United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Here’s how congressional Democrats plan to mark Trump’s first 100 days"

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President Trump is the most unpopular president in modern history — and Democrats are hoping to keep it that way.

While negotiating this week with the White House on a plan to avoid a government shutdown and strongly opposed to any new plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are planning to lead a series of events designed to call out Trump’s work and words on the economy, trade, health-care reform and his vows to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

The offensive begins Monday with a conference call hosted by Schumer, Pelosi and Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and will continue with other events hosted by lawmakers throughout the week.

Schumer noted in a statement that Democrats have vowed to hold Trump accountable, “and as we approach this benchmark, we intend to do just that. So far, the President’s first one hundred days have been defined by broken and unfulfilled promises to America’s working class. The President has yet to follow through on promises he made to improve the lives of millions of workers in everything from health care to trade, and from infrastructure to outsourcing.”

Pelosi got to work Sunday, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that as a candidate, Trump “promised jobs. Show us the jobs. Where’s his infrastructure bill? There are many promises, made promises, broken.”

...

Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials will hold public events on Capitol Hill and sit for interviews with local television stations from across the country. Trump will be signing more executive orders designed to provide relief to rural Americans and military veterans and revamp the nation’s energy policy. He will hold receptions for conservative columnists and radio talk show hosts, sit for television interviews and hold one of his signature rallies next Saturday in Pennsylvania.

Democrats are planning for events on Capitol Hill headlined by rank-and-file lawmakers who will release scorecards designed to criticize the new administration’s work on the economy, trade, health care and ethics. Schumer and Pelosi will cap the week on Friday with another event designed to draw attention to the looming shutdown. Their offices will be circulating talking points and social media guidance to House and Senate offices each day — the kind of material likely to end up in floor speeches and members’ Twitter feeds.

A briefing memo prepared for Democratic lawmakers and obtained by The Washington Post lays out the top-line arguments against Trump:

On the economy:

“President Trump has done nothing to stop companies from outsourcing jobs and has failed to buy American as he promised on the Keystone XL pipeline. He has proposed drastic cuts to job training programs and has refused to label China a currency manipulator.

“Meanwhile, President Trump still has not put forward a single, concrete job-creating bill – betraying his promises to make rebuilding America’s infrastructure a top priority of his Administration.”

On health-care reform:

“As a candidate, President Trump promised to lower costs, provide “insurance for everybody,” and increase the quality of health care. In his first 100 days, he has taken actions to increase health care costs and cripple the marketplaces. He pushed a bill that would make Americans pay more for less care, and he has and continues to undermine our current health care system to the detriment of families’ pocketbooks.

“Trumpcare, President Trump’s largest legislative proposal (and failure) to date, would make older Americans pay thousands more for lower quality care, result in 24 million more Americans going without health coverage, and undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions—all while giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

“President Trump started undermining the Affordable Care Act and Americans’ health care from the moment he took office, and he cynically continues to threaten to raise premiums and costs on millions of families as a pretext to do even worse damage to Americans’ health care.”

On Trump’s vows to “Drain the Swamp”:

“President Trump, as a candidate, promised time and time again to “drain the swamp.” In his first 100 days, he has done the opposite. He filled his administration with lobbyists and Goldman Sachs alumni.

“He put forth a “lobbying ban” that doesn’t actually prevent lobbying. We have recently learned that President Trump is issuing waivers to his so-called lobbying ban in secret, and the Trump administration just announced it will not release the White House visitors’ logs. He is not only filling the swamp; he’s getting rid of transparency.

“President Trump’s conflicts of interest cast a dark shadow over his Administration and its policies. While federal investigations examine Trump officials’ sprawling ties to Russian agents, the President has been making surprise concessions to foreign powers where his family or the Trump Organization have pending business concerns. While American workers are forgotten, President Trump has made it possible to take money from his “blind” trust controlled by his sons at any time, and hired his daughter and son-in-law, who maintain Trump business ties, to work in the White House.

“President Trump has continually refused to release his tax returns, so it is impossible to know the extent of his potential conflicts, including any possible ties to Russia.”

And on Trump’s “Broken Promises to American Families, Promises Kept to Wealthiest Few”:

“As a candidate, President Trump made a lot of promises to make life better for working- and middle-class Americans. But when he proposed his first budget, it was clear his priorities are making life better for the wealthiest special interests, not everyday Americans.

“The Trump Administration wants to hurt Americans trying to make a better life for themselves by slashing job training programs, hurt American seniors by cutting Meals on Wheels, hurt American competitiveness by gutting infrastructure funding, and hurt all Americans hoping for cures by harshly decreasing funding for health research.

“His budget demonstrates he prioritizes the bottom lines of huge corporations and the wealthiest Americans over the bottom lines of families trying to put food on the table and send their kids to college.”

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Dems say Trump can avert shutdown risk if he relents on wall"

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump could avert the risk of a government shutdown next weekend by stepping back from his demand that lawmakers fund his promised border wall with Mexico in a must-pass spending bill, Congress’ two top Democrats said Monday.

“If the president stepped out of it, we could get a budget done by Friday,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday in a conference call with reporters, referring to Democratic and Republican budget negotiators.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed. She said that while Trump had promised during his campaign to build the barrier, “He did not promise that he would take food out of the mouths of babies” and cut programs for seniors, education and the environment to pay for it. She called the wall an “immoral, ineffective, unwise proposal.”

Democrats timed their call to mark the 100th day of Trump’s presidency, which falls next Saturday. They said that Trump has repeatedly broken his campaign promises to help working-class Americans, and cited a GOP health care bill that Pelosi called “a moral monstrosity,” proposed cuts in domestic programs and a failure to advance tougher trade policies.

Saturday is the same day the government will run out of money unless lawmakers pass legislation financing federal agencies.

White House officials and leaders of both parties have said they don’t want a government shutdown. But administration officials have continued to demand that lawmakers include money for the wall in the spending bill, and the proposal has emerged as the biggest stumbling block to a budget agreement.

“Instead of risking a government shutdown by shoving this wall down Congress’ and the American people’s throats, the president ought to just let us come to an agreement,” said Schumer.

