U.S. Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) recently praised President Donald Trump’s deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and secure hurricane relief funds, expressing hope that the much-needed bipartisanship was a harbinger of things to come.
In a Sept. 19 op-ed in the Washington Examiner, Rice wrote that his biggest hope for Trump has been that the president would care more about solving the country’s big problems than about party politics. “He wants to accomplish things, and so do I.”
“Despite the rancor and fury that is preached hourly on the news, there are only a few really big problems holding our country back: tax reform, the federal debt, regulatory reform, illegal immigration, infrastructure, and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare,” Rice wrote.
After spending four years in Congress, Rice said, he has discovered that even when Republicans and Democrats reach agreement on big issues, partisanship and election cycles compromise the solutions.
“We tried to pass Obamacare repeal with only Republican votes, just as Democrats passed the law with only Democratic votes,” Rice said. “We narrowly passed it out of the House of Representatives, but it has yet to clear the Senate. If we only get Republican senators, we need 50 out of 52 yea votes — 96 percent agreement. You can’t get 96 percent of people to agree that the sky is blue.”
When it comes to tax reform, Rice added, Republicans would be foolish to forgo a bipartisan solution in hopes of getting 96 percent of Republican senators to back a tax reform bill.
“This country has historically been governed from the center-right,” Rice wrote, despite there being strong advocates of both extremes. However, “If we are to move forward, grow our economy, and restore this land of opportunity, we must get back to governing from the center-right with compromise on both sides.”
Rice noted that the Reagan administration and the Clinton administration both worked across party lines to craft important bipartisan legislation that moved the country forward, but that bipartisanship became an “endangered species” under the Bush administration and “extinct” under the Obama administration.
“Perhaps Trump, with all his foibles, is precisely the right man at the right time in history,” Rice wrote. “Perhaps he can break the bonds of partisanship and help us solve some of our most difficult problems.”