United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[47of74]

18 hours ago, Howl said:

Meanwhile, an employee at a San Francisco UPS warehouse/customer center opened fire with an "assault pistol" and shot four of his fellow employees today.  This isn't about a Bernie Sanders supporter killing Republicans, it's about disgruntled (mostly white, mostly men) people venting their emotions by shooting whoever is the perceived source of their anguish over personal failure and inability to deal with life.  It's business as fucking usual in the USA and I refuse to be any more or less upset about someone opening fire on a baseball game than I am about any other mass shooting that happens on a daily to weekly basis in my country. 

 

When I went overseas I generally felt safer than I did in this country.   Hell even in Turkey. 

I know no country on Earth is perfect, but it seemed to me like there wasn't the level of generalized festering anger overseas that is a constant part of living in this country, that there wasn't the malaise that seems to permeate everything here.  I've always had mixed feelings returning home after being overseas.

 

[Childless]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

When I went overseas I generally felt safer than I did in this country.   Hell even in Turkey. 

I know no country on Earth is perfect, but it seemed to me like there wasn't the level of generalized festering anger overseas that is a constant part of living in this country, that there wasn't the malaise that seems to permeate everything here.  I've always had mixed feelings returning home after being overseas.

 

As someone who has traveled overseas often, I completely agree.  I felt much safer walking the streets of Rome, London, Athens, etc. after dark than I ever do in cities in the U.S.  Hell, you'd never catch me out alone after dark in the closest big city to me (Indianapolis).  It's a very violent city.  One of the most violent cities in the most violent Western country in the world.  And the State Department has the gall to warn Americans about traveling in Europe.  What a joke!

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

WARNING: a truck load of sarcasm ahead!

You have it all wrong dear! We stoopid Europeans gave up our god given right to bear arms so our gubbimmints can tax us more in exchange for things fit for lazy people who can't even pull themselves up from their bootstraps such as healthcare, preventative care, maternity leave, sefety nets, environmental protection, sustainable energy and other evil things that none in their right mind would want. But it's for the best because we aren't exceptional you know, we aren't like Americans, have you ever heard of European exceptionalism? No? It's because we aren't exceptional! If we had firearms we would be dangerous we would use them stupidly, we would mistakenly kill one another, it would be like leaving guns in children's reach, shooting and massacres everywhere even in schools, would you imagine that?

Americans are completely different, they are exceptional! Every American has a secret sniper inside, if only everyone of them had a gun the bad guys would be deafeated in a heartbeat! /sarcasm

 

Sorry people I know I am preaching to the choir but from this side of the pond the pro-gun propaganda sounds even crazier. Especially the part about guns being necessary to defend the citizens from government overreach. That's not a recipe for democracy but for civil war.

Well, to be fair, @laPapessaGiovanna, the monarchy here are the gun manufacturers. The most powerful industry in the country. With a mindless and fearful audience. If you want a wonderful example of the insanity of guns in this country google "Dad shows 10 year old twins about gun safety." Sorry, I will learn how to link one of these days.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent analysis: "G.O.P. Senators Might Not Realize It, but Not One State Supports the Republican Health Bill"

Spoiler

It’s no secret that the American Health Care Act is unpopular. In recent national polls, only about 29 percent of Americans support the bill. It is the most unpopular piece of major legislation Congress has considered in decades — even more unloved than TARP (“the bailout”), and much more unpopular than the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Will Republican senators vote yes on a bill this unpopular? To hang on to their jobs, senators have to keep only voters in their own states happy, not the whole nation. Perhaps red-state senators, or even some senators in swing states, might think their states are friendlier to the bill than the nation as a whole.

Our research indicates that is not the case. To get a sense of support by state, we combined recent polls to estimate support for the A.H.C.A. in every senator’s home state. Our estimates indicate that not one state favors it.

Even though very few state polls have been conducted on views of the A.H.C.A., we are able to estimate views on the bill in each state using a statistical method called M.R.P. (multilevel regression and postratification) and eight national polls that the Kaiser Family Foundation, YouGov and Public Policy Polling shared with us on people’s views on the A.H.C.A.

