1-day cease fire

Behind the 1-day cease fire between Donald, Chuck and Nancy

The trio agreed to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan — but haven’t worked out how to pay for it.

By ANITA KUMAR, SARAH FERRIS and BURGESS EVERETT

By all appearances, they are mortal enemies. President Donald Trump has been at war with Democratic leaders in Congress for months, as the two sides trade subpoenas, lawsuits and accusations of bad faith.

But on Tuesday, Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer did something few people expected: They got along — or at least pretended to.

After a 90-minute Oval Office meeting to discuss a potential infrastructure bill, both sides gushed about what may have been their first point of agreement this year, on a plan to spend $2 trillion to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Never mind that they left unresolved how to foot the gigantic bill.

“Constructive,” said Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader. “Excellent,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared.

And when reporters asked Pelosi whether the subject of multiple House Democratic investigations into Trump came up, she scoffed and shook her head no.

What?

A capital riveted for weeks by the high-stakes war between Trump and Democrats was left wondering how peace had broken out, however temporarily. When the same group convened in the Oval Office in December, an indecorous round of raised voices, finger-pointing and plenty of interruptions broke out. “Unfortunately, this has spiraled downward,” Pelosi declared midway through the meeting. Weeks later, Trump abruptly stormed out of another White House meeting that included the top Democrats.

Many Democrats were bracing for similar theatrics from a president who rarely resists them. But this time they were pleasantly surprised.

“He’s unpredictable, even when we think he’s predictable,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said of Trump’s decision not to use Tuesday‘s meeting to clash with Democrats on investigations.

There’s at least one explanation: Both Trump and Democrats are eager for a legislative win — or short of that, the appearance of genuine legislative effort — before the 2020 elections. Trump is about to embark on a tough reelection campaign with key promises, including a grand infrastructure plan, still unmet. Democrats are eager to pivot from the subject of Russia to more tangible issues like the economy, and to provide swing-district moderates with talking points about bipartisan action.

That leaves the two sides searching for an elusive accomplishment during a time of a divided government when they agree on little policy, call each other names and accuse each other of being obstructionist.

Now the two sides say they will hold a second infrastructure meeting in three weeks to discuss how to pay for their $2 trillion vision and another yet-to-be-scheduled gathering to discuss their shared interest in lowering prescription drug prices.

“It was a very constructive meeting. It's clear that both the White House and all of us want to get something done on infrastructure in a big and bold way,” Schumer told reporters at the White House. “And there was goodwill in this meeting, and that was different than some of the other meetings that we've had, which is a very good thing.”

Pelosi and Schumer went in with a specific goal — no televised sparring with Trump over special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. And Trump agreed to close the meeting to the media, a marked shift from December, when he surprised the newly elected Democrats by allowing television cameras into their meeting on Trump’s demand for a wall on the southern border.

Even behind closed doors, the tone of the room was generally cordial, and in another tiny sign of a truce, Trump offered Pelosi a white mint Tic Tac, according to a Democratic aide. (She accepted.)

Trump didn’t bring up House Democrats’ slew of investigations into his administration, his policies and his finances, lawmakers said, though he has previously said he wouldn’t be able to work with Democrats on legislation if they continued with their aggressive oversight.

“I sort of thought, after all the fallout of the Mueller report, there may be an unwillingness on behalf of all the parties to have this conversation,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a Democratic centrist, said. “I’m a little bit encouraged. The odds went up today.”

“A moment for optimism,” said a grinning Rep. Max Rose, who knocked off a GOP incumbent in Staten Island last fall and has been frustrated by the lack of progress on areas such as health care and infrastructure.

Sanders described the meeting as "excellent and productive" — even after White House officials had blasted Democrats earlier in the day — and said Trump "looks forward to working together in a bipartisan way."

After the meeting, Pelosi and Schumer presented a united front as they stood outside the White House, praising Trump’s “positive attitude” and painting him as an eager partner.

“We’re very excited about the conversation we had with the president,” Pelosi said. “We have opportunity to work together in a bipartisan way.”

The massive price tag — in line with what Democrats have long sought — delivers fresh momentum for Pelosi and her caucus to go after a huge policy agenda this summer. The party's moderates, including dozens of freshmen, have been craving real action on infrastructure for months.

But they came away with an even bigger political win with Trump proclaiming that he's on board with a $2 trillion package, a number that only took minutes for Republicans on Capitol Hill to dismiss.

Pelosi and Schumer also talked up a policy win: convincing Trump to agree to rural broadband — a key priority for the party's moderates — as well as agreeing to the total price tag that Democrats have long touted.

“It started a little lower, even the president was eager to push it up to $2 trillion,” Schumer said, showing the gap between Trump and some of his advisers.

Trump told the attendees that he likes the $2 trillion figure for an infrastructure plan, and that it sounds better than $1.9 trillion, another number that had been batted around, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Trump did reject Schumer’s offer of $2.2 trillion, the minority leader said. He also panned the idea of including new labor regulations in any infrastructure bill.

Still, it will be difficult to find consensus even on bipartisan issues like infrastructure — particularly on how to cover the cost of such massive investments – but Trump and Democrats spoke as though they had never fought before.

Every Democrat in the room pressed Trump on what he was willing to do to cover the $2 trillion price tag, including raising the gas tax and or taxes on the wealthy.

Democrats oppose the White House’s previous plan of relying on private businesses for a large chunk of the funding. Trump and his advisers made clear they were ditching that old proposal centered on public-private partnerships, which was drafted by former adviser Gary Cohn.

“I’ll lead on this,” Trump told the room, referring to infrastructure. “I would like to do something. It may not be typically Republican,” he added.

Trump didn’t engage on the question of how to pay for new infrastructure investments, and Democrats are waiting on him to propose something first.

“The ball is in the president’s court to come up with ‘pay-fors‘ and I look forward to meeting with them in three weeks about that,” Schumer said. “The president didn’t get into any specifics. We just told him we needed him to come up with how he would propose paying for this and then we would counter it.”

Democrats have been urging the president to consider scrapping some tax cuts for the wealthy from the 2017 tax law to help pay for infrastructure. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said that’s a “non-starter” for Republicans, but Democrats will want some progressive economic reforms to move forward.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told Trump and his aides as he was leaving that “fairness for working class people and economic growth are not incompatible. We have to do both.”

Earlier, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway declined to say whether Trump would support an increase in the gas tax.

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, the administration's top deficit hawk, wasn’t in the meeting as Trump apparently agreed to a higher figure than his other advisers were pushing and set low expectations for a deal.

Speaking at the investor-filled Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Mulvaney said he believed there was a much better chance of Congress passing a new trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico — another heavy lift with Democrats — than passing an infrastructure deal.

While the concept of boosting infrastructure investment has bipartisan support, the Trump administration wants to find a way to speed up projects by overhauling regulations, and Mulvaney said that's where infrastructure talks could break down.

"I want to change the environmental laws," he said. "How do you feel about that as a Democrat? It's going to be a very difficult place for some of them to go."

Trump used the meeting with the 12 top Democrats to raise a slew of policy issues from trade and immigration to health care. “It was all over the place, the whole meeting,” said a Democratic aide in the room.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow repeatedly raised the question of Trump’s trade deal with Mexico and Canada and what it would take for Democrats to agree. Democrats answered that they needed labor and environmental protections to even consider the new trade deal, Schumer said.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao also spoke during the meeting; Ivanka Trump was silent.