Trump said during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the structure, estimated to cost perhaps tens of billions of dollars. Mexican officials have refused, so the White House is seeking taxpayer money for the downpayment to begin construction.

In a tweet Monday, Trump said his proposed border wall would be “a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)!”

Over the weekend, he tweeted, “Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.”

To mark his 100th day in the White House, Trump has announced a rally in Pennsylvania that day.

Despite Trump’s dismissal that the 100-day marker is “artificial,” the White House has packed his schedule for Monday. Trump will sign executive orders on energy and rural policies, meet with the president of Argentina and travel to Atlanta for a National Rifle Association event. Top aides will also fan out around the country to promote the administration.

Trump also plans to outline an ambitious tax cut plan on Wednesday, telling The Associated Press last week that it would include a “massive” tax break for both individuals and corporations.

Trump would like to revive a failed effort by House Republicans to replace the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” He also hopes to use the $1 trillion catchall spending bill to salvage victories on his promised border wall, a multibillion-dollar down payment on a Pentagon buildup, and perhaps a crackdown on cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement by federal authorities.

So far, negotiations have proven difficult, with disputes over the wall and health law subsidies to help low-income people afford health insurance. House members received little information from leaders on a conference call this past Saturday.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’s confident the spending bill will include something “satisfactory” to reflect Trump’s desire to build a wall. The legislation would keep the government running through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal 2017 budget year.

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On Obama’s health law, Priebus said he’d like to have a vote on the GOP repeal-and-replace bill in the House this week. But he insisted it didn’t make too much difference to the White House whether the vote came “Friday or Saturday or Monday.”

Oh boy, he'll be having a pep rally in PA to mark 100 days. I think I'll wear a black armband instead.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s latest threat is a big problem for Republicans, not Democrats"

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This is the week that we find out whether President Trump’s 100-day mark will get commemorated with a shutdown of the government that Trump and Republicans control. Trump is desperate for accomplishments to cite on that day, yet that very desperation may itself end up provoking a shutdown, which would only make the media coverage of that marker even more brutal.

Trump and the White House are now escalating their demand that Democrats drop their opposition to funding his wall on the Mexican border — and to pressure Democrats, they are escalating their threat not to fund Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies, which could cause insurers to flee, melting down the markets. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that “Dems need big money” to prevent this from happening, and White House allies are telling reporters that this constitutes leverage to get Democrats to agree to the wall.

But a new report in the Washington Examiner suggests that this “threat” is a greater problem for Republicans than it is for Democrats. The Examiner’s David Drucker talks to Republicans who agree that if the cost-sharing subsidies aren’t funded, it could be a political problem for vulnerable House Republicans:

These subsidies, or “Cost Sharing Reductions,” flow to perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in districts represented by Republicans considered soft targets for the Democrats in 2018….

If Republicans and the Trump administration don’t finance the subsidies in a spending bill that must pass by April 28 to avoid a government shutdown, the GOP could face a voter backlash as insurers cancel plans and pull out of communities.

“Republicans wanting Obamacare to collapse might be a good talking point in 2017, but it will be disastrous at the ballot box for us in 2018,” a former House GOP aide said … That has put them in an awkward position. They either protect Obamacare from implosion, or risk the ire of voters whose premiums would spike, and choices diminish, even more than has already occurred under the troubled Affordable Care Act.

Read Drucker’s piece for more details, but the upshot is that, if Trump goes through with his threat to sabotage the ACA, Republicans would likely get the blame for it. They would get blamed both for the immediate loss of subsidies by voters in their districts, and, more broadly, for the larger damage caused by the meltdown of the exchanges, which could lead to at least 10 million fewer people covered. A recent Kaiser poll found that 75 percent of Americans want Trump and Republicans to make the law work, and 61 percent say they are responsible for future problems with it.

If basic logic counts for anything, all this should complicate the idea that Trump’s power over the subsidies gives him and Republicans leverage to extract concessions in return for not continuing them. Much of the press coverage treats this as a he-said-she-said standoff, in which Republicans say the threat to nix the cost-sharing subsidies gives them leverage, and Democrats say it doesn’t. But if Drucker’s reporting is right, Republicans know that they need the subsidies to continue. Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans would also likely get the blame if the government shuts down. So where does their leverage reside, exactly?

Now, it’s true that Democrats really don’t want the exchanges to melt down, and they also really don’t want the government to shut down, since both would be very destructive. (Indeed, most Republicans probably don’t want either of those to happen for the same reason.) So Democrats will probably be willing to make some concessions toward getting a spending bill passed, to avoid either of those happening. But for Democrats, the incentives tilt strongly against making such concessions on the wall in particular, because it occupies an outsize place in the imagination of Trump voters. Trump himself thinks his base really wants it, as he put it in a rambling interview with the Associated Press:

My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. Okay, the thing they want more than anything is the wall … the people want to see it. They want to see the wall, they want to see security.”

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said yesterday that he did not know whether Trump would sign any funding bill that doesn’t fund the wall — which could bring about that shutdown.

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Trump wants the wall funding so badly as a 100-day accomplishment that he may be willing to push us to the brink of a government shutdown to try to get it. After all, the wall looms very large in the mythology of Trumpism — his supporters see it as a symbol of Trump’s willingness to slam the brakes on the cultural, demographic, and economic forces that are making them feel destabilized. But it also looms large for his detractors, who see it as a symbol of his Fortress America xenophobia. This increases the pressure on Democrats not to agree to fund it, to demoralize Trump’s base and fire up their own. It’s hard to see how the threat to tank the ACA’s exchanges overcomes that, particularly since that outcome is one that Republicans apparently don’t want, either.

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[GreyhoundFan]

I wish I could believe that the spineless weasels (Bitch McTurtle and Paul Lyan) would stand up to the tangerine toddler, but I just don't think it will happen: "Decision time for GOP: Trump’s ire or government shutdown"

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Republicans are caught in one of their biggest dilemmas of the year: Whether to cross President Donald Trump and ignore his demand for border wall funding or join him and invite a government shutdown while the GOP controls all of Washington.

With four days before government funding expires, the president and his administration have stepped up their insistence that a must-pass spending bill include initial funding for his U.S.-Mexico border wall — surprising Republican leaders who had been quietly moving forward with Democrats on legislation without money for the wall.

