Hurricane Harvey Shifts Political Winds in Washington
“The truth of the matter is, they don’t need money to build a wall in Texas, but to rebuild the shoreline in Texas.”
Facing a difficult September, deeply divided over spending and what to do about the debt limit, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders may find
that a devastating storm has provided them the common cause that has proved so elusive after their failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
As Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a senior Republican member of the House Appropriations Committee, put it, “There will be members who will have to eat a little crow,
but the bottom line is the votes are there” because “Congress wants to look functional.”
Part of looking functional, he said, is ending discussion of shuttering the government
in a dispute over whether to provide money for a wall border on the southern border.
“This is going to change the whole dynamic for September and, quite frankly, for the Republican establishment for the remainder of the 115th Congress,”
said G. William Hoagland, a longtime chief budget adviser to Senate Republicans who is now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Instead, both Mr. Trump and his putative allies in Congress — many of them professed fiscal hawks — are promising an outpouring of federal aid to begin a recovery and rebuilding effort
that will last for years and require tens of billions of dollars, if not substantially more, from Washington.
