with the latest on the trade rift. john? the president continuing to talk tough this afternoon when he met with prime minister netanyahu of israel saying as you pointed out, he s not backing down from his threat to oppose tariffs on aluminum, 25% tariffs on steal because he believes that u.s. companies and jobs have suffered long enough under the brunt of cheap steel being dumbed into this country. that position puts him at odds with many prominent republicans, including paul ryan, whose spokesperson, ashley strong, said earlier today we re worried about the consequences of a trade war and urging the white house to not advance with this plan. the new tax reform law has boosted the economy. we don t want to jeopardize those gains. listen to what sarah huckabee sanders said in respond to that. we have a great relationship with speaker ryan. we ll continue to have one. that doesn t mean we have to agree on everything. the president has been committed
dreamers. chief congressional correspondent mike emanuel is live on capitol hill for us. what s going on? sandra, good afternoon. all sources i have spoken with say they expect an agreement later today on a two year spending cap deal but for now house democratic leader nancy pelosi says not so fast. the big four leaders here on capitol hill mcconnell, schumer, ryan, and pelosi have been negotiating working on setting spending levels for the next two years. that is critical in order to avoid these very short-term funding extensions that congress has been doing. the deal is expected to increase spending for the military and domestic priorities but the house democratic leader wants more from speaker paul ryan on immigration. unless we can get the same commitment that mitch mcconnell gave the bipartisan group of legislators in the senate, we would like that same response to our bipartisan group. ashley strong, a house spokesperson for speaker
it s hard to say. i mean, you re anticipating, the anticipation is to be sort of two different reports. one from the republicans, one from the democrats. it sort of tells you where the investigation is headed with the partisanship and disagreements between both parties, of what prism through which they look at this investigation. there are some things that they can do, and ashley strong, the spokeswoman for paul ryan alludes to some of this. preparing for the midterm elections. making sure what happened in the 2016 election didn t happen in the leadup to the 2018 elections. i think congress can do something in that vein. but even that is a little bit difficult to tell, given that the president is still, you know, to have not on board that there s a problem to deal with in the first place. matt, let me stay with you, a