Senate Republican leaders met for nearly an hour on Monday evening to go over their plight. They emerged “optimistic” about getting a deal with Democrats, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). But it might require delivering Trump some bad news.

One Republican senator said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has not indicated whether he supports Trump’s request for wall money. But the senator, who would only speak anonymously, said the preference of most GOP leaders is to deliver Trump only border technology and staffing and leave the fight for “new money on a new wall for later.”

“I think that’s where we are,” the senator said.

Still, Trump’s position is receiving some rhetorical support on Capitol Hill. As they returned Monday from a two-week recess, Senate Republicans bashed Democrats for vowing not to vote for any bill funding the wall despite a number of Democratic senators who voted to authorize a border fence in 2006.

“They ought to quit playing games. They ought to provide for at least this down payment to continue completing work that they’ve already voted for,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Seems to be kind of a no-brainer.”

Replied Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Senate Democrat: “We are not going to accept border wall money. We’re just not.”

Trump’s insistence on funding for the wall, pushed by top administration officials over the weekend and reiterated Monday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, has derailed bipartisan talks on a large spending package to fund the government through September. However, Trump signaled some flexibility on Monday.

Meanwhile, Republicans blame Democrats for complicating negotiations by making new demands on providing permanent Obamacare subsidies for low-income people. The dispute may require Congress to pass a short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown on Friday night; Blunt said that decision would be made by the end of Tuesday.

Democrats laid out a hard line against the border wall more than a month ago, placing Republicans in the uncomfortable political position of picking between a potentially disastrous shutdown fight or leaving Trump’s priorities behind. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the border wall’s cost “staggering” and said the money would be better spent elsewhere, vowing yet again to tank any spending bill that includes border wall money.

Even conservative Democrats appear opposed to Trump’s demands.

“If the president is able to get the Mexicans to pay for it, God bless him. I don’t think it should be a high priority for us to pay for it right now with all the different demands we have,” said Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, perhaps the closest congressional Democrat to Trump.

Republicans had quietly signaled for weeks that they preferred to skirt a battle over the $1.4 billion in requested wall funding — but now Trump’s tweetstorms about the wall and his emissaries' public statements have made it impossible to ignore.

...

 

[candygirl200413]

Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal

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House Republicans appear to have included a provision that exempts Members of Congress and their staff from their latest health care plan.

The new Republican amendment, introduced Tuesday night, would allow states to waive out of Obamacare’s ban on pre-existing conditions. This means that insurers could once again, under certain circumstances, charge sick people higher premiums than healthy people.

Republican legislators liked this policy well enough to offer it in a new amendment. They do not, however, seem to like it enough to have it apply to themselves and their staff. A spokesperson for Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) who authored this amendment confirmed this was the case: members of Congress and their staff would get the guarantee of keeping this Obamacare regulations. Health law expert Tim Jost flagged me to this particular issue.

A bit of background is helpful here. Obamacare requires all members of Congress and their staff to purchase coverage on the individual market, just like Obamacare enrollees. The politics of that plank were simple enough, meant to demonstrate that if the coverage in this law were good enough for Americans than it should be good enough for their representations in Washington.

That’s been happening for the past four years now. Fast-forward to this new amendment, which would allow states to waive out of key Obamacare protections like the ban on pre-existing conditions or the requirement to cover things like maternity care and mental health services.

If Congressional aides lived in a state that decided to waive these protections, the aides who were sick could be vulnerable to higher premiums than the aides that are healthy. Their benefits package could get skimpier as Obamacare’s essential health benefits requiremen may no longer apply either.

This apparently does not sound appealing because the Republican amendment includes the members of Congress and their staff as a protected group who cannot be affected by this amendment.

You can see it on the sixth page of the amendment, although it is admittedly hard to spot. The Obamacare section that requires legislators to buy on the individual market is section 1312(d)(3)(D). And if you look at the Republican amendment, and the list of who cannot be included in this waiver? It includes Section 1312(d)(3)(D).

At the bottom of that article, they have this new amendment.

[GreyhoundFan]

8 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal

At the bottom of that article, they have this new amendment.

This just chaps my hide. I hope the moderate Repubs don't capitulate to the demands of the teabagger "Freedom Caucus". I've already called my Congressman's office about this. With the teabag plan, personally, I'd be screwed, as I am a woman, over 50, with multiple health conditions. I would have to basically sign over my paycheck to the insurance company.

[candygirl200413]

I would also in a few years with pre-existing conditions too. It will also be what the point in having health insurance then?!

[GreyhoundFan]

"This is why Trump’s legislative agenda is stuck in neutral"

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In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to expedite a raft of major laws to combat the Great Depression. Ever since, the end of the first 100 days has been a time to mark the accomplishments of new presidents. For President Trump, to quote an old Republican hand, the first 100 days have been the “honeymoon from hell.” By any legislative metric, little progress has been made on the president’s “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.”

Why have Trump and the Republican Congress delivered so little? There’s a relatively quick version of the answer: Trump is historically unpopular, lacks governing experience and surrounds himself with neophyte advisers. Across town and toting his own legislative agenda, Republican House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said the GOP “has to go from being an opposition party to being a governing party.”

And although all of that is true, legislative dysfunction is deeply rooted within today’s House. The two parties are at ideological extremes, and the ruling Republicans are more divided among themselves than at any point in the past century. The combination undermines their capacity to deliver on the president’s agenda and dampens the chances for a productive Congress.

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Political capital is built on public support and post-election momentum — and often peaks in a president’s first few months in office. Most presidents leverage their electoral boost to push through major initiatives and proposals blocked by their predecessor. After President Bill Clinton’s rocky start, Democrats swiftly enacted a first-ever family leave law vetoed by President George H.W. Bush. The second President Bush made quick progress on a multitrillion-dollar tax cut, as well as landmark education reform. Within a month, President Barack Obama’s Democratic Congress delivered a record-size fiscal stimulus, soon followed by pay equity and children’s health reforms that President George W. Bush had vetoed.

Before and after the November election, Trump outlined a menu of ambitious offerings — including immigration and tax restructuring, infrastructure spending, trade renegotiation, his oft-emphasized southern border wall, as well as Affordable Care Act repeal and Wall Street deregulation.

