THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

One of the tried and true methods for success has never been to attack an important member of the committee workin on the desired legislation. Donny Dinkydick seems to think it will bring him the success he hasn;t found elsewhere in DC.

President Trump renewed his attacks on Senator Bob Corker on Tuesday, chastising him for his skepticism over a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Mr. Corker responded by going on national television to say that Mr. Trump was “debasing” the United States and that the president struggled with the truth.

Mr. Corker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday. Mr. Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, is not running for re-election after serving in the Senate since 2007.

The extraordinary back and forth between a Republican president and the Republican chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee came just hours before Mr. Trump is to join Senate Republicans for their weekly lunch in the Capitol. That lunch is expected to be dominated by a discussion of the ambitious tax package set to be released as soon as next week.

Republicans are attempting to craft a tax bill that can pass the Senate by a party-line vote, avoiding a Democratic filibuster.

To do that, they must contain the revenue losses from reducing tax rates, both over the next decade and in the years to follow.

The party’s most difficult fights will be over how to do that — by some combination of eliminating popular tax breaks and employing accounting maneuvers, such as setting some tax cuts to expire, in order to reduce revenue losses.

Mr. Corker stands as a possible impediment to that plan. A longstanding opponent of rising federal deficits, the senator has said he will not vote for any tax bill that would increase the federal debt by a dollar. But on Thursday, the House is expected to give final approval to a budget blueprint that would protect a 10-year, $1.5 trillion tax measure from a Democratic filibuster.

A Treasury Department report released on Friday showed that the budget deficit for fiscal 2017 grew by $80 billion, to $666 billion, as federal spending eclipsed revenues and economic growth remained tepid. At the same time, Congress is contemplating what the president has promised would be the largest tax cut in history.

If Trump gets anything he likes is the Billionaires Tax Cut Bill it will be a miracle.