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South Dakota Republicans are on the verge of doing something that backfired spectacularly for congressional Republicans earlier this year: Getting rid of an independent ethics commission.

What is a politically tricky endeavor for any lawmaking body could beeven more precarious for the state's lawmakers, given that the commission they want to cut was approved by51 percent of voters in a ballot initiative this November. The independent commission was part of a larger voter-approved ethics reform package thatput limits on campaign finance and lobbying access.

State lawmakers metMonday to debate repeal of the entire law, and Republican leaders say the bill could be on the governor's desk by the end of the week. Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) has indicated he would sign a repeal. In his December budget address, he lambasted the ethics package, declaringthat voters were hoodwinked by scam artists who grossly misrepresented these proposed measures.

As Daugaard's rhetoric suggests,Republican opposition to the voter-approved ethics package has been fierce.

Days after the election, 25 GOP lawmakers and a conservative lobbying group challenged the law in court, declaring that voters were tricked into supporting something that could be unconstitutional, for a variety of reasons. A South Dakota judge subsequently paused it from going into effect. Though the judge said some parts of the law could be saved, GOP lawmakers decided it was better to start from scratch.

It would only stand to reason from that logic that we repeal it in its entirety, said state Rep. Larry Rhoden, one of the Republicans leading the repeal effort.

Rhoden said lawmakers are considering other ethics reform legislation and added there was no rush to do something: We are pretty squeaky clean, and I can say that with a great deal of pride in South Dakota; the ethics among the people that serve the state in the legislature, I would call impeccable.

Lawmakers are also debating a bill that would double the required signatures to get an initiative on the ballot in South Dakota.

Democrats and progressive groups in South Dakota don't see it that way. They are accusing Republicans of picking apart the law to get out of having an independent ethics commission look over their shoulders.

Support for the anti-corruption act was wildly nonpartisan, said Doug Kronaizl, a spokesman with the grass-roots group Represent South Dakota, which advocated for the ethics package. He pointed out that no ballot initiative in South Dakota can pass without Republican support, because there simply aren't enough Democrats in the state. (Out-of-state money on both sides poured into the referendum.) At least two former Republican state senators campaigned for the reform package. It's troubling when legislators tell us we were 'hoodwinked' or don't know what we were voting for.

Did I agree with everything in Initiative Measure 22? said state Senate Minority Leader Billie Sutton (D). Probably not, but I think it's our job to respect the will of the voters and to fix pieces that may be considered unconstitutional.

The nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity recently ranked South Dakota 47th in the nation for accountability, largely because of its lax lobbying laws. Little to none of [state legislative and lobbyist interaction] is reported to the public in any detail, the report said.

Proponents of the ethics commission say South Dakota has earned its F rating on integrity. The state has been wracked by two major ethics scandals in the past two years: Investigations into misuse of the federal green card program for wealthy immigrant investors and the theft by a private company of more than $1 million of federal grant money to help Native Americans get ready for college.

As a grim aside, people implicated in both scandals either committed suicide or murder or both.

Republicans counter that this new ethics commission would not have been able to stop those scandals because they involved misuse of federal, not state, funds.

The whole saga has echoes of what happened three weeks ago in Washington.

On the eve of Congress's first day back insession in 2017, Republicans in control of the House of Representatives pushed a provision that would have gutted an independent ethics officethat investigates them. Republicansabruptly dropped the planafter public backlash from their constituencies and two tsk-tsk tweets from then-President-elect Donald Trump.

In South Dakota, the battle is largely along partisan lines. More than two-thirds of Republican lawmakers have signed onto the repeal effort; not one Democrat has. (That may also be a function of just how small the Democratic Party is in South Dakota: There are 16 Democrats in the entire 105-person legislature.)

All thatproponents of the ethics law can do is watch Republicans undo it and try to point out what, from their vantage point, looks like irony. More than a century ago, South Dakota was the first state in the nation to create a referendum process as a check on its legislature.

This isn't the first time South Dakota lawmakers have tried to change a voter-approved ballot initiative. In 2014, voters passed a ballot measure increasing the minimum wage; GOP lawmakers again claimed voters didn't realize what they had done and passed legislation excluding anyone under 18 from the paycheck boost.

Minimum-wage advocates successfullygot a referendum on November's ballot to override the legislature's changes to the law. That referendum passed by 71 percent, and the minimum wage went back up to $8.50 an hour for all workers.

