Trump Looks Left On Cost Of Living Concerns

President Donald Trump’s kicking off a midterm year by reaching out to Senate Democrats.

He dialed up Elizabeth Warren after she gave a speech on the future of the Democratic party. He invited Chuck Schumer to the White House to talk about a New York infrastructure project. And he invited Peter Welch to an Oval Office event on an initiative important to Vermont.

For a president who wants his party to retain control of Congress, it’s a striking – even unexpected – level of outreach to some of the most liberal members on the opposing side.

It comes as both parties compete for the mantle of affordability. It’s a problem that the White House recognizes Republicans alone can’t solve — and in some cases, a problem for which congressional Republicans are reluctant to embrace Trump’s solutions. The president is looking for populist policies to deal with the high cost of living, not traditional Republican ideas for the economy, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Some proposals on affordability are “more populist-inflected than some of the more classic proposals that had been worked on,” the official said. “A lot of these proposals have, in part, been put forward by Democrats.”

The White House is examining policy on credit card interest rates, housing and prescription drug prices as “pretty marquee issues where the perspective of more standard old-school Republican orthodoxy is not necessarily in step with where Republican voters are,” the official said. “Some of these are issues where the Washington GOP consensus and the GOP base consensus are divergent.”

While Trump’s outreach is new, enacting policy changes would require a dramatic reversal in the president’s ability to work with Democrats on Capitol Hill. During much of his first term as well as last year, that relationship has been deeply toxic — a government funding meeting last year prompted Trump to post a deepfake of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero — and, until now, neither side has shown any appetite to make amends.

Trump called Warren last week shortly after she delivered a speech that, in part, criticized Trump on affordability. She told CNBC she was “surprised” and “did not recognize the phone number.”

The Massachusetts Democrat said Trump raised the idea of capping credit card interest rates, a proposal she said she’d been working on for years. She told him: “Congress can pass legislation to cap credit card rates if he will actually fight for it.”

Days earlier, he called fora one-year cap of 10 percent for credit card interest rates.

Other popular Democratic policies that Trump is looking to implement include curbing credit card swipe fees — Trumpendorsed a bill introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to do that. In addition, Trump has said he’s interested in banning large investors from acquiring single-family homes — an idea that several Senate Democrats have supported.

Trump called for a one-on-one meeting with Schumer at the White House last week, according to the Senate minority leader’s office, to talk about the Gateway project, a massive infrastructure overhaul over which Schumer and Trump have sparred since his first term.

And last week the White House invited Welch to attend a signing ceremony for a bill that would allow whole milk in schools, reversing an Obama-era initiative to encourage skim milk. Trump pointed to Welch to give remarks first as the Democrat in the room.

The official refused to name any other Democrats who could be getting a call from Trump. Democrats have taken the opportunity to meet or speak with the president to raise other issues.

Schumer used his sit-down with Trump to raise the unrelated issues of health care and the administration’s decision to deploy ICE around the country to carry out mass deportations.

Welch went to the White House prepared to “advocate for the extension of the [Affordable Care Act] health care tax credits,” according to a spokesperson for the senator. He did discuss the tax credits with Trump, as well as with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the spokesperson said.

Warren, who is calling on her own party to embrace a populist economic platform, said she used her phone call to urge Trump to put pressure on House Republicans to pass legislation on housing costs.

The Warren wing of the Democratic Party has worked with lawmakers on the other side on issues such as banning institutional investors from buying homes. But working with Trump can be risky for Democrats, even those who want to burnish their bipartisan bona fides. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer— who has developed a surprisingly affable relationship with the president — has been criticized by fellow Democrats for being too friendly with Trump.

Trump’s enlisting help from Democrats and shifting towards economic populism comes asrecent CNN polling found 61 percent of voters said they disapprove of his handling of the economy and anew New York Times/ Siena College poll found just 34 percent of voters approve of his handling of the cost of living.

The White House looks at talking to Democrats as a way to blend “what might be termed traditional Republican approaches and traditional Democratic approaches” to address domestic problems.

“While these proposals are more populist in orientation, it doesn’t mean just taking off the shelf a Democratic proposal and refashioning it. It is trying to figure out the ways in which the free market and Trump-ist populism can be advanced using different paradigms,” the official said.