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Official Platform Goal for Republicans Before National Convention

Upenda Kanda / Creative Commons

Even before Donald Trump got in hot water for his remarks about a Mexican American judge and implicating President Obama in the Orlando attack, House Republicans were planning to unveil their own agenda this summer.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump recently taunted GOP leaders in Congress, saying they need to get tougher and that if they didn't he would "just do it by myself." Well, it seems they were already letting him go it alone. House Speaker Paul Ryan has been unveiling a series of new policy proposals called A Better Way. 

"Let's face it, people know what Republicans are against. Now, we're going to give you a plan that shows you what we are for."

Among other things the six part plan would require those receiving federal benefits to spend more time working or looking for a job. It also would address the nation's borders but not merely focusing on building a wall. To many in Washington, the series of House Republican proposals draws a stark contrast with what Trump has been promising voters.

“If anything they may come up with a kind of contra-Trump agenda.”

That’s northern Virginia Democrat Don Beyer. He says the Republicans he talks to in private are terrified of Trump but that they are too afraid of their base to call him out publicly.

“They don’t want the third of their base that might be Trump voters to be mad at them and skip them but they also don’t want to be linked to Donald Trump.”

While many Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump this summer, the party is struggling to unify around an agenda. Virginia Republican Dave Brat says he’s disagreed with some of the Speaker’s proposals, like his poverty program.

“Just some of those I think could have been much tougher. The work requirements in that are pretty thin in you go in and look at them and that's a real deal right? I mean, everyone is leaving the workforce to work for participation rates, at its 40-year low. That can't be.”

Brat says he doesn’t want his party to be monolithic, but he wishes Democrats would stand up to their party leaders too.

“I’m taking on my own side again, right? Because it's not optimal, but I'm waiting for the Democrats to put up any proposal, right? So that's what we're waiting for."

And Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith says he doesn’t expect to run on the House agenda any time soon.

"I'll keep running the same campaign I've always had and I'll take the parts of it I really like and talk about it some but there would be parts I don't care for as much and probably won't run on those."

But Griffith says it’s fine if House Republicans disagree with Trump on everything from immigration to trade policy.

“It's really important that we realize that the House has its prerogatives and the House needs to do its job, president has a job to do but it's not to dictate to the house and we have to work things out between whoever the new executive is going to be and the members of the House."

On the details of the proposals, Virginia Democrat Bobby Scott says the GOP is hypocritical because on the one hand they call for alleviating poverty and on the other hand they’re working to cut nutrition programs that are vital in alleviating poverty.

“Their view of improving the child nutrition program is to reduce the nutrition standards, kick kids out of the school lunch program, and water down the summer and after school programs. I mean, and then you talk about reducing poverty. Well that, that’s, you’ve got the rhetoric on one side and the votes on the other.”

Much of this will be in flux until the party's official platform gets hammered out at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

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