While no polling system is infallible, our M.R.P. model combines respondents’ demographic characteristics, their state and their views of the A.H.C.A. to estimate the probability that a voter of a certain age, race and gender, and in a state with certain characteristics, would support the proposal. It then estimates support for the bill within every state based on each state’s demographics. Models like this have been used to accurately predict public opinion in states on other topics, and in last week’s election in Britain.

We found that Republicans have produced a rare unity among red and blue states: opposition to the A.H.C.A.

For example, even in the most supportive state, deep-red Oklahoma, we estimate that only about 38 percent of voters appear to support the law versus 45 percent who oppose. (Another 17 percent of Oklahomans say they have no opinion.) Across all the states that voted for President Trump last year, we estimate that support for the A.H.C.A. is rarely over 35 percent. A majority of Republican senators currently represent states where less than a third of the public supports the A.H.C.A. By comparison, President Trump received 33 percent of the vote in Massachusetts.

How many senators might lose their seats as a result of supporting the bill? A recent study found that Democrats who supported Obamacare lost about six percentage points in the vote in 2010 — a dangerous omen for the 15 sitting Republican senators who won their most recent elections by less than that number. For example, if the A.H.C.A. costs Republicans as much support as Obamacare cost Democrats, senators like Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada might be in danger of losing their seats. We estimate that only 28 percent of the public in Nevada supports the A.H.C.A., while only 31 percent of Arizonans support it.

With this said, it’s hard to know just how politically damaging supporting the A.H.C.A. would be. On the one hand, no major bill this unpopular has passed in decades, but some voters might forget about the A.H.C.A., or change their opinions, by the time some senators face re-election.

But the picture of public support is bleak in the home states of many reported G.O.P. swing votes on the bill. In Susan Collins’s Maine, Lisa Murkowski’s Alaska, Mr. Flake and John McCain’s Arizona, Cory Gardner’s Colorado, Bill Cassidy’s Louisiana, Rob Portman’s Ohio, Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina and Mr. Heller’s Nevada, we estimate that public support is under a third, and clear pluralities oppose.

... <chart of states and levels of support>

With A.H.C.A. support in the subbasement, Republican senators have indicated they hope to make changes to the law. Although we can’t be sure exactly what they will change or how it might influence public support, the YouGov data indicate that Republicans in the House had little success softening the public’s opposition with their own modifications. In fact, support for the A.H.C.A. was even lower in the three YouGov polls after the House made its changes than in the two YouGov polls conducted before it.

Cynics might worry that senators care too much about their donors or primary voters to pay heed to general public opposition in their states. But evidence shows that when politicians learn that a majority of their constituents oppose a bill, many change their votes as a result. In one study, academics randomly assigned some legislators to receive information on public opinion in their districts, and found that legislators were much more likely to vote along with constituency opinion when they were informed of it.

But critics of the bill shouldn’t assume Republican senators know where their states stand. Research shows that politicians are surprisingly poor at estimating public opinion in their districts and states, Republicans in particular. G.O.P. politicians tend to overestimate support for conservative health care views by about 20 percentage points — meaning Senate Republicans might see their states as just barely supporting the A.H.C.A. Our analysis indicates this view would be mistaken.

All the more reason for FJers in "red" states to contact their senators and reps sooner, rather than, later.

[JMarie]

From the United states Congress of Honor

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/15/gop-rep-mark-sanford-trump-partially-blame-rhetoric-scalise-baseball-shooting/22305640/

Quote

Rep. Mark Sanford said Thursday President Donald Trump was "partially" to blame for the hostile rhetoric in America that led to Wednesday's shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R.-La.) and several others at a congressional baseball practice.

"I would argue that the president has unleashed, partially, again not in anyway totally, but partially to blame for the demons that have been unleashed," the South Carolina Republican said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "The fact that you've got the top guy saying, 'I wish I can hit you in the face, if not why don't you and I'll pay your legal fees.' That's bizarre. We ought to call it as such."

The congressman described a recent change in tone he has seen in local town hall meetings, noting a growing hostility that seems to be becoming a nationwide issue.

