Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham predicts Republicans “are finished” if they can’t get tax reform passed quickly.
"[President Trump] wants to be a popular president. He’s a conservative populist. That means at times, if Republicans don’t deliver legislation that he can sign on the critical matters that he campaigned on, he’s going to look to move the ball down the field with another set of players," Ingraham told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
"And sometimes it’s going to be people that you and I don’t like very much and don't agree with on many issues — on an issue like the debt ceiling, which is a conservative concern and rightfully so — but the president wanted to move this issue off the table and clear the deck for tax reform," she added.
Ingraham’s comments come after Trump struck a deal with Democrats on government spending and the debt ceiling.
While many Republicans bristled at the move, others recognized it was meant to help give them room to work on tax reform.
Ingraham said if they don’t use the opportunity to get it accomplished, Republicans are done.
"If they do not get tax reform done, they are done. They are finished. [Speaker] Paul Ryan came out today and had an extra special spring in his step on tax reform. It's funny what Trump working with the Democrats will do to the Republicans."
Ryan sought to explain Trump’s deal by saying he wanted to avoid a “food fight.”
"What the president didn’t want to do is have some partisan fight in the middle of the response to this," Ryan said. "He wanted to make sure that in this moment of national crisis, where our country is getting hit by two horrible hurricanes, he wanted to have a bipartisan response and not a food fight and not the timing of the debt limit attached to this bill.”
Trump on Friday urged Republicans to “hurry” on tax reform.
"Republicans must start the Tax Reform/Tax Cut legislation ASAP. Don't wait until the end of September. Needed now more than ever. Hurry!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
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