The Senate has confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice, albeit only after nuking the need for Democratic votes. And via the Congressional Review Act, a seldom-used, fast-track law, Republicans quietly overturned more than a dozen late-term Obama rules — loosening regulatory limits on oil, gas, coal and telecom industries, among others.

Ongoing Republican efforts to repeal and replace the health-care law have been far more visible. Even with tactics designed to cut out the Democrats, House Republicans remain at odds with their Senate colleagues, the White House and one another over how to unwind an increasingly popular law, wasting precious legislative floor time in the process.

In turn, without offering any substantive proposals, Trump has bounced between advocating action on health care, taxes and infrastructure. Coincidentally, the federal spending authority expires on the eve of Trump’s 100th day in office. A government shutdown looms should Congress and the president fail to strike a budget deal this week.

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But the Republicans’ governing difficulties run deeper than an unpopular president backed by inexperienced advisers pursuing deeply polarizing proposals. A view inside the Capitol suggests why.

In the figure below, we use lawmakers’ ideological scores to place every House majority party since 1901 along two dimensions. (When Republicans hold the White House and Congress, the start of the Congress is marked in red; periods of unified Democratic control are marked in blue; a divided government shows up in gray.)

As you can see, the 2017 House is nearly the most polarized in more than a century. And among the years under unified Republican control, 2017 stands out as the most polarized.

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The current House is unusual in another critical way. Along the Y-axis, we map each Congress based on the relative ideological breadth of the two House parties. When the score is high, it means that Republicans are more divided than their Democratic opponents. When the score is low, Republicans were the more cohesive party.

Today’s GOP House stands out in the upper-right quadrant. The parties are extremely polarized, and Republicans are far more fractured ideologically than the Democrats. That’s what we saw in the Republican stalemate over Obamacare, in which the far-right Freedom Caucus rejected anything but flat-out repeal while the moderate Tuesday Group sought improvements. Such stalemates may well recur when Republicans turn to tax restructuring and other Trump proposals. Unless Republicans can overcome their extreme internal divisions, Ryan will be challenged to corral his conference and move major legislation.

We see a more mixed bag in the Senate, as shown in the chart below. Like the House, the Senate is deeply polarized, meaning that Republicans will continue to have a hard time bringing Democrats on board. Republicans are also more divided than Democrats, but these GOP cleavages are not nearly as sharp as they are in the House. This suggests that the GOP agenda may gain more traction in the upper chamber.

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Ideological disagreements between the parties surely shaped Republicans’ legislative strategy this year: Anticipating that Democrats would oppose Trump’s agenda, the GOP leaned heavily on procedures that eliminated the need to court Democratic votes.

But those tactics backfired. Yes, they enabled the GOP to quickly repeal some Obama regulations. But using the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process highlighted internal Republican Party disagreements over how to restructure health care. It threatens to do the same for tax restructuring, as well. In other words, ironically, the GOP’s parliamentary strategy limits what Trump and Congress can achieve.

A more popular president with a more disciplined and fully staffed administration might have had more success herding these fractured Republican majorities. But Trump attracts so much popular opposition that the divided Republican majority can’t come together to make the compromises needed to legislate. As David Jones wrote here at The Monkey Cage yesterday, presidents can recover from slow legislative starts. But the road is likely to be uphill for Trump and his unruly Republican Congress.

How I read this article (and associated charts): basically, the Repubs are a bunch of whining do-nothings. I'm not complaining, because every time they fail to pass something, especially something dear to the teabaggers' hearts (not that I'm suggesting any teabagger actually has a heart), it saves us a day or so of our lives being worse off.

[candygirl200413]

Jason Chafettshit is going on leave starting tomorrow to get surgery

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/26/politics/jason-chaffetz-surgery/

Really wonder if it's because he'll still have that nice obamacare and should use it while he can.

[GreyhoundFan]

9 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Jason Chafettshit is going on leave starting tomorrow to get surgery

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/26/politics/jason-chaffetz-surgery/

Really wonder if it's because he'll still have that nice obamacare and should use it while he can.

I agree, I wonder if part of it is so he can use insurance while he has it. I thought maybe he was having surgery to implant a soul, but, alas, it's just for pins in his foot.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘LGBTQ people were born perfect’: A new bill would ban conversion therapy nationwide"

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Democratic lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would ban the practice of “conversion therapy,” treatments that historically have targeted the LGBT community and claim to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act of 2017 was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), along with Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). About 70 other members of Congress, all Democrats, have said they support the bill, which would allow the Federal Trade Commission to classify conversion therapy and its practitioners as fraudulent.

“The bill is very simple,” Lieu told The Washington Post. “It says it is fraud if you treat someone for a condition that doesn’t exist and there’s no medical condition known as being gay. LGBTQ people were born perfect; there is nothing to treat them for. And by calling this what it should be, which is fraud, it would effectively shut down most of the organizations.”

Conversion therapy, also referred to as “reparative therapy” or “ex-gay therapy,” purports to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation. Highly controversial, the practice has been decried by dozens of mental health, medical and LGBT rights groups as harmful and misleading. Nevertheless, very few states have passed legislation banning it.

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Seven states and the District of Columbia have successfully passed legislation to ban or restrict conversion therapy in some way. California was the first to do so, banning the practice outright in 2012; others are New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, Vermont and, just this month, New Mexico. Although New York does not have an outright ban, the state effectively prohibits conversion therapy through administrative regulations.

“The mere promise that you can somehow change someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation is, in it of itself, inherently deceptive and false,” said New Mexico state senator Jacob Candelaria, who sponsored the new legislation there. As the only openly gay man in the state legislature, Candelaria said he understands how “frightening and stressful” the process of coming out can be, both for the individual and the family.

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Support for conversion therapy remains fueled by conservative Christian groups, and in recent months, some in the LGBT community have questioned whether those groups would hold greater sway during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Earlier this year, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group that supports conversion therapy, told ABC’s “20/20” that he felt confident Vice President Pence and other Republicans would support the FRC in fighting the “gay lobby.”