"I was at a town hall meeting -- it was at a senior center, at a retirement center -- and what took place in terms of what people were saying to each other was like out of a movie, and so we've got to find a way to dial this back," Sanford said.

Sanford added that there is "some heavy soul-searching going on right now" on Capitol Hill following Wednesday's shooting.

A lone shooter, identified as James T. Hodgkinson, approached members of Congress and aides while they were practicing for an upcoming baseball game on Wednesday morning in Alexandria, Virginia and opened fire. Five people were injured, and Rep. Scalise remains in critical condition.

 

[onekidanddone]

This from the "Hike the Appellation trail on Hike Naked Day" guy.  Wow having the guts to put country of party I'm impressed. Still I would like to see him voted out of office, but I do give him kudos. Who with an 'R' by their name will also speak out?

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Excellent analysis: "G.O.P. Senators Might Not Realize It, but Not One State Supports the Republican Health Bill"

All the more reason for FJers in "red" states to contact their senators and reps sooner, rather than, later.

Crud.  I forgot to call my Senators today.  Both are Dems, but I just want to give them a reminder.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Rep. Steve King is right. ‘America has been divided,’ and he helped divide it."

Spoiler

On a day that cried out for calls for unity — and got them from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and even President Trump — leave it to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to emerge from his palatial glass house to yell at the neighbors.

“America has been divided,” King said Wednesday from the scene of the horror on a local baseball field in Alexandria, where Republican members of Congress and staff were practicing for a charity game against Democrats on Thursday. “And the center of America is disappearing, and the violence is appearing in the streets, and it’s coming from the left.”

As if that weren’t enough, King took to Twitter to repeat himself.

...

Yes, the center of America is disappearing. There are many causes of it, including hateful rhetoric that drives wedges rather than builds bridges. And a leading expert in the former is King.

Nearly a year ago, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, King stunned the nation with a bit of racial chauvinism. He was reacting to writer Charles Pierce contending that the gathering might be the last time old white people command the attention of the GOP.

King: This whole white people business, though, does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?

MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes: Than white people?

King: Than Western civilization itself that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and everyplace where the footprint of Christianity settled the world.

This is the same guy who derided “dreamers” during an interview four years ago with Newsmax, a far-right website that purports to report news.

There are kids that were brought into this country by their parents unknowing they were breaking the law. And they will say to me and others who defend the rule of law, ‘We have to do something about the 11 million. Some of them are valedictorians.’ Well, my answer to that is…it’s true in some cases, but they aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents. For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act.

The bold in the quote above is mine for emphasis and to highlight the imagery of human beings as nothing more than mindless pack mules. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise from King. Remember his comparison of immigrants to dogs in 2012?

And you put out a beacon like the Statue of Liberty and who comes here? The most vigorous from every country that has donated legal immigrants to the United States of America. The cream of the crop. We’ve always had bird dogs around our place. And, right now, in our family there’s a black lab and white lab a yellow lab, and my brother has a chocolate lab. And, you go in and you look at a litter of pups, and you watch them. You watch how they play — they run around a little bit — and what do you want? You want a good bird dog, and you want one that’s gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest, the one that’s in games the most and not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner. If you want a pet to sit on the couch, pick the one that’s sleeping in the corner. That’s — so, you get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. We got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet because it’s hard to get here, you had to be inspired to come. We got the vigor from the planet to come to America. Whichever generation it was, and then we taught our children that same thing.

King is all about purity, as this tweet from March attests.

...

And if you had any doubt about what King was driving at, it was dispelled by none other than David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

...

And this one. Notice the hashtag.

,,,

Looking through Duke’s racist Twitter feed is akin to walking barefoot through a full dumpster in the dark. This post from June 12 is one of many examples.

...

So, before King starts laying blame at the feet of “the left” for the nation’s very real cultural and racial divides, perhaps he should put down the rocks and reflect on his role in the toxic environment to which he contributes liberally.

The David Duke tweets are especially nauseating.

