hard core of Trump to his fellow Republicans, since the meager majority of conservatives in the Upper House seemed insufficient in case produce more than one dissidence.
The only vote against the Republican caucus, issued by Senator Bob Corker, and all opposition lawmakers were not enough to bring down a tax cut that has come to be qualified by the leader of the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives. Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, of “betrayal” of the middle class.
The possibility that the project might not move forward made the Republican Party fear that the situation could be repeated last summer, when Trump was not able to join the necessary support among his own party colleagues to repeal the health law known as Obamacare. .
During the electoral campaign of last year, the now president had attacked with vehemence this health law, considering that it deprived Americans of their freedom of choice and promised to end it as soon as he occupied the Oval Office.
However, Trump discovered on the basis of successive defeats in Congress, that the once unpopular law promoted by former President Barack Obama (2009-2017) had gained in recent years enough support for many Republican legislators to be against their repeal for fear of having to pay a high electoral price in the future.
As happened with Obamacare, the president had not yet obtained the necessary support to make other big electoral promises, such as the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico or other measures to toughen the entry of emigrants, through decrees that were overturned by different courts because they were considered unconstitutional.
And when it was not the lack of political support, it was the lack of political expertise on the part of his Cabinet that made the populist president’s base doubt his ability to fulfill his commitments.
A clear example has been his promise to drain “the swamp” in which, according to Trump, Washington’s political class had become, always open to partisan interests and the privileges that come with being part of the Administration.
But far from doing it, Trump has had to see how several of the main members of his Cabinet have been accused of abusing the privileges that come with their positions.
Especially striking was the wave of accusations received in September by various secretaries of the Executive for their abuse in the use of private flights and ended up costing the charge to the head of the portfolio of Health, Tom Price
All these clouds that darkened the sky of the presidency seem to have dissipated, at least a little, after the Republican victory in the Senate this dawn, which has been the first great triumph of Trump.
