Press: Making a deal with the devil

What were Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) thinking? He’s the devil. How could they agree with Donald Trump on anything? Don’t they realize they must oppose Trump on everything if Democrats have any hope of winning back the House and Senate in 2018?

That’s the cry of disbelief heard from many Democrats. That’s the majority of complaints I heard from listeners to my radio show. They are passionate. They are true believers. And they are dead wrong.

{mosads}In fact, the deal struck by leaders Pelosi and Schumer with President Trump was a win-win-win. It was a win, first of all, for the American people because it kept the government running, avoided a government shutdown, allowed us to keep paying our bills, and empowered FEMA to provide emergency hurricane relief to Texas, Louisiana and Florida — with no strings attached.

Yes, it was a win for Donald Trump also because it not only gave him a chance to publicly humiliate Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), for whom he has little respect, but also provided him a rare legislative accomplishment he could brag about.

Which made some Democrats nervous. But so what? Because the deal was also a big win for the Democratic Party, thanks to Pelosi and Schumer. The very fact that the tripartite deal, agreed to in the Oval Office on Wednesday, passed the Senate on Thursday and the House on Friday shows that the Democratic Party knows how to govern: how, when and where to produce for the American people. Democrats delivered where Republicans could not.

The good news about this deal, of course, is that the good news doesn’t necessarily stop there. Trump and his newfound playmates don’t have to stop with last week’s success. He’s also discussed joining with Pelosi and Schumer in two other important goals: fixing the debt ceiling, triggering an automatic increase in the debt ceiling, so it’s no longer necessary to fight that battle every year; and making the Dream Act official.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, especially, is ripe for action. As good a public policy as it is, its existence still rests on a presidential executive order which, as we know, is only as good as the next president decides. Giving the Dreamers permanent status under an act of Congress, which has bedeviled Congress for 16 years, is the only way to protect them. If that’s really what Donald Trump wants, only Pelosi and Schumer can make that happen. Neither Ryan nor McConnell could deliver enough votes.

And then there’s infrastructure. If Donald Trump had started there, instead of his knee-jerk reaction to repeal ObamaCare, he’d already have one major legislative coup under his belt. That $1 billion infrastructure investment is still possible, but only with Pelosi and Schumer.

For a man who likes nothing better than to brag about what he has accomplished, it looks like Donald Trump has finally awoken to the fact that if he wants to get anything done, he must forget about the feckless Ryan and McConnell, and make more deals with Democrats.

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down.”

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.