United States Congress

[Cartmann99]

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I liked this article about Al Franken. One quote really stood out to me:

Gee, what a concept: "Keep a low profile, take care of <your> state, and always show up well prepared.". It's too bad more members of Congress don't live by that plan.

You know, I forget sometimes that there are people who don't know about Al Franken's career before he became a senator.

I guess it has been a while....

[GreyhoundFan]

28 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

You know, I forget sometimes that there are people who don't know about Al Franken's career before he became a senator.

I guess it has been a while....

I didn't particularly care for him on SNL, but I think he's done a bang-up job as a senator. I wish there were more like him.

[RoseWilder]

This was a breath of fresh air today: 

 

[Fighter]

I just hope this health care bill doesn't pass it's awful! 

[RoseWilder]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm hoping this is true and that the Paul Ryan Deathcare law does die in the Senate.

Quote

The Trump administration, under pressure from conservative lawmakers, appears increasingly open to changing legislation repealing and replacing Obamacare in order to placate the right -- but that may guarantee at least this version of the bill is as good as dead the Senate.

The political calculation is setting off a domino effect on Capitol Hill.

Just days to go before a Thursday vote on the House GOP bill, moderate Republicans have already expressed deep reservations about making drastic reforms to the current health care system. Making additional changes to satisfy conservatives is certain to strengthen opposition among centrist Republicans.

But moving the bill to the right dooms the proposal in the Senate, where the GOP has a razor-thin majority.

For now, the White House appears fixated on shepherding the bill repealing the Affordable Care Act through the House, with a vote on the seven-year anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the law. In its 11th hour negotiations, Trump and his top deputies have made compromises to appease the GOP's most conservative faction.

After meeting with members of the conservative Republican Study Committee this week, Trump announced that the lawmakers in the room who had previously been "no" votes were now on board, thanks to legislative changes that the White House and House GOP leaders had agreed to.

The negotiations continued over the weekend.

Several conservative lawmakers opposed to the House GOP health care bill -- Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, and Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee -- met with senior White House aides on Saturday at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump himself did not participate in the meeting, a White House official said. But the President's senior most aides -- chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon and policy aide Andrew Bremberg -- were present, according to a senior Republican familiar with the meeting.

Cruz, Lee and Meadows made the case for going further with the American Health Care Act, the name of the bill introduced by House Speaker Paul Ryan and other senior Republicans, and backed by Trump. According to the Republican source, discussion included phasing out Medicaid expansion earlier and repealing Obamacare rules like essential health benefits and requiring insurers to allow 26-year-olds to stay on his or her parents' insurance -- one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Notably, Bannon appeared receptive to the conservative contingent, while Priebus and Bremberg advocated for Ryan's approach.

"Bannon is definitely our ally in the White House," the Republican source said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on ABC about the negotiations in the House: "It's a fine needle that needs to be thread. There's no doubt about it."

It's not clear whether the White House will announce further concessions following the Saturday gathering in Florida. A Freedom Caucus source simply told CNN on Sunday that the negotiations are continuing "in good faith."

But giving more ground to conservatives risks a hemorrhaging of support from House Republican moderates, who are already uncomfortable with and have said they cannot support the legislation in its current form.

Particularly troubling to more centrist Republicans is the Congressional Budget Office's prediction last week that the House legislation would lead to some 24 million more people being uninsured by 2026 than under Obamacare, as well as the projection that premiums would spike for vulnerable demographic groups like older and low-income Americans.

A more conservative version of the bill that Ryan originally unveiled would most certainly be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Multiple Senate Republicans have publicly aired grave concerns about restructuring Medicaid. Under Obamacare, 31 states opted to expand the program for low-income adults and 16 of those states have Republican governors.

GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, for example, said this week that she could not support the House bill in its current form, particularly because of its effects on the ability of low-income seniors to afford health insurance.

The White House, too, has admitted that the House bill would have trouble in the Senate. Trump administration officials acknowledged to Republican senators at a White House meeting earlier this week that "they don't have the (Senate) votes to pass this in current form."

In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Cruz briefly discussed his Mar-a-Lago visit, saying the meeting with the President's team spanned three hours. He added that he had spoken multiple times with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence about the bill.

"I am spending night and day meeting with House members, meeting with senators, meetings with the administration," Cruz said.

Cruz and others have advocated publicly for a much more sweeping, conservative bill, but said he had not managed to sway Trump yet. He described Trump as willing to listen to everyone and that the bill was still in an ongoing negotiation process.

"I think that the President right now is listening to the arguments on all sides," Cruz said.

I think Cruz is delusional if he thinks Agent Orange is listening to anyone.

[RoseWilder]

Rep. Jim McGovern is publicly calling out the people who are supporting TrumpCare: 

I like your style, Rep. McGovern!