We think it's pretty clear that the voters don't like when the legislature comes in and messes with our laws, Kronaizl said.

Advocates won't get a second chance to reinstate theirethics package. Lawmakers are considering the repealunder a protection known as state of emergency, which effectively prohibits a referendum on it.

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South Dakota Republicans are about to get rid of the state's first independent ethics commission - Washington Post

As the gavel fell on a critical vote advancing the global trade agenda, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) pumped his arm, fist-bumped three Republicans and high-fived another.

That was June 2015.

On Monday, President Trump delivered a knockout blow to that agenda. On his first full work day in the Oval Office, Trump formally withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade pact among a dozen nations that was supposed to have been eased into passage by Ryans leadership 19 months ago.

Trumps move was largely symbolic because Ryan, who was elevated to House speaker a few months after that celebrated vote, had already waved the political white flag on what would have been the worlds largest trade deal.

Throughout 2016, Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled that support for the deal had collapsed in both chambers in large part because presidential candidates including Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had successfully portrayed it as a bad pact for American workers.

Still, Trumps actions demonstrate his seriousness about reversing decades of Republican orthodoxy on globalism a pledge he renewed during Fridays inaugural address, when he committed to an America first agenda.

These actions also show the rocky road that may lie ahead for congressional Republicans on a range of policy issues. On Thursday, Trump and Vice President Pence will join their Republican brethren at an issues retreat in Philadelphia to talk about getting on the same page.

If past is prologue, Trump wont be asking for the Hills help. Hell be telling his fellow Republicans to get on board or step out of the way. They, in turn, will be figuring out how to stick to their principles while also positioning to play a role in Trumps success.

The abandonment of the TPP came a short time after Trumps meeting with business executives, during which he again voiced support for tariffs or a border tax on U.S. companies that build products with cheap foreign labor and ship them to the United States. That policy has already caused friction between the new president and traditional conservatives such as Ryan.

Trump then met with several labor leaders, whose unions had backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential race to tout his infrastructure agenda. And White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that more executive actions on trade are likely to come later this week.

Its a stunning reversal for a party that, just two summers ago, continued to support a free-trade agenda.

[TPP trade deal is dead until a new president revives it, McConnell says]

Ryan, who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee at the time, played the lead role in legislation granting special fast-track rules for trade deals for the last months of Barack Obamas presidency and the first few years of the new administration. The measure won support from 194 Republicans in the House and 48 in the Senate; thats nearly 80percent and 90percent, respectively, of the GOP caucus in each chamber.

It was one of the most important pieces of legislation Ryan ever shepherded into law, as his emotional response on the House floor indicated. It reflected an ideology that was part of the Republican bedrock since at least the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Throughout the Obama years, Ryan became the public face of that brand of conservatism, projecting faith in U.S. leadership in open, global markets. It gives America credibility, Ryan said during final debate over the 2015 fast-track bill. And boy, do we need credibility right now.

That period created a deep rift among Democrats who bitterly fought their president on the issue, particularly those in the Midwest, where the manufacturing sector has been crushed by the movement of jobs overseas and automation in the plants that remain here. In an odd twist, Democrats provided some of the biggest applause to Trumps formal withdrawal from the trade treaty.

Its a pleasant surprise to me. Im glad that we have a president thats joining us, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), a leader of the opposition to TPP, said Monday evening. She shook her head at the work that McConnell and Ryan put into passing the fast-track legislation intended to lay the groundwork for passing the Pacific trade deal.

I think their heads must be spinning right now, Stabenow said.

Ryans advisers say the opposite, that the politics of trade had shifted long before Trump won the presidential election an election in which Clinton, who helped negotiate the initial contours of TPP, reversed course and became an opponent of the deal.

President Trump is wasting no time acting on his promises, Ryan said in a statement Monday after the new president issued a string of executive orders. On trade, Ryan noted: He has followed through on his promise to insist on better trade agreements.

[ Its mostly kumbaya so far for Trump and GOP in Congress ]

Republican advisers are quick to say that the bulk of GOP lawmakers still believe in negotiating trade deals. Except now the focus is on smaller, bilateral deals with one nation at a time, as opposed to the more sweeping multilateral deals involving many nations.

Wilbur Ross, a billionaire financier who is Trumps nominee for Commerce secretary, voiced support for that approach during his confirmation hearing last week.