[GreyhoundFan]

I would be thrilled it is backfires on McTurtle: "Why Mitch McConnell’s secrecy gambit on his health-care bill could backfire"

Spoiler

Right now, the Republican leadership in the Senate is undertaking an unprecedented effort to write and pass a bill to remake the entire American health-care system in secret, with not a single hearing or committee markup and with its details kept hidden even from many Republican senators. This plan was devised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who is widely respected for his strategic acumen even by Democrats who believe he has a bottomless void where his soul ought to be.

But is it possible that McConnell’s plan will backfire?

I’ll explain why that might happen in a moment, but it’s important to understand that the secrecy with which this bill is being crafted is a tacit admission on Republicans’ part that its likely effects on Americans’ health care and financial security are so gruesome that it must be kept hidden until the last possible moment, lest the public have time to understand what’s in it.

We don’t know exactly what the Senate’s bill will consist of, but there are a few things we do know. At its heart, it will do what the bill the House passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act does: take health coverage away from millions of people in order to give a tax break to the wealthy. While some hoped that a few moderates and senators from states that had accepted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion might try to save the expansion, that hope is dead. According to various reports, those supposed moderates now support phasing out the expansion, but doing it over seven years instead of the three years that the House bill provided for.

The Senate bill would also likely transform Medicaid — which today covers nearly 70 million Americans — into a block grant, for the first time allowing states to toss people off and cut back benefits. It will cut back on the subsidies that currently allow those not poor enough for Medicaid to afford coverage. It will likely undo the ACA’s mandates for essential health benefits, allowing the sale of “insurance” that in practice covers almost none of the needs people actually have. It will probably allow insurers to once again impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage, which can turn a life-threatening illness or accident into a financial catastrophe as well. And it could undermine the protections the tens of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions now enjoy.

You can see why Republicans might not be too eager to invite Americans to get a good long look at this rancid smorgasbord of poison and misery. And as we get closer to seeing it, we’re learning even more about what the effects of the ACA repeal could be. In the past day or two we’ve seen the release of three new reports on those effects:

• The Kaiser Family Foundation looked at what non-group plans (analogous to what people now purchase on the ACA exchanges) covered before ACA’s essential benefits mandate was in place. They found that 75 percent of the plans didn’t cover maternity care, 45 percent didn’t include coverage for substance abuse, and 38 percent didn’t cover mental and behavioral health. Once that mandate is removed, non-group plans could revert to what they covered before.
• A Commonwealth Fund study concluded that if the House health-care bill became law, “By 2026, 924,000 jobs would be lost, gross state products would be $93 billion lower, and business output would be $148 billion less. About three-quarters of jobs lost (725,000) would be in the health care sector. States which expanded Medicaid would experience faster and deeper economic losses.”
• An analysis by the Center for American Progress concludes that if yearly and lifetime caps are once again allowed, 27 million people with employer-based coverage could be subject to yearly caps and 20 million could be subject to lifetime caps.

It just gets better and better, doesn’t it? So McConnell’s theory is that if the Senate’s bill were seen, debated and discussed, opposition would grow and grow, and eventually at least three of his members would bail out (the Republicans’ 52-48 majority means they can only lose two votes). Which might well be true.

But the opposite might also happen. The bill’s secrecy is garnering more and more attention, and more and more outrage. It has become one of the leading complaints Democrats make about it. And as any marketer knows, suspense is a terrific tool to increase public interest in your product. Tell people that your new movie or album is coming out soon, but give them only a taste of what it contains, and you’ll heighten the anticipation.

So by the time we actually get a look at the Senate’s bill, all that waiting may have primed the media to give it a great deal of attention, primed Democratic officeholders to run to the cameras to denounce it and primed liberal activists to mount an all-out assault on the bill, pressuring potentially wavering senators to oppose it.

To be clear, nothing is guaranteed — McConnell’s gambit could work. But it’s also possible that his strategy will concentrate all the drama into one intense period of a couple of weeks, generating such loud opposition to it that a few of those Republican senators get spooked enough to abandon the bill. In the end, the outcome may depend on whether the bill’s opponents are ready when the moment comes.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Fuck you, Steve King: "Rep. Steve King Says Obama Is Partly To Blame For Alexandria Shooting"

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is pointing a finger at former President Barack Obama for the attack on Republican lawmakers at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday.