[RoseWilder]

I'm kind of surprised to hear this coming from a Republican, but I'm glad someone publicly said it: 

 

[RoseWilder]

Chris Wallace better be careful. If he keeps committing these random acts of journalism, FoxNews will probably fire him and replace him with someone who is better at kissing Republican's asses: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Russia Inquiries Overlap in a Tangle of Secrets and Sniping"

Quote

Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election has spawned a tangle of inquiries with competing agendas and timetables, and with little agreement on the most important things that should be investigated.

Staff members for the Senate Intelligence Committee have spent weeks poring over raw intelligence that led the Obama administration to conclude that Russia meddled in the election, but they have yet to be given any access to far more politically charged information — evidence of contacts between Russians and associates of President Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee is conducting its own investigation of issues surrounding Mr. Trump and Russia, but the committee’s Republican chairman has said a top priority is to unmask whoever is speaking to journalists about classified information. Democrats on the committee hope the investigation can force a disclosure of the president’s tax returns.

The progress of these congressional inquiries depends at least in part on a third investigation by the F.B.I., in which counterintelligence agents have been scrutinizing past contacts between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s aides. Officials say the F.B.I. effort will probably take many months or even years, however eager Congress might be for quick answers.

And, while the F.B.I. conducts its investigation in secrecy, the White House insists publicly that there is nothing to investigate.

“It puts us in a very difficult position,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a former F.B.I. agent who served as the government’s senior counterintelligence official and retired last year. “We are pushed and pulled by Congress, and then having to address the concerns of the White House and Justice Department.”

The overlapping investigations have, in some cases, already been plagued by partisan sniping and misdirection by Mr. Trump, raising questions about whether there can ever be a full public accounting of the scope of Russia’s campaign to influence the election in November.

...

I wish the Repubs would stop playing footsie with Agent Orange and admit something is going on.

[RoseWilder]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is so true:

[Audrey2]

17 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is so true:

A "man" (if you will, with him I use the term loosely) whose Dad passed away when Paul was 16 and his Dad was 55, according to Wikipedia. He's just enough of a twit to reason (in his puny little Ayn Rand inspired brain) that he finished growing up without his Dad, so it's okay for everyone. And hey, if those between 50 and 65 die off because they can't afford healthcare, then that's less social security that needs to be paid out. (Yes, there are many in this age range working jobs that don't provide healthcare, so it comes out of their pocket. In many of these jobs, after paying housing, utilities, and food, there's very little left.) What a scumbag!

[Tesseract]

On 3/15/2017 at 7:42 AM, Dark Matters said:

Wonder if we can get more petitions like this one started in all the states?

http://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2017/03/portland_man_gathers_over_3000.html

Daniel Jimenez, 30, says he lost his father to cancer several years ago. His father was employed at the time he fell ill, but was not covered by health insurance. -snip-

So, he decided to find out. He started a petition to "remove health-care subsidies for members of Congress and their families."

Update: The petition now has close to 700,000 signatures:

https://www.change.org/p/remove-health-care-subsidies-for-members-of-congress-and-their-families?recruiter=696190925&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

[GreyhoundFan]

So Ryan is realizing his "glorious" plan needs to change: "House health-care bill will change to offer more help to seniors, Ryan says"

Quote

The Republican health-care plan moving rapidly toward a crucial House vote this week is likely to be changed to give older Americans more assistance to buy insurance, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Sunday.

“We think that we should be offering even more assistance than what the bill currently does,” Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview, in which he confirmed that House leaders are eyeing a Thursday vote on its passage.

Meanwhile, a key conservative senator said White House officials were continuing to negotiate through the weekend on even more dramatic revisions to the bill in hopes of winning over hard-liners who have threatened to tank the legislation.

...

Those over 50 but not yet 65 — and thus eligible for Medicare, the federal health program for seniors — represent a major issue in forging an alternative to the ACA. That age group tends to have more medical issues than younger adults and, thus, higher insurance costs, and the ACA forbids insurers to charge their oldest customers more than three times their rates for young adults — essentially having young adults cross-subsidize the cost of coverage for older ones.

But House Republicans want to eliminate that feature of the law, and the GOP bill would allow a 5-to-1 ratio as part of an attempt to attract more of the younger, healthier customers whom insurers want.

In an extreme case laid out in the CBO report, a 64-year-old earning $26,500 a year would see yearly premiums rise from $1,700 under the ACA to $14,600 under the Republican plan.

...

 

 

This is a lengthy article which is comprised of an interesting email chain: "Why Paul Ryan needs Donald Trump so badly on healthcare"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Paul Ryan’s moment of truth"

Quote

It’s a rough week to be Paul Ryan.

Republicans’ first attempt at a replacement for Democrats’ health reform law was panned by enough GOP members to cast real doubt on whether repeal would ever pass. Now, the party has given itself just a few days to come up with a health care bill its members can unite behind, and the bill's GOP critics are pulling in opposite directions.

