Page 8A
NATION
East Oregonian
Saturday, December 2, 2017
GOP nears Senate OK of tax bill after flurry of final deals
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Republicans
used a burst of eleventh-hour horse-
trading to edge a $1.4 trillion tax
bill to the brink of Senate passage
Friday, as a party starved all year for
a major legislative triumph took a
step toward giving President Donald
Trump one of his top priorities by
Christmas.
“We have the votes,” Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., declared after leaders swayed
holdout senators by agreeing to
fatten tax breaks for millions of
businesses and let people deduct
local property taxes.
The Senate was on track to give
near party-line approval to the
measure by late Friday, setting up
negotiations with the House for a
final package. The measure focuses
the bulk of its tax reductions on
businesses and higher-earning indi-
viduals, gives more modest breaks
to others and would be the boldest
rewrite of the nation’s tax system
since 1986.
Republicans touted the package
as one that would benefit people of
all incomes and ignite the economy.
Even an official projection of a $1
trillion, 10-year flood of deeper
budget deficits couldn’t dissuade
nearly all GOP senators from
rallying behind the bill.
“Obviously I’m kind of a
dinosaur on the fiscal issues,” said
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the only
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, listens to a
question from a reporter as he leaves the Senate chamber Friday
on Capitol Hill in Washington.
announced GOP opponent, who
battled to keep the measure from
worsening the government’s accu-
mulated $20 trillion in IOUs.
The Republican-led House
approved a similar bill last month
in what has been a stunningly swift
trip through Congress for legis-
lation that impacts the breadth of
American society and is hundreds
of pages long.
After spending the year’s first
nine months futilely trying to repeal
President Barack Obama’s health
care law, GOP leaders were deter-
mined to move the measure rapidly
before opposition Democrats and
lobbying groups could blow it up.
The party views passage as crucial
to retaining its House and Senate
majorities in next year’s elections.
Democrats derided the bill as a
GOP gift to its wealthy and business
backers at the expense of lower-
earning people. They contrasted
the bill’s permanent reduction in
corporate income tax rates from
35 percent to 20 percent to smaller
individual tax breaks that would end
in 2026.
The bill is “removed from the
reality of what the American people
need,” said Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He also
criticized Republicans for releasing
a lengthy, revised version of the bill
shortly before the final vote, saying,
“The Senate is descending to a new
low of chicanery.”
“You really don’t read this kind
of legislation,” Sen. Ron Johnson,
R-Wis., told home-state reporters,
asked why the Senate was approving
a bill some senators hadn’t read. He
said lawmakers needed to study
it and get feedback from affected
groups.
Congress’ nonpartisan Joint
Committee on Taxation has said the
bill’s reductions for many families
would be modest and said by 2027,
families earning under $75,000
would on average face higher, not
lower, taxes.
Democrats took to the Senate
floor and social media to mock one
amended version of the bill that
included changes in barely legible
handwriting. They also criticized
Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., for
a proposed amendment they said
would give a tax break to only
conservative Hillsdale College in
Michigan. Toomey, one of the cham-
ber’s more conservative members,
acknowledged the language would
help Hillsdale but said other schools
might benefit, too.
The bill hit rough waters
Thursday after the Joint Taxation
panel concluded it would worsen
federal shortfalls by $1 trillion over
a decade, even when factoring in
economic growth that lower taxes
would stimulate.
Trump administration officials
and many Republicans have
insisted the bill would pay for itself
by stimulating the economy. But the
sour projections stiffened resistance
from some deficit-averse Republi-
cans.
But after bargaining that
stretched into Friday morning,
McConnell and other leaders said
victory was assured in a chamber
they control 52-48. Facing
unyielding Democratic opposition,
Republicans could lose no more
than two GOP senators and prevail
with a tie-breaking vote from Vice
President Mike Pence.
Under the changes leaders agreed
to, millions of companies whose
owners pay individual, not corpo-
rate, taxes on their profits would be
allowed deductions of 23 percent,
up from 17.4 percent. That helped
win over Wisconsin’s Johnson and
Steve Daines of Montana.
People would be allowed to
deduct up to $10,000 in property
taxes, a demand of Sen. Susan
Collins of Maine. That matched
a House provision that chamber’s
leaders included to keep some GOP
votes from high-tax states like New
York, New Jersey and California.
Collins, a moderate and frequent
maverick who opposed her party’s
Obamacare repeal drive, said she’d
back the tax bill.
Flynn pleads guilty, is cooperating in Trump-Russia probe
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
Michael Flynn, the retired
general who campaigned at
Donald Trump’s side and then
served as his first national
security adviser, pleaded
guilty Friday to lying to the
FBI about reaching out to the
Russians on Trump’s behalf
and said members of the
president’s inner circle were
intimately involved with —
and at times directing — his
contacts.
Court papers didn’t name
the senior officials, but
The Associated Press has
confirmed that they were
Trump’s son-in-law and senior
White House adviser Jared
Kushner and former Deputy
National Security Adviser KT
McFarland, who is now up for
an ambassadorship.
Flynn’s plea could be a
crucial development in the
wide-ranging criminal inves-
tigation into possible coor-
dination between the Trump
campaign and Russia to
influence the 2016 U.S. pres-
idential election in Trump’s
favor because it means Flynn
is now required to cooperate
with federal investigators.
