Sean Craig picked up my comments in The Daily Beast on the behind-the-scenes House GOP fight over the Trump tax cuts.

However, that would leave Republicans without the necessary wiggle room to implement any of Trump’s tax policies apart from the extension of the tax cuts from his first administration.
“There will absolutely have to be trade-offs,” Republican strategist Liam Donovan told Politico. “You simply can’t fit it all into that.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Benjamin Guggenheim and Meredith Lee Hill for POLITICO on GOP tax cuts and budget reconciliation.

The number that lawmakers had tentatively settled on last Thursday — around $4.7 trillion — would make it virtually impossible to implement anything above an extension of the expiring tax cuts. House Republicans agreed during their White House meeting last week that they would permanently extend the 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated by Congress’ official accountants as costing $4.6 trillion.
The $4.7 trillion figure “is an implicit acknowledgement that something will have to give,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist, in an interview.
“[T]here will absolutely have to be trade-offs. You simply can’t fit it all into that,” Donovan said.

Read the full piece here.

Craig Bettenhausen quoted me in Chemical & Engineering News on what a Republican trifecta means for bioeconomy policy and the IRA.

“With full control, Republicans can kind of do . . . whatever they can get internal agreement on,” said Bracewell government relations strategist Liam Donovan. For all of them, he said, “frame your story around American energy dominance.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Maggie Haberman for her New York Times piece with Jonathan Swan on President Trump’s floor-the-zone nomination strategy.

Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide, said that “we’re on a collision course between traditional senatorial prerogatives and the unique power dynamics of the Trump restoration.”

Now, as Mr. Trump prepares to take office for the second time, he is demonstrating how confident he is that the branches of government will bend even further to accommodate him.

He plans to test just how far he can go.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Andy Duehren for his New York Times piece on the Trump agenda and the looming fiscal cliff.

Mr. Trump’s ambitions for a second term will ultimately have to compete with the signature accomplishment from his first: the giant tax package that Republicans passed and Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. Large swaths of that tax cut expire at the end of next year, setting up an expensive debate that could overshadow Mr. Trump’s other goals.

“Nobody wants to acknowledge at all the sheer enormity of the challenge,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “There’s a reckoning coming.”

Read the full piece here.