Centrist Republicans are worried about ending some of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which allowed millions of Americans to obtain health insurance for the first time. After a decade, 24 million additional Americans could be uninsured under the GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Moderate Republicans want to make sure that the government does not abandon those who benefited from Obamacare.

That’s the opposite of the criticism coming from the GOP’s conservative wing. They feel that under the bill as written, the government would be doing too much in health insurance – continuing to help middle-class families buy coverage and regulating the plans that insurers can sell.

"The problem is, there are taxes, mandates and subsidies -- sounds a lot like Obamacare lite to me," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said recently, summarizing the views of many conservative members of the House.

And if the party wants to pass any bill at all, it can’t write off either wing. With no Democrats expected to support the bill, 22 defecting House Republicans would be enough to sink it. Ryan and the GOP leadership have even less room to maneuver because Congress’s rules limit the kinds of changes they can make to the bill without exposing it to a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Ryan, in his official capacity as speaker of the House and his unofficial role as GOP wonk-in-chief, is the one tasked with making the legislative magic happen.

...

The article goes on to talk about some of the biggest sticking points. I know where I'd like Ryan to stick this whole misbegotten plan...

[Cartmann99]

I just got through reading my Congressman's Facebook page to see what sort of comments he's been getting about the new Republican healthcare bill. While I was there, I come across this guy that hates it, calls my Rep. a RINO for supporting it, wants a full repeal of the ACA, etc...and then he says that he doesn't want chronically Ill people to have the same insurance as he does, because they use up too many resources.

First, he proposed that these individuals should just pay for their own care out of pocket, but then he changed his mind and decided that if we absolutely have to do something for them, then it was okay for them to receive medicaid as long as they were forced to use county hospitals for any care they needed.

I was curious, so I clicked on through to his Facebook page to learn more about him, and discovered that he had attended a Baptist Bible college.

Jesus must be so proud of him for wanting to treat those with chronic illnesses with such compassion. 

[Childless]

6 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I just got through reading my Congressman's Facebook page to see what sort of comments he's been getting about the new Republican healthcare bill. While I was there, I come across this guy that hates it, calls my Rep. a RINO for supporting it, wants a full repeal of the ACA, etc...and then he says that he doesn't want chronically Ill people to have the same insurance as he does, because they use up too many resources.

First, he proposed that these individuals should just pay for their own care out of pocket, but then he changed his mind and decided that if we absolutely have to do something for them, then it was okay for them to receive medicaid as long as they were forced to use county hospitals for any care they needed.

I was curious, so I clicked on through to his Facebook page to learn more about him, and discovered that he had attended a Baptist Bible college.

Jesus must be so proud of him for wanting to treat those with chronic illnesses with such compassion. 

And watch how fast his beliefs change once he, his wife, or one of his kids is diagnosed with a chronic illness and he has to pay out of pocket for their care.  These morons never think it will happen to them.

[GreyhoundFan]

This scares me -- it appears that Ryan pandered to Cruz and the Freedom Caucus enough that their deathcare plan may pass the House. I hope a few Repubs in the Senate (like Susan Collins) can stand up to the pressure and vote against it. Only three senators have to vote against it. "House Republicans unveil changes to their health-care bill"

Quote

House Republican leaders, racing toward a planned Thursday vote on their proposed health-care overhaul, unveiled changes to the legislation late Monday that they think will win over enough members to secure its passage.

The tweaks addressed numerous GOP concerns about the legislation, ranging from the flexibility it would give states to administer their Medicaid programs to the amount of aid it would offer older Americans to buy insurance. They are the product of two weeks of negotiations that stretched from the Capitol to the White House to President Trump’s Florida resort.

The bill's proponents also appeared to overcome a major obstacle Monday after a key group of hard-line conservatives declined to take a formal position against the bill, known as the American Health Care Act.

...

House leaders said they intended to provide another $85 billion of aid to those ages 50 to 64, but the amendment unveiled late Monday did not do so directly. Instead, the leaders said, it “provides the Senate flexibility to potentially enhance the tax credit” for the older cohort by adjusting an unrelated tax deduction.

That workaround, aides said, was done to ensure that the House bill would comply with Senate budget rules and to ensure that the CBO could release an updated analysis of the legislation before the Thursday vote.

But it also means that the House members who pushed for the new aid will have to trust the Senate to carry out their wishes.

"potentially". Yeah, that's really comforting.

[RoseWilder]

I'm starting to think the list of Republicans who aren't connected to Russia is shorter than the list of those who are: 

 

[RoseWilder]

 

[RoseWilder]

I say this about 50 times a day, but it bears repeating: what the fuck is wrong with Republicans: 

This is so disturbing: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"No, Republicans, the ‘real story’ is not the leaks"

Quote

...