This reorientation on trade is one of several key policy areas that the Ryan and Trump wings of the party must work through in the months ahead. In his address Friday, Trump returned to his dream of pushing a massive new infrastructure bill for roads, bridges and airports the kind of largesse that House Republicans have furiously fought in the past.

And all sides within the party are struggling to explain the process and details of how theyre going to replace the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have promised to repeal.

On Monday evening, Trump met privately with Ryan after a larger, bipartisan huddle at the White House with congressional leaders. The speakers aides said the meeting focused on every major policy issue of the moment.

What they didnt say is what the two men agreed on and what they didnt. Which leaves a burning question for Ryan: Will he get on board or step out of the way?

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Trump is going after Republican orthodoxy. How will Paul Ryan adapt? - Washington Post

U.S. President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump has dealt global oil markets a major case of whiplash.

After pilinginto betsthat the benchmark prices for crude oil traded in New York and London would converge by December 2018, traders are now paring those wagersamid doubts that a Republican Congress will be able to push through plans for a levy on oil imports and a tax exemption for exports, moves that wouldincentivize production in the U.S. relative to bringing in oil from overseas.

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The spread between contracts set to expire at the end of 2017, 2018, and 2019 are now well off their earlier-year tights, even though the ideasoutlined by Trump and the House GOP ought to be similar directionally for the WTI-Brent gap, if not in magnitude.

This price action speaks to a larger theme evolving in markets: The unbridled enthusiasm about the incoming administration has been replaced with more caution, skepticism and outright confusion about what exactly the president's policy goals are and how he'll implement them.

The five-year yield on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, which soared after the election,has fallen back into negative territory on concerns that the new administration won't be too much of a positive for growth. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar spot index is in negative territory in Januaryafter going on a tear in the fourth quarter, and gold has regained some of its luster after ending 2016 below $1,110 per ounce.

Whether any enacted border tax will be similar to the form envisaged by House Republicans or more selectively applied on companies that outsource jobs, which is more seemingly in line with Trump's rhetoric, remains to be seen.

When it comes to the oil proposals, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conclude that a move to the tax program preferred by the House Republicans would cause WTI to trade at a premium to Brent immediately, and for the first time since May 2016 -- causing pain for U.S. consumers in the process. They say U.S. gasoline prices could rise by about 30 cents per gallon at the pump.

But while Trump's steadfast support for protectionist measures implies a meaningful shift in trade policy is in the offing Goldman isn't too bullish on the House Republican's plan coming to pass.

Economist Alec Phillips, a former Senate Finance Committee staffer, sees just a one-in-five chance that a border tax will be implemented. The presence of former Exxon Mobil Corp. chief executive Rex Tillerson in the cabinet, as well as comments from Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin highlighting Trump's cognizance of how border taxes could increase gas prices, raise the prospect that energy may be ``carved out'' from changes that aim to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, Goldman concludes.

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Oil Traders Aren't So Sure About Republicans' Border Tax Plan - Bloomberg

Forbes

An Open Letter To President Trump: Don't Let Congressional Republicans Wreck Your Tax Plan Forbes I am writing to you about the tax cut package that congressional Republicans are working on, which holds much promise, but, alas, may contain a poison-pill provision that would severely damage your goal of making America great again. You were right to ... and more »

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An Open Letter To President Trump: Don't Let Congressional Republicans Wreck Your Tax Plan - Forbes

The vast majority of Republicans in Congress havent budged from their longstanding vow to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act. But as the party struggles to write a replacement, a few GOP lawmakers are declaring their support for keeping the law on the books in some form indefinitely.

A group of senators on Monday unveiled legislation that would give states the option of preserving Obamacare, securing federal support for a more conservative health-insurance system, or opting out of any assistance from Washington. Offered as a middle ground in the partisan health-care fight, the proposal breaks with years of Republican orthodoxy on the 2010 law, which party leaders have pledged to rip out root and branch.

Republicans think that if you like your insurance, you can keep it. And we mean it, said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and the lead author of legislation he has titled the Patient Freedom Act of 2017. We give states the choice, he said at a Capitol press conference. So California and New York, you have Obamacare, you can keep it. I disagree with it, but Republicans think power is best held at the state level, not by Washington, D.C., so its not for us to dictate.

