| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. I got one wrong. In the deal reached Sunday on the pandemic relief and stimulus bill, it appears that President Donald Trump successfully negotiated for one of his priorities: the return of the three-martini lunch. The Washington Post's Jeff Stein has the details: The draft language of the emergency coronavirus relief package includes a tax break for corporate meal expenses pushed by the White House … Democratic leaders agreed to the provision in exchange for Republicans agreeing to expand tax credits for low income families and the working poor in the final package.
As Stein says, Trump has been pushing for this provision since the summer, despite the fairly unanimous view of economists that it would do little or nothing for hard-hit restaurants and despite almost no sign of any interest from congressional Republicans. Indeed, this appears to be a rare case in which the president managed a real legislative victory. For four years, when Trump and Hill Republicans disagreed, Trump lost, whether it was his long failure to make any headway on infrastructure or his more recent inability to pass a payroll-tax holiday. Oddly enough, this comes at a time when, from all reports, Trump is paying no attention to his job, instead focusing only on efforts to undermine the rule of law by overturning an election that he lost. Presumably he told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who negotiated the deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on behalf of the White House, that he didn't much care what was in the bill as long as it included this provision. (And surely it's a coincidence that restoring this deduction will once again subsidize high-priced establishments such as those Trump owns.) I'd be very surprised if congressional Republicans would've made this deal on their own. As for the Democrats? This particular log-roll seems like a big win for them. The business deduction may be lousy policy and a subsidy for the rich, but it's relatively harmless overall — and liberal policy experts are thrilled with what they got in return. So it's a win for Trump, a win for Democrats and a loss for congressional Republicans. If there's been a deal with any similar configuration over the past four years, I can't think of it. That's just one piece of the $900 billion puzzle, however. Judging winners and losers on the larger bill is more difficult. Democrats got a whole lot less than they wanted and are getting it more than six months after they wanted it. But on the other hand, this is a package similar in size to the 2009 stimulus bill, and that one (passed by large Democratic majorities in both chambers, and with a new and popular Democratic president) had a lot more tax cuts and a lot less spending. In other words, anyone who claims this was a total win for either side is surely wrong. 1. Amy Erica Smith at Mischiefs of Faction on a lost opportunity in Venezuela. 2. Daniel Nichanian on criminal-justice reform and the 2020 election results. Comprehensive. And a good reminder for regular readers: I write mostly about national politics because that's what I know about, but what happens at the state and local level often is what matters most to people. 3. Janet Hook on President-elect Joe Biden's cabinet. 4. Matt Viser on Biden's transition style. 5. Harry Enten on another measure of Trump's unusual unpopularity. 6. Greg Sargent on the post-policy Republican Party in Georgia. 7. And Bloomberg's Saleha Mohsin and Liz McCormick have more details on Biden's Treasury personnel. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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