“I see it as unlikely that any sort of legislative — federal legislative attack upon sexual reorientation therapy will … go anywhere,” Sprigg said on the program, adding that he supported only “ordinary talk therapy” and would not tolerate physical abuse. “As a Christian, I believe that the Bible teaches that to choose to engage in homosexual conduct is a sin.”

Pence has been frequently accused of having supported conversion therapy in the past, in large part owing to a 2000 campaign website from when he was running for Congress that stated “resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”

Pence’s press secretary, Marc Lotter, told The Post in an email Wednesday that such accusations misrepresented Pence’s views.

“Any assertion that Vice President Pence supported or advocated for conversion therapy is patently false and is a mischaracterization of language from a 16-year old campaign website,” Lotter said in a statement. “As a candidate for Congress in 2000, the Vice President’s website advocated that public funding in the Ryan White CARE Act be directed to groups that promoted safe sexual practices in the hopes of reducing the spread of HIV.”

Lotter did not answer a question sent by email about whether Pence would support the new bill seeking to ban conversion therapy.

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Lieu, the Democratic congressman, said he was encouraged by increasing awareness about the issue since he authored the California bill that ultimately passed in 2012, when he was a state senator.

“That was the hardest bill I ever did,” Lieu said. “It almost failed in the very first committee. And a lot of folks were uncomfortable with, in their view, getting in the way of the parent-child relationship. And so we did have a lot of initial resistance. But once it passed basically the floor, everyone thought oh, what a great idea.”

He also was heartened when, in 2013, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became the first Republican governor to sign a state bill banning conversion therapy for minors.

In a statement then, Christie said he had reservations about the bill because he felt the government was limiting parental choice when it came to raising their children.

“However, I also believe that on issues of medical treatment for children we must look to experts in the field to determine the relative risks and rewards,” Christie said. “I believe that exposing children to these health risks without clear evidence of benefits that outweigh these serious risks is not appropriate. Based upon this analysis, I sign this bill into law.”

In a statement Wednesday, Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin applauded the new congressional proposal.

“So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is nothing more than child abuse and those who inflict it on others must be held accountable,” Griffin said. “HRC thanks Senators Murray and Booker and Representative Lieu for their efforts to outlaw this dangerous and inhumane practice. Now more than ever, we must send a clear message to the LGBTQ community — and especially LGBTQ young people — that who you are is not something that needs to be fixed.”

Unfortunately, I doubt our Republican-controlled congress will go for this bill.

[zygote373]

Irony alert: My parents live in the district of a moderate Republication representative, and they can't call to urge him to vote against the new bill because my mom is currently in the ER getting treated for pain that comes from a preexisting condition (she'll be fine, just needs minor help).

I called for her, at her request. I doubt it will make a difference, though. He's one of those assholes who markets himself as moderate yet has one of the most conservative voting records. Never puts his money where his mouth is. Or rather, puts his mouth where his money comes from instead of where his constituents want him to.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The new health-care bill may be little more than an exercise in blame-shifting"

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The renewed push by House Republicans to pass legislation replacing parts of the Affordable Care Act might just be a game of political hot potato, with no one sure who will end up holding the object when the legislative music stops.

A month ago, when Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) first pulled the bill from a planned vote, the blame fell squarely on the shoulders of the House Freedom Caucus, the group of almost three dozen hard-line conservatives who were largely opposed because Ryan’s proposal did not go far enough to eliminate the Obama administration’s landmark health-care bill.

Ryan and other leaders made clear that they blamed the conservative caucus with thinly veiled criticism, and in the days that followed President Trump eviscerated the group in a series of tweets that left no doubt where he believed the blame fell.

On Wednesday, however, after a few changes to the legislation that modestly tilted the bill more to the right, the Freedom Caucus issued a forceful endorsement of the new package. Outside allies issued declarations that the bill’s fate now fell entirely on the shoulders of moderate Republicans.

It was a whiplash moment for a group that has previously based its existence largely on opposition in the pursuit of purity — and it set off alarm bells among other Republicans.

“A lot of them were taking a lot of heat for the failure of the bill, and they didn’t like it. It’s an exercise in blame-shifting,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a leading member of the Tuesday Group, the collection of more than 50 moderate Republicans.

At this point Ryan’s leadership team still does not have enough votes to bring the new legislation to the House floor for a vote, and it’s unclear whether enough Tuesday Group members will support it, particularly given the continued effort to appease conservatives in the emerging legislation.

In this new alignment, the thinking goes, another failure to repeal what Republicans derisively call “Obamacare” will be because the other caucus got cold feet and not the Freedom Caucus. Or, if the bill narrowly passes the House, it may well meet its demise in the Senate, where a bloc of Republicans have the votes to defeat the measure unless their demands are met to protect their constituents who rely on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

Dent was the most blunt in accusing the conservatives of buckling under pressure and looking for another scapegoat, but there were quite a few other moderates who privately cheered his accusation.

This belief is that, even though they faced no political blowback at home over the 18-day spring recess, members of the Freedom Caucus found themselves as the face of defeat. And while they did not mind that image during President Barack Obama’s final years in office, it’s a much more difficult thing to be known as the group that upended its own party’s administration.

The arch conservatives reject the idea that they gave in to the presidential pressure. “We went back to our districts and received widespread support for our position,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), one of the most strident Freedom Caucus members, told reporters Wednesday, even as he declined to say if he will support the new bill. “That was not a concern, if anything I came back with a renewed spirit to keep up the fight.”

Yet in the same breath, Amash acknowledged that he saw the new details, negotiated by the chairmen of the Freedom Caucus and Tuesday Group, as only slightly better than what the hard-line caucus rejected in late March.

“We want full repeal of Obamacare. This bill is not even close to full repeal of Obamacare. I’m not sure it’s half repeal,” Amash said. “So this is a marginal improvement over what we have today, and if that’s what we can get right now, then that’s what the House Freedom Caucus is going for.”

The simple math is, when Ryan pulled the bill last month, both the Freedom Caucus and Tuesday Group shared the blame. According to a Washington Post whip count of public statements, 36 Republicans were open in their opposition to the legislation. Another 15 Republicans were leaning against the legislation.

Of those 51 opponents, about 30 were members of the Freedom Caucus, while many of the others were in the Tuesday Group. Ryan could only spare 20 votes from his side of the aisle — no Democrat will vote for a bill repealing the ACA — so he had no path to passing the legislation.