“I do want to put some of this at the feet of Barack Obama,” the congressman said in an interview with Simon Conway on WHO Iowa radio. “He contributed mightily to dividing us. He focused on our differences rather than our things that unify us. And this is some of the fruits of that labor.”

...

After the shooting, Obama called Sen. Jeff Flake (R- Ariz.), whom Obama maintained good relations with during his presidency, to send “best wishes and prayers to those injured,” Flake told the Los Angeles Times.

Although King does have a point about the nation being divided, he is clearly unaware that his own hateful rhetoric — especially toward people who are not white, Christian or U.S.-born — contributes to the divide.

...

And in April, when a King staffer failed to show up for a meeting with a Latina constituent who called him out for the runaround, he responded with a tweet that said, “Do you always lie in English?”

So, basically, take his comments with grain — or an ocean’s worth — of salt.

[fraurosena]

Yessss... there are three REPUBLICANS siding with democrats against the AHCA!

 

Three cheers for John Kasich, Brian Sandoval and Charlie Baker.

Fingers crossed their bipartisan tendencies are not restricted to the AHCA alone.

[fraurosena]

There's a COVFEFE Act!

Congressman introduces 'COVFEFE Act' to make social media a presidential record

Spoiler

While the political world and late-night comedians still debate what "covfefe" means, at least one member of Congress is aiming to establish what it stands for.

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois has introduced a bill, dubbed the "COVFEFE Act," to require the preservation of a president's social media records.

Quigley's bill turns the buzz word into an acronym standing for the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act, which would broaden the scope of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by including the term "social media" as documentary material.

On May 31, President Donald Trump declared at 12:06 a.m. on Twitter: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe."

The tweet remained published for several hours before being removed, allowing observers plenty of time to ponder the meaning of "covfefe." But the deletion and others like it have raised questions about how presidents' social media should be handled and preserved.

"In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets," Quigley, who co-founded the Congressional Transparency Caucus, said in a statement.

Trump's frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account is "unprecedented," Quigley said.

>example toddler tweet<

As is, the Presidential Records Act mandates that presidents take all necessary steps to ensure their records are properly documented and stored with the National Archives and Records Administration for public release after they leave office.

The law allows exemptions for personal documents, like diaries and medical records, but otherwise asserts a broad scope. A 2014 amendment expanded its latitude to include electronic records but did not explicitly mandate the preservation of social media records.

In light of the President's use of Twitter as a daily means of communicating directly with the public, Quigley's bill reignites a long-running conversation about the extent of presidential record-keeping and transparency.

"If the President is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference," the lawmaker said. "Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post."

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois has introduced a bill, dubbed the "COVFEFE Act," to require the preservation of a president's social media records.

Quigley's bill turns the buzz word into an acronym standing for the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act

This is some serious trolling! 

[GreyhoundFan]

My thought is -- NOPE: "Trey Gowdy now has the House Oversight gavel. But will he investigate Trump?"

Spoiler

Rep. Trey Gowdy secured one of Congress’s most powerful investigative posts last week. But it remains unclear how — or if — he’ll use it to investigate President Trump.

Voted in as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, Gowdy (R-S.C.) possesses nearly boundless jurisdiction to probe executive branch misdeeds and abuses.

His predecessor, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who is retiring from Congress next week, had taken some halting steps to investigate Trump — requesting, for instance, memorandums written by former FBI director James B. Comey about his meetings with the president and documents related to Trump's downtown Washington hotel.

But there are signs that Gowdy, a former state and federal prosecutor who led the rancorous House probe into the 2012 Benghazi attacks, may defer those inquiries to other congressional investigations and to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

“The last thing he’ll want to do is impede any sort of investigation,” Chaffetz said of Gowdy. “But we also have duties and obligations in the House. I trust that he’ll find the proper balance to that, and it’s a tricky one. It’s not easy.”

