Tax reform the next big ticket item on Trump's legislative agenda
— -- The morning after President Donald Trump failed to deliver on his campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, he reassured the country a new plan will be on the way.
“ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” Trump tweeted.
Vice President Mike Pence issued a similar response during a speech in Charleston, West Virginia, a state where Trump was very popular in the 2016 election but that has a population that is heavily dependent on Medicaid for health care coverage.
"We will end the Obamacare nightmare and give the American people the world class healthcare they deserve," Pence said.
But after weeks of high pressure negotiations and closed door deals, where do Republicans go from here? Speaker of the House Paul Ryan listed off the big ticket items on the Republican agenda during a press conference on Friday afternoon.
"Now we're going to move on with the rest of our agenda because we have big ambitious plans to improve people's lives in this country," Ryan said. "We want to secure the border. We want to rebuild our military. We want to get the deficit under control. We want infrastructure and we want tax reform."
In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump told reporters passing tax reform is his first legislative goal.
"I would say that we will probably start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform. That will be next," he said.
At an event hosted by Axios, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the administration thinks tax reform is possible by the August recess.
"We’re going to do tax reform as absolute," Mnuchin said. "We are reforming both personal and the corporate side."
But overhauling the nation's complicated tax code by the end of the year is an ambitious goal.
"I think it's a goal, and I think it's an ambitious one and I think it's one that we're going to try to stick to," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Friday when asked about an August deadline. "But I think tax reform is something that the president is very committed to."
