Republican congressmen denied that the GOP legislative agenda has been sidelined due to the saturated media coverage of problems within the Trump administration, insisting that they have been working intensively on both reforming the tax code, as well as repealing and replacing Obamacare, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.
To emphasize the point, Republicans say that GOP senators are meeting daily about legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Regarding tax reform, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that good progress is being made and that he's confident in his party they will meet the goal of achieving it during this calendar year.
Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch said he has personally been dealing with both healthcare and tax reform, but "We can't make headlines, though. How can you make headlines when there is already a headline: Trump did … fill in the blank."
The GOP's complaints about the media ignoring other important issues besides controversies over President Donald Trump are backed up by a recent study by the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
The report found Trump was the topic among all news stories 41 percent of the time during his first 100 days in office, which was three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, a frequent critic of the president, told the Examiner that the media misquoted him that Trump's troubles have hobbled the GOP agenda, insisting that he said "it has diverted our attention. I have not seen it slow down the agenda."
The Arizona senator said that Republican senators are spending their daily meetings "going over certain aspects of healthcare reform," not talking about Trump's problems.
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