...

I really despise the "Freedom Caucus". They care about nobody other than themselves.

[Howl]

Chaffetz posted his X-ray on Instagram.  12 years ago he fell off a ladder while working on his garage and shattered his heel bone, which is held together with screws and a metal strap.  Now, suddenly, he's in danger of infection if he doesn't DROP EVERYTHING and go back to his home state to have surgery to remove all the hardware and be gone "recovering" for a ridiculous amount of time.  Ya know, there are surgeons in D.C., and probably some pretty damned good ones.  There are wheelchairs AND these awesome contraptions that are like a scooter for your leg so you can get around.  I googled "wheeled thing for when you hurt your foot" and it popped right up!  

HTFU and do your damned job, Jason.  Unless, of course, you are cowering in fear and running home to hide from imminent fallout due to your own bad actions and idiotic lack of judgment.  Vlad sends best wishes for a nice recovery.  Just be sure to not drink from the bottle of wine he sent, and whatever you do, don't open the card that came with the flowers from an unknown sender. 

[GreyhoundFan]

@Howl, yes, there are incredibly good surgeons in the DC area. One of the best orthopedists in the country, who practices in VA, replaced my knees. Of course, I'm not a speshul snowflake like Chappass. He probably wants to go home because he can hide from angry people better there.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Chaffetz posted his X-ray on Instagram.  12 years ago he fell off a ladder while working on his garage and shattered his heel bone, which is held together with screws and a metal strap.  Now, suddenly, he's in danger of infection if he doesn't DROP EVERYTHING and go back to his home state to have surgery to remove all the hardware and be gone "recovering" for a ridiculous amount of time.  Ya know, there are surgeons in D.C., and probably some pretty damned good ones.  There are wheelchairs AND these awesome contraptions that are like a scooter for your leg so you can get around.  I googled "wheeled thing for when you hurt your foot" and it popped right up!  

HTFU and do your damned job, Jason.  Unless, of course, you are cowering in fear and running home to hide from imminent fallout due to your own bad actions and idiotic lack of judgment.  Vlad sends best wishes for a nice recovery.  Just be sure to not drink from the bottle of wine he sent, and whatever you do, don't open the card that came with the flowers from an unknown sender. 

I'm not a doctor, but when I Humpty-Dumptyed one of my ankles and they put me back together with screws, a metal plate, and pure meanness, my doctor said she wanted me back in a year to remove all the metal. I was only 20 at the time of my accident, so maybe that makes a difference between me and Chaffetz, but it sounded odd to me to remove it after twelve years.

I would think that if they left it in for that long, that his doctors felt he needed the hardware for the rest of his life. He's saying he needs this surgery because there's a risk of infection, but I don't understand how an infection starts inside your foot after twelve years, unless an infectious agent is introduced in some manner. Are the metal bits deteriorating, and there's something inside of them that could cause an infection? . 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm not a doctor, but when I Humpty-Dumptyed one of my ankles and they put me back together with screws, a metal plate, and pure meanness, my doctor said she wanted me back in a year to remove all the metal. I was only 20 at the time of my accident, so maybe that makes a difference between me and Chaffetz, but it sounded odd to me to remove it after twelve years.

I would think that if they left it in for that long, that his doctors felt he needed the hardware for the rest of his life. He's saying he needs this surgery because there's a risk of infection, but I don't understand how an infection starts inside your foot after twelve years, unless an infectious agent is introduced in some manner. Are the metal bits deteriorating, and there's something inside of them that could cause an infection? . 

 

I'm not sure about humans, but I work with retired racing Greyhounds, some of whom have repaired broken legs. They often have pins or screws and plates in the broken area. They are normally not removed unless they cause a problem, which they can, years later. Sometimes a pin or screw works itself loose, which is quite painful. You know I have no love for Chappass, but it is possible that it is suddenly an issue. Of course, I hold with the idea that he could have the surgery here in the DC area.

[GreyhoundFan]

Courtesy of the fabulous George Takei. This is so very true:

[GreyhoundFan]

Brief sigh of relief. "House will not vote on Affordable Care Act rewrite, smoothing way for government to stay open"

Quote

Despite pressure from the White House, House GOP leaders determined Thursday night that they don’t have the votes to pass a rewrite of the Affordable Care Act and will not seek to put their proposal on the floor on Friday.

A late push to act on health care had threatened the bipartisan deal to keep the government open for one week while lawmakers crafted a longer-term spending deal. Now, lawmakers are likely to approve the spending bill when it comes to the floor Friday and keep the government open past midnight.

The failure of GOP leaders to summon enough support for a renewed health-care push is evidence of just how difficult it is to overhaul Obamacare, despite seven years of GOP promises to repeal and replace the 2010 law. Conservatives and moderates have repeatedly clashed over what legislation should look like, most sharply over bringing down insurance premiums in exchange for sharply limiting what kind of coverage is required to be offered.

Up to 15 or so House Republicans have publicly said they would not support the latest draft of the measure, leaving House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the White House an incredibly narrow path to a simple majority. If all 238 Republicans are present for a vote, Ryan can lose only 22 Republicans and still pass the bill with the barest of majorities.

GOP leaders’ failure to secure a health-care deal will help ensure the government stays open past midnight on Friday — at least for one week. Lawmakers agreed to the stopgap measure so they could finish negotiating a broader deal to fund the government through September. Republicans have stated that they need Democratic support to pass the long-term spending measure, which they expect to consider next week.

The Senate stands ready to approve a one-week spending measure, but only once the broader spending agreement is complete. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday blocked a measure that Republican leaders hoped would allow the Senate to approve the stopgap budget without a formal vote. Schumer has indicated that he will drop his objections once he is assured a long-term budget agreement is in place, according to Senate Democratic aides.

Senators in both parties told reporters they were instructed not to leave Washington on Thursday night.

“Instead of rushing through health care,” Schumer told reporters, “they first ought to get the government funded for a full year — plain and simple.”

