The Trump administration has made good progress on issues of importance to conservatives, despite pushback from the left, the president’s legislative point man told a gathering of Christian conservatives.
“Do we have all the major things we wanted to get done, done? No. Are they all in process? Yes,” Paul Teller says.
“It’s been like a calm ocean, right? No challenges whatsoever,” Paul Teller said to a laughing audience at the Road to Majority conference, referring to the Trump administration’s first four and a half months.
Teller, special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, spoke Friday as part of a panel on the legislative agenda for the next year and a half.
Teller, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who previously was executive director of the House’s Republican Study Committee, reaffirmed the assembled activists’ apparent consensus that the Trump administration’s first 140 days have been positive for conservatives.
Teller’s job is to coordinate conservative messaging between Congress and the White House.
“Basically, my role is liaisoning directly with some of the more conservative House members, some of the more conservative senators,” Teller said. “I think that’s really smart for the president to want to create that kind of position.”
He said that from his perspective in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, conservatives have made significant advances on their agenda in a short time.
“The first few months have been fantastic from a legislative standpoint,” Teller said. “Do we have all the major things we wanted to get done, done? No. Are they all in process? Yes.”
His examples included Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination and confirmation for the Supreme Court and the president’s use of the Congressional Review Act, which Teller said “makes it really easy to peel back regulation” imposed during the Obama administration.
Paul Teller, left, the president’s special assistant for legislative affairs, outside the White House with Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. (Photo: Paul Teller Facebook)
Teller also discussed the House’s recently passed legislation to replace Obamacare, the American Health Care Act, as an example:
The president wants this bill to show up on his desk, not for the sake of checking a box, but for the sake of relieving suffering. People of America are hurting. They’re losing their health insurance [under Obamacare]. Premiums are increasing. They move from full time to part time … they have no real choice. … That’s real suffering.
Teller pointed to better communication as an aid to conservative victories:
I like to say that I’m a ‘chief communicator’ as well, because I get to translate conservative-speak into the White House, and White House-speak out to the Hill and the larger conservative movement. Sometimes that translation makes all the difference.
The Faith & Freedom Coalition organized the conference, held Thursday through Saturday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington.