His plea to a single felony
count of false statements
made him the first official of
the Trump White House to
admit guilt so far in the crim-
inal investigation by special
counsel Robert Mueller.
Friday’s
developments
don’t resolve the paramount
question of possible Trump-
Russia coordination in the
campaign, but they do show
that Flynn lied to the FBI
about multiple conversations
last December with the
Russian ambassador to the
United States. Court papers
make clear that senior
Trump transition officials
— including Kushner and
McFarland — were fully
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn arrives at federal court in
Washington, Friday. Court documents show Flynn, an early and vocal supporter on
the campaign trail of President Donald Trump whose business dealings and foreign
interactions made him a central focus of Mueller’s investigation, will admit to lying
about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during the
transition period before Trump’s inauguration.
aware of Flynn’s outreach to
Russian officials in the weeks
before the inauguration.
McFarland’s involvement
was confirmed by two former
transition officials who spoke
on condition of anonymity
because they weren’t autho-
rized to publicly discuss the
matter. One of the officials
confirmed Kushner’s involve-
ment.
That revelation moves
the Russia investigation,
which has shadowed Trump
throughout the year, deeper
into the White House and
raises questions about the
accuracy of repeated asser-
tions by the administration
December 9, 2017 at the St. Mary’s Catholic
Church from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.
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that Flynn had misled Vice
President Mike Pence and
other officials about the
content of his calls with the
ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner had led a transition
team effort to defeat a United
Nations vote referenced in
the court papers, according
to former U.S. officials and
foreign diplomats.
Though
prosecutors
also had investigated Flynn
lobbying work on behalf of
the Turkish government, the
fact that he pleaded guilty to
just one count, and faces a
guideline range of zero to 6
months in prison, suggest that
prosecutors see him as a valu-
able tool in their investigation
and are granting a degree
of leniency in exchange for
cooperation.
White House lawyer Ty
Cobb sought to distance the
plea from Trump himself,
saying: “Nothing about the
guilty plea or the charge
implicates anyone other than
Mr. Flynn.”
Flynn, the longtime soldier,
stood quietly during his plea
hearing except to answer brief
questions from the judge. He
accepted responsibility for his
actions in a written statement,
though he said he had also been
subjected to false accusations.
He said, “My guilty plea and
agreement to cooperate with
the Special Counsel’s Office
reflect a decision I made in the
best interests of my family and
of our country.”
The Russia investigation
has persistently followed
Trump the first year of his
presidency, angering the
president and repeatedly
distracting from his agenda.
Flynn’s plea came as Repub-
lican senators labored to pass
a far-reaching tax bill, which
would be a significant victory
for Trump.
On Friday, the president
ignored reporters’ shouted
questions as he welcomed
the Libyan prime minister to
the White House, and aides
canceled media access to a
later meeting between the
two. He did appear briefly at
an afternoon White House
holiday reception for the
media, where he offered
season’s
greetings
and
departed without addressing
the Mueller investigation.
Early on in his adminis-
tration, Trump had taken a
particular interest in the status
of the Flynn investigation.
Former FBI Director James
Comey, whose firing in May
precipitated the appointment
of Mueller as special counsel,
has said Trump asked him in
a private Oval Office meeting
to consider ending the investi-
gation into Flynn. Comey has
said he found the encounter so
shocking that he prepared an
internal memo about it.
A former Defense Intel-
ligence Agency chief, Flynn
was a vocal Trump surrogate
during the campaign and was
known for leading crowds
in “Lock her up” chants
regarding Hillary Clinton’s
use of a private email server.
Flynn was interviewed by
the FBI days after Trump’s
inauguration.
He was forced to resign
following news reports indi-
cating that the Trump White
House had been warned
by Obama administration
officials that he had discussed
sanctions with Kislyak and
was therefore compromised
and potentially vulnerable to
blackmail.
White House officials
including Pence, who had
declared publicly that Flynn
never discussed sanctions,
said they had been misled.
The court case Friday
concerns a series of conver-
sations that Flynn had with
Kislyak during the transition
period between the November
election and the Jan. 20 inau-
guration.
Prosecutors say Flynn
on Dec. 29 spoke with an
unnamed senior transition
team official about what, if
anything, to say about sanc-
tions that had been imposed
on Russia one day earlier by
the Obama administration in
retaliation for election inter-
ference. Flynn then requested
the Russian ambassador
“not escalate the situation”
and respond “in a reciprocal
manner,” a conversation
that prosecutors say he then
reported to transition team
members.
If the Trump transition
made secret back-door assur-
ances to Russian diplomats,
that could potentially run
afoul of the Logan Act, a 1799
law that bars private Amer-
ican citizens from attempting
to intervene in “disputes or
controversies” between the
United States and foreign
powers without government
approval.
GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT
Please join us for a...
Holiday Celebration
Dinner
Tuesday, December 5th
5:00 - 7:00pm
The menu will include:
Prime rib and ham, bourbon sweet potatoes, vegetable du jour & pumpkin and
pecan pie for dessert.
Adults - $10.00, children 6-12 - $5.00, under 5 - FREE
We will honor November and December Birthdays, as well as Resident and Staff of
the Month. ***Please RSVP by November 30th***
McKay Creek Estates
1601 Southgate Place
Pendleton, OR 97801
(541) 276-1987