Yet to listen to Republican members of the Intelligence Committee, the most pressing problem to arise from Russia’s intervention and the FBI’s investigation of it is that reports of contacts between Russia’s ambassador and Mr. Trump’s designated national security adviser were leaked to The Post. The priority of Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.) and other Republican members, judging from their statements, is not fully uncovering Russia’s actions but finding and punishing those who allowed the public to learn about them.

Mr. Nunes and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) could not have been more zealous in their outrage over the exposure of Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign as national security adviser after reports in The Post exposed his lies about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Mr. Flynn accepted nearly $68,000 in payments from Russian companies, including the state propaganda outlet, before advocating greater cooperation with Moscow during his brief White House stint. Yet Mr. Nunes and Mr. Gowdy would have it that hunting down the sources for the disclosure that Mr. Flynn discussed the lifting of U.S. sanctions with Mr. Kislyak is more urgent than learning the full extent of the contacts he and other Trump aides had with Moscow.

The Republicans seem to be slavishly following the cues of the president, who, while failing to retract his accusation against Mr. Obama, is seeking to direct attention elsewhere. “The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information,” he tweeted Monday morning. Such a diversion, like anything else that distracts attention from Vladi­mir Putin’s support for his election, would be to Mr. Trump’s advantage.

Congressional Republicans ought to consider larger national interests. Russia’s intervention in the election was not incidental and haphazard, but part of a concerted campaign to disrupt Western democracy. Mr. Putin is even now attempting to interfere in ongoing election campaigns in France and Germany. Given Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the threat, it is essential that Congress discover the truth about Russia’s activities, take steps to defend against similar intrusions in the future and help allies protect themselves.

The first useful step would be to fully inform the public. Instead, Mr. Nunes and his followers appear bent on silencing anyone who would do so.

Sadly, both Nunes and Gowdy seem to be in Agent Orange's/Putin's pocket.

[RoseWilder]

The Republicans seem to have forgotten that we live in the age of the Internet, when we can just pull up evidence that they're lying in under 2 minutes: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This Repub jerk just has to muck with DC's laws (for those who don't know, Congress has a big say over DC's local laws). "Among the priorities of a new congressman from Virginia: Void D.C.’s strict gun laws"

Quote

A freshman Republican member of Congress from Virginia has introduced legislation to void D.C.’s strict gun laws as one of his first bills, sparking a retort from Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton that he should pay more attention to the lax gun laws in his own state.

Rep. Thomas Garrett’s bill, filed March 15, would eliminate the city’s prohibition on semiautomatic guns and high-capacity magazines while making it easier for residents and visitors to carry concealed firearms.

It is the House counterpart to legislation reintroduced this year by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“My citizens should be able to come to their capital and protect themselves, just the way they can at home,” said Garrett, a former state senator who represents Charlottesville and a conservative swath of central and southern Virginia. “This should be something that D.C. leadership looks at. It’s their responsibility to protect their citizens.”

Norton, who leads the charge in defending local laws against congressional intervention as the city’s nonvoting representative, said it was hypocritical for Garrett to try to make it easier for people to carry weapons in the District without addressing the prohibition of firearms on Capitol grounds. A spokesman for Garrett said he would support a change that would allow anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring a gun into the Capitol. Virginia issues concealed carry permits.

Norton questioned whether Virginia’s relaxed gun regulations should be a model for the nation’s capital.

Virginia’s laws drew national attention this month when New York authorities busted what they called an illegal gun trafficking ring that funneled more than 200 handguns and semiautomatic assault rifles and boxes of ammunition from Virginia into New York City.

...

Norton said Garrett and other conservative lawmakers who want to limit the federal footprint should not second guess local laws decided by elected D.C. officials.

“No freshman who has only put in four bills should be looking into somebody else’s jurisdiction,” Norton said in an interview.

The District’s unique status as a federal district, population 681,000, leaves it at the mercy of Congress under the Constitution, which gives the federal government the power to void District laws and approve how it spends local tax dollars.

With unified GOP control of the White House and Congress, Republican lawmakers have been aggressively offering legislation to scale back some of the Democratic city’s liberal laws and policies.

Several Republican lawmakers failed in their attempt to block a law allowing terminally ill District residents to end their lives. But they may pursue an alternative line of attack against the law by preventing the city from spending money to implement it.

The House passed legislation in February that would permanently ban the District from spending its local tax dollars to subsidize abortion for low-income women. It has not come up for a vote in the Senate, where Democrats could block the bill through a filibuster.

Garrett’s legislation follows several unsuccessful attempts to void the District’s gun laws in recent years, including one that derailed a 2009 deal that would have granted the city’s delegate to Congress the right to vote on federal legislation.

What a tool. He's from a very "red" area.