...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a meeting of Democratic whips on Thursday that she had called Ryan and told him there were two conditions for Democratic support of the short-term funding bill, according to aides in the room. Democrats would only sign off on the emergency spending measure to allow lawmakers time to pass the longer-term spending deal, and they would not back the measure if doing so would allow Ryan time to set up a vote on a GOP rewrite of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats fiercely oppose replacing the law.

The sudden turmoil is yet another sign of Congress’s inability to meet deadlines for its most basic function: keeping the government’s lights on. And it presages fights between Congress, the White House and both parties over spending priorities, despite the one-party rule that gave some observers hope that the gridlock would cease.

...

The standoff is the first in what could be several budget battles between Congress and the White House this year. Trump has called for massive hikes to defense spending and harsh cuts to domestic agencies in his 2018 budget, a proposal that many Republicans have rejected out of hand. He is also likely to revive calls for money to begin constructing the border wall — which by some estimates would cost as much as $21 billion — in future budget negotiations.

Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were forced to negotiate with Democrats on the budget after it became clear that Republicans lacked enough votes to pass a long-term spending bill on their own. As a result, the GOP leaders have had the uncomfortable task of writing a measure that ignores nearly all of Trump’s priorities, including money for the border wall.

...

 

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm not sure about humans, but I work with retired racing Greyhounds, some of whom have repaired broken legs. They often have pins or screws and plates in the broken area. They are normally not removed unless they cause a problem, which they can, years later. Sometimes a pin or screw works itself loose, which is quite painful. You know I have no love for Chappass, but it is possible that it is suddenly an issue. Of course, I hold with the idea that he could have the surgery here in the DC area.

Okay, that I can see. Having it "go rogue" could do a lot of damage to other tissues and would be painful for dogs or humans.

Thank you for sharing that. 

 

[formergothardite]

Right now the GOP Congress is floundering, but if they get their shit together and start doing stuff, well NC is a good indication of what the rest of the country could look like. We absolutely must take as much power away from them in 2018 as we can. Everyone needs to look at NC and realize that we are all fucking doomed if this becomes our country. They are bound to start trying to pull together soon, especially since they are coming off as total fools who can't do anything. 

Quote

What happens when Republicans have enough power to do virtually anything they want? On the federal level, that’s still an open question: We’ll find out if Democrats fail to mount meaningful resistance to President Donald Trump by 2018—or if Republicans stop infighting for long enough to realize how strong they already are. But on the state level, North Carolina provides us a preview. Thanks to gerrymandering that has been ruled to be unconstitutionally racist, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the state’s General Assembly. (A federal court ordered new districts and special elections this year, but the Supreme Court blocked them.) This week, Republicans rushed to pass a slew of bills that could permanently damage the state’s courts, elections, universities, and the environment. They also provide a glimpse at the havoc congressional Republicans in Washington could wreak with just a few more votes in the House and Senate.

 

Quote

North Carolina’s swift descent into madness should send congressional Republicans into fits of envy—and terrify the rest of us. It’s already parallel to what Trump is attempting to do

 

Quote

Republican infighting has thwarted any significant legislative achievement, forcing Trump to govern through executive orders that are vulnerable to legal challenges. But he still has nearly four years to consolidate power, subdue the courts, and bring the GOP to heel. North Carolina today shows us what the United States will look like if Trump and congressional Republicans succeed. It is a warning sign that we ignore at our own peril

.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/north_carolina_republicans_are_attacking_the_courts_the_environment_and.html

[Cartmann99]

From the article @formergothardite posted:

Quote

Republicans also found time to ensure the further degradation of North Carolina’s environment: A GOP-sponsored bill, already passed by both the House and the Senate, strictly limits nuisance lawsuits brought against hog farmers in the state. Due to already lax regulation, hog farms can currently drain their pigs’ manure into giant cesspools called lagoons and then empty the lagoons by spraying the fecal slurry onto farmland as fertilizer. This vile-smelling waste disproportionately impacts blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans—who are more likely to live near hog farms than whites—by damaging their respiratory systems and dramatically reducing the quality of their lives and value of their land.

To remedy the problem, many affected residents banded together and filed lawsuits against the farmers, alleging that their operations created an unlawful nuisance. Hog farmers responded by demanding that Republican legislators—to whom they donate a great deal of money—shield them from liability. Republicans happily complied: Their new bill protects hog farmers and other agricultural businesses from such suits.

And finally, just for good measure, House Republicans passed a bill prohibiting protesters from suing drivers who run over them if they are blocking traffic, so long as the driver exercised “due care.”

[onekidanddone]

On 4/27/2017 at 4:45 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

@Howl, yes, there are incredibly good surgeons in the DC area. One of the best orthopedists in the country, who practices in VA, replaced my knees. Of course, I'm not a speshul snowflake like Chappass. He probably wants to go home because he can hide from angry people better there.

I had one of the DC's "Top Docs" replace my knee. Didn't have to fly 2,000 miles to get it done either. I looked at Chappy's Twitter page and yowzer! people are trashing him right and left. No wonder he is not going to run again. Then I did a little bit more digging on the Wiki, and for each of Utah's three Congressional districts and it looks like Orange Toddler won by the lowest percentage point since 2000.  I figure that McMullin dude made a dent in shit stain's numbers.

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

From the article @formergothardite posted:

Republicans probably think if those protesters didn't want get run over while exercising there Constitutional rights they should have stayed off the side walk.

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm not sure about humans, but I work with retired racing Greyhounds, some of whom have repaired broken legs. They often have pins or screws and plates in the broken area. They are normally not removed unless they cause a problem, which they can, years later. Sometimes a pin or screw works itself loose, which is quite painful. You know I have no love for Chappass, but it is possible that it is suddenly an issue. Of course, I hold with the idea that he could have the surgery here in the DC area.

Every time I go to the dentist for a cleaning I have to take an antibiotic. Apparently some doctors think there is a risk of infection from invasive procedures after having joint replacement.  I've had a pin in my ankle since 2001 and a rod in my spine since 1979 and never had to do this until my knee replacement in 2013

[GreyhoundFan]

11 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Right now the GOP Congress is floundering, but if they get their shit together and start doing stuff, well NC is a good indication of what the rest of the country could look like. We absolutely must take as much power away from them in 2018 as we can. Everyone needs to look at NC and realize that we are all fucking doomed if this becomes our country. They are bound to start trying to pull together soon, especially since they are coming off as total fools who can't do anything. 

