Republicans on Capitol Hill spent last week fending off mobs of reporters who rarely asked a question about the GOP agenda.
Instead they wanted to know how Republicans feel about the escalating problems bubbling up from the Trump administration.
Drowned out were the talks about GOP's efforts to reform the tax code and repeal Obamacare, which led some to speculate that the Republican agenda has essentially been sidelined, perhaps permanently.
That's not true, say GOP lawmakers, who blame the Capitol Hill media for downplaying coverage of their agenda in favor of round-the-clock reporting of Trump's troubles.
"Today, I have dealt with healthcare, we've started to wade into actual tax reform," Sen Jim Risch, R-Idaho, told the Washington Examiner. "We can't make headlines, though. How can you make headlines when there is already a headline: Trump did fill in the blank."
Republicans are indeed working intensively on plans to make major reforms to the tax code as well as repeal and replace Obamacare.
The House Ways and Means Committee held its first major public hearing on tax reform on Thursday and has been meeting privately for weeks with lawmakers as well as key players in the Trump administration, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., denied the problems at the White House are interfering with completing tax reform.
"Our goal, and I feel very confident we can meet this goal, is calendar year 2017 for tax reform," Ryan said last week. "And I think we're making good progress."
In the Senate, Republican lawmakers meet daily to discuss how to write legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, while two separate working healthcare groups are holding several meetings each week.
"We are doing stuff all the time," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "All the press wants to cover is whatever is going on at the White House."
A new study backs up the GOP's complaint.
Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy issued a report last week that found Trump was the topic among all news stories 41 percent of the time during his first 100 days in office. That's triple the level of coverage for previous presidents.
Almost all of the media coverage of Trump was negative, Harvard's analysis found, "setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president."
Trump's problems have literally migrated to Capitol Hill.
A half-dozen committees in the House and Senate are delving into allegations that Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian operatives ahead of the November election.
Investigative committees are also digging for information about Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey and whether Trump tried to pressure Comey to drop his probe into ousted national security adviser Mike Flynn.
Nearly every day key lawmakers fire off requests to the White House for documents and information relating to the various congressional investigations.
On Thursday, only a smattering of reporters lurked around a closed-door GOP meeting on healthcare reform. Most of the media were elsewhere in the Capitol staking out a private briefing by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was summoned to explain to senators how Trump went about firing Comey.
This week, much of the attention will swing back to the House, where Comey has been invited to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said he has been misquoted by media who report he believes Trump's difficulties hobble the agenda.
"I'm saying it has diverted our attention," McCain told the Washington Examiner. "I have not seen it slow down the agenda."
McCain said he anticipates producing a major defense bill in June and Republicans are spending their daily meetings "going over certain aspects of healthcare reform," not talking about Trump's problems.
"It's sucking the oxygen out of the room because it is dominating the media," McCain said.
The true threat to the GOP agenda, Republicans argue, is the Democrats who have so far moved to slow down or stop legislation and executive branch appointments.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told NBC after Trump's election that for most of the president's agenda, "we're going to have to fight him, and we'll fight him tooth and nail."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said Democrats are upholding Schumer's pledge as they employed yet another delaying tactic on a Trump nominee, this time former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who is awaiting a Senate vote to be confirmed as the ambassador to China.
Instead of simply voting on the nomination, Democrats are forcing Republicans to hold a cloture vote that follows a two-day delay.
"Here we have cloture on an Iowa governor, who everybody knows and everybody likes," Roberts said. "So we just burn two days."
Excerpt from:
Trump coverage drowns out Republicans' agenda - Washington Examiner