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Republicans in Congress, having convinced themselves that repealing the estate tax and enriching corporations is the key to America’s heart, are now sweating the gory details of their trillion-dollar giveaway. For starters, there’s the niggling question of how the whole thing will be paid for. Then there’s the problem of personnel: Donald Trump, the party’s titular head, is a self-serving egotist and a self-defeating idiot who doesn’t seem to grasp that getting into Twitter wars with key Republicans isn’t helping his cause. Making matters worse, it seems, is the man he’s assigned to serve as his chief tax liaison: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose social awkwardness is matched only by his profound inexperience in dealing with Capitol Hill.
Politico reports that Mnuchin, a former investment banker turned hedge-fund manager turned foreclosure mogul turned movie producer, who had no experience in Washington before he was made a Cabinet official, “hasn’t been able to overcome Republicans’ suspicion about his Wall Street background and limited conservative credentials.” An initial attempt at flexing his muscles backfired during a meeting in September, when Mnuchin, apparently overestimating his rapport with House Republicans, tactlessly demanded that they help raise the debt ceiling “for me”—a request that lawmakers found “uncomfortable,” “not helpful,” and “intellectually insulting.” Now, having distanced himself somewhat following the debt-ceiling debacle, those same lawmakers feel snubbed. “That was also the last time Mnuchin spoke to many of the people in the room,” Politico reports, citing a senior House aide. (A Treasury official told Politico, “Just like any relationship, we are always working on it.”)
In the Senate “the picture is not much better,” as Mnuchin is “still an unknown quantity to many members, thanks to the fact that he spent so little time in Washington before becoming Treasury secretary.” Those who have spent time with him say he “has a quiet, sometimes socially awkward manner that does not lend itself to chitchat, or building instant rapport.” As my colleague Sarah Ellison reported earlier this month, there’s a very real fear that Mnuchin’s mediocrity could sink the tax effort. He’s “a political novice who doesn’t have the substantive background to do the job he’s being asked to do,” said Stan Collender, a former staffer on the House and Senate Budget Committee.
Former colleagues don’t speak particularly highly of Mnuchin either. “Gary is much smarter than Steve,” one former Goldman partner told Ellison, referring to chief economic adviser Gary Cohn. Another noted that while Mnuchin’s father was a “towering figure” in the financial industry, “poor Steve had to walk in his shadow. He was just not that impressive.”
Unsurprisingly, Democrats view Mnuchin with even more skepticism. “His statements are outlandish, and he seems just to want to—I don’t know if I'm allowed to use this word, I think I am—suck up to Trump, flatter Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Ben White this week. “This man cannot be believed. And if he used these kinds of arguments at Goldman Sachs, they would have fired him.” Of Mnuchin’s claim last week that the market would fall significantly if tax reform didn't get passed, Schumer said, “It’s absurd. No one believes Steve Mnuchin. He has lost all his credibility because of statements like that. Wall Street was doing great. It was going up at a dramatic rate before the president even took office. And it’s doing fine now, because the economy’s doing well, because corporate profits are way up.”
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