 

 

.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/north_carolina_republicans_are_attacking_the_courts_the_environment_and.html

I agree, if congress gets its act together, we're royally screwed. My hope is that the teabaggers will continue to be crazy enough for moderate Repubs to not be able to work with them. Some of the Repubs in less red districts have to toe a fine line.

 

 

I hope they can't get their act together to "replace" the ACA, unless it is with a single-payer system: "The GOP’s latest repeal effort just collapsed. The reason is simpler than you think."

Quote

Republicans have once again shelved their plan to vote on replacing Obamacare, depriving Donald Trump of a fake accomplishment he had hoped to tout on the 100th day of his presidency (even if it had passed the House on the 100th day, there’s no telling what would have happened in the Senate). A lot of explanations are circulating: A rushed vote would have complicated keeping the government open; Republicans balked at opposition from the powerful AARP; poor messaging and GOP infighting; and so forth.

I’d like to propose another explanation. What if the GOP repeal effort once again failed because the Affordable Care Act has actually helped a lot of people, and this whole process has made that a lot harder for Republicans to deny?

GOP leaders said they put the latest version on hold because the votes weren’t there for it. The new changes had won over House conservatives who had previously objected, but many of the more moderate or pragmatic Republicans were still opposed. Indeed, the changes that swayed conservatives — which would have allowed states to scrap the requirement that insurers cover Essential Health Benefits and gut protections for people with preexisting conditions — appear to have made it harder for Republicans from less conservative and more contested districts (such as Colorado’s Mike Coffman) to support it.

If you read through the public statements of many of the Republicans who objected to the latest version, you’ll see a common thread. They say either that passing the new bill would drive up premiums for people with preexisting conditions (because it would allow insurers to jack them up); or that too many would lose coverage, partly because of the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion. A number of the Republicans who opposed it this time had previously made statements to this effect about the older version, and those objections were still operative.

“The reality is most of the moderate hard Nos were already opposed,” Matt Fuller, a reporter for HuffPost who has followed this more closely than anyone, told me today. In short, many Republicans objected to the new version on the grounds that it would take coverage away from untold numbers of poor and sick people.

At the same time, though, many of these Republicans avoided openly crediting Obamacare with achieving the very protections for those with preexisting conditions and the vast coverage expansion via Medicaid that they now want to preserve. And they pledged to continue trying to repeal the law. These Republicans cannot affirmatively applaud Obamacare’s success in accomplishing ends they now recognize as imperatives, but they can stand up and say they won’t remove or badly weaken the provisions of it that are accomplishing those ends, provided they also say they’ll replace the law whenever some more acceptable alternative — which would also accomplish those ends — comes along.

The absurdity of this basic dynamic continues to elude direct recognition. Byron York reports that Republicans privately say that as many as 40 or 50 House Republicans secretly don’t want to repeal the ACA, and one key reason appears to be a lack of political courage. As one Republican puts it: “We have members in the Republican conference that do not want Obamacare repealed, because of their district.”

But the reason for this is not stated as forthrightly as I think it should be. Even if the primary motive here is that taking coverage away from people — and gutting protections for those with preexisting conditions — will alienate voters, this is just another way of saying that voters will recoil from efforts to roll back the help the law is providing to countless numbers of people. It is often said that taking away “entitlements” is politically difficult, which is true as far as it goes. But another way to say this is that even many Republicans now recognize that sustaining the law’s achievements is now imperative — and that Republicans have not come up with an alternative that would do this in a way that their public ideological pre-commitments permit. Of course, they can’t put it quite this way out loud.

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I liked this Jennifer Rubin piece: "Here’s why, even with control of everything, the GOP cannot govern"

Quote

...

If one had any doubt, this week’s events — a half-baked tax proposal that would not pass one let alone two houses, another failed effort at Trumpcare, White House bluffs and retreats on the budget — should have disabused observers of the notion that Trump’s agenda would sail through Congress.

The Trumpcare effort was the quintessential “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” For every Freedom Caucus member who figured he’d jump on the bandwagon (the opt-out for states who could choose to do away with the list of essential benefits), there was a moderate who jumped off. What did Ryan and the rest expect would happen when they made a bad bill even less attractive to the great majority of Americans?

Trump cannot manage to devise attractive legislation or get down in the weeds of negotiation, while House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) seems willing to accommodate whatever group is currently rocking the boat, regardless of the likelihood of success. Neither Ryan nor Trump can lead a successful legislative effort. As a result, members of Congress figure there is little reason to stick their necks out for either one. “Members of Congress have watched with horror as Trump thrashed about in Washington with little predictability, guided by top aides with little experience in the trenches of government,” Time reports. “Staffers with decades of Hill experience find themselves sidelined by political neophytes who think barking orders can get Congress to act. More than once, White House officials have told Paul Ryan that his role as Speaker may be in jeopardy if he does not do more to help Trump.”

To a large degree, the GOP’s angst is to the country’s benefit. The national and world economies are slowly recovering from the 2008 financial meltdown. Unemployment is way down in the United States. If “do no harm” (or, as President Barack Obama would say, “Don’t do stupid stuff”) is the watchword, then gridlock and inaction may not be the worst thing. Not exiting from NAFTA, not pulling the rug out from millions of people who got coverage under Obamacare and not building a wall or harassing cities (for refusing to do the feds’ work on immigration enforcement) are certainly preferable to Trump “succeeding” on these issues. A tax plan that exacerbates the gap between rich and poor and starves the federal government of revenue so that it cannot make worthwhile investments in worker training, education, science and infrastructure would arguably be worse than the current situation. If they fail on the big, ambitious items, then small improvements in Obamacare or the tax code may be possible.

This is not to say we don’t have substantial problems or need competent leadership. However, this president and this Congress have not a clue how to proceed. They would potentially do much more harm than good. They are prisoners of extreme ideology, unrealistic expectations and their own incompetence.

Perhaps under another president, the center-right and center-left can make progress on key issues. For the remainder of Trump’s term, however, the best-case scenario would be no new wars or new nuclear powers and the status quo at home.

It's sad when no new wars is the best we can hope for.