A Possible Republican Truce on Obamacare

Cassidy introduced a similar proposal last year along with Representative Pete Sessions, a House Republican from Texas. But the bill was ignored by Cassidys Senate colleagues and went nowhere. This time around, hes secured early support from three fellow Republicans in the Senate: Susan Collins of Maine, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. Cassidy, Collins, and Isakson all sit on the Senate committee that will be charged with drafting a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.

The Cassidy bill would repeal both the employer and individual insurance mandates in Obamacare while retaining the more popular consumer protections allowing people to stay on their parents plan through age 26 and banning discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. It would still require insurers to cover mental-health and substance-abuse disorders. States could choose to continue to run ACA exchanges and expanded Medicaid, although there would be a 5 percent cut in federal support for subsidies and tax credits. Or they could receive the same level of federal funding to pursue a more conservative program based on expanded health savings accounts and high-deductible plans, which are the hallmarks of many Republican proposals to replace Obamacare.

Whether the Cassidy proposal could function as intended is unclear. The ACA is a complex and highly interconnected law, and its proponents have argued that keeping popular provisions while removing the mandates designed to make them affordable would be nearly impossible. States could also auto-enroll residents in basic health plans, which Cassidy said was designed as an alternative to the ACAs requirement that individuals buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. Maintaining a large enough pool of healthy people enrolled in coverage, he acknowledged, was essential to continuing the ban on insurance companies being allowed to deny plans to consumers with conditions that would be more expensive to cover.

Another challenge for Cassidy and his colleagues is that their proposal represents a compromise at a moment when neither side of the healthcare fight is ready for one. Democrats attacked the plan for its funding cuts and for the likelihood that many Republican-led states would choose to abandon the federal law and kick millions of their residents off the exchanges and Medicaid. Ultimately, this proposal is an empty facade that would create chaosnot carefor millions of Americans, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said.

Conservatives were equally dismissive of the proposal, which would keep the tax increases included in the original law. It doesnt repeal Obamacare, and thats been a Republican pledge since 2010, said Jason Pye, director of public policy and legislative affairs from FreedomWorks, the conservative advocacy group.

Pye said congressional Republicans must, at the very least, pass the same bill that former President Obama vetoed last year, the Restoring Americans Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, which repealed all of the tax-and-spending provisions in the law. Anything other than that, and there will be hell to pay from grassroots activists, he told me. We cant nibble around the edges here. We can't sit here and try to be cute with this effort. We either need to be all in, or Republicans are going own Obamacare. Dan Holler, a spokesman for the conservative Heritage Action, offered a similar criticism. Giving states the ability to keep Obamacare will not empower patients; too many will remain trapped in a failing, centrally controlled system, he said. Congressional Republicans promised to repeal Obamacare for all Americans, not just some. They promised to provide more freedom and choice for all patients, not just some.

That Cassidys bill is getting a second life exemplifies the GOPs dilemma on Obamacare: Republican leaders want to repeal the law as fast as possible, but they have encountered resistance from President Trump and a growing number of rank-and-file lawmakers who are demanding that a replacement be ready immediately. Republican governors in states that embraced the ACA and expanded Medicaid have also warned Congress against taking action that could destabilize the insurance market and threaten coverage. We recognize that our bill is not perfect. It is still a work in progress, Collins said. But if we do not start putting specific legislation on the table that can be debated, refined, amended, and enacted, then we will fail the American people.

Trump on Friday signed an executive order aimed at laying the groundwork for repeal by directing federal agencies to ease the burden of the law on consumers, insurers, and businesses. But in a sign of the division among Republicans on the issue, Collins criticized the order as very confusing. We really dont know yet what the impact will be, she said.

To supporters of Obamacare, the GOP bill represents less a serious policy proposal than an attempt by nervous legislators to grasp onto anything they can describe as a replacement.

It shows that a handful of Republican senators are extremely uncomfortable with repeal and delay, and theyre desperately looking for a way out, said Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

The Cassidy bill could begin to look more appealing to some Democrats if Republicans succeed in repealing most of the Affordable Care Act later this year with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate. It would keep the law alive and offer the chance that states would re-embrace it once theyve experienced the alternative. But as they watch Republicans struggle to keep the hardline promise theyve made to their base, Democrats are in no hurryyetto negotiate.

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The Republican Health Plan That Doesn't Repeal Obamacare - The Atlantic