Gowdy’s office declined requests for an interview last week, citing an ongoing review of the committee’s staff and agenda. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Saturday, Gowdy said he saw his tenure as a “rare opportunity to depoliticize oversight” and said he had confidence in Mueller to lead the criminal probe into Trump’s orbit. He said he would prefer the committee focus on issues such as the federal workforce, the coming 2020 Census and drafting reform legislation.

A GOP aide acknowledged last week that Gowdy had conversations with other committee chairmen in recent weeks about their potentially overlapping jurisdiction.

“Rep. Gowdy respects the jurisdiction of each committee and has had similar conversations with all committee chairs,” the aide said. “House rules clearly lay out the jurisdiction of each committee.”

Any decision to bow out of probing Trump could spark a partisan battle on the Oversight Committee, angering Democrats who watched Chaffetz and Gowdy vigorously pursue politically damaging probes into former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton ahead of last year’s election.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), the second-ranked Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said any move to have the panel step aside from Trump probes would be a “recipe for very serious friction on the committee.”

“We are increasingly going to demand robust oversight on what we consider to be one of the most serious threats to American democracy,” he said.

Several Republican members and aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe Gowdy’s thinking before he publicly unveils his oversight priorities, said the 52-year-old South Carolinian is mindful of staying in his investigative lane.

Gowdy not only conducted criminal investigations before joining Congress, but he also now sits on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees — both panels with pending oversight interests in the Trump administration. Gowdy will be wary, the Republicans said, of treading on his colleagues’ turf or interfering with Mueller’s probe.

Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is leading the Intelligence panel’s investigation into alleged Russian election interference and possible Trump links, said last week he “had some brief conversations” on the subject with Gowdy.

“I think Trey and I will work well together,” he said. “Obviously, he’s got two hats, and so I trust him to be able to manage that.”

Democrats have little patience for the notion that the Trump probes might be left to other committees. They pointed to multiple Obama administration issues in which the House Oversight panel conducted its own — often higher-profile — investigations of matters that were also being probed by other committees of jurisdiction.

Four other House committees — Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Judiciary — also probed the Benghazi attack, for instance. The Ways and Means Committee probed reports of the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative nonprofit groups before then-Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) took the lead, and Issa’s rigorous investigation into the Justice Department’s handing of Operation Fast and Furious impinged on the Judiciary Committee’s turf.

“We had hearings on Benghazi. We had hearings on the IRS. That never stopped us before,” Connolly said. “Both Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz were more than willing to entertain conflict with other committees in order to engage in their own oversight and make their own imprint on the topics. So why would this to be an exception to that rule?”

Gowdy has yet to meet as chairman with the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who has been recovering from heart surgery last month.

In a statement, Cummings said he hoped to talk to Gowdy about continuing bipartisan oversight initiatives on prescription drug prices and other issues, and also about exercising the panel’s “unique jurisdiction over White House officials, which includes the vetting system, the security clearance process, and the compliance with ethics rules.”

Chaffetz himself emphasized the breadth of the Oversight panel’s portfolio and said Gowdy will have considerably leeway to pick his targets.

“The beauty of the Oversight Committee is you have far-and-wide reach of jurisdiction,” he said. “There’s nothing that really holds you back. He’s very collegial and will want to work closely with the other committees, but he can still do it if he wants to.”

Treading on others’ turf can be treacherous in terms of the internal politics of the House, however, and Gowdy is widely seen among his GOP colleagues as a team player who is unlikely to rock boats for his own aggrandizement.

Chaffetz was not always seen in that light, and his quick move earlier this year to seek Comey’s memos raised some hackles, according to several members and aides.

“That’s water under the bridge,” Conaway said, acknowledging the tensions. “I have great confidence in Trey.”

Gowdy is a conservative Republican, but he also has few personal or political ties to Trump. He endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida during the presidential race, and took heat from the Trump for the endorsement. “His hearings were a disaster,” Trump said of Gowdy on Fox News in December 2015, referring to the Benghazi probe. Earlier this year, Gowdy returned donations from a pro-Trump super PAC, and he said in the Wall Street Journal interview that he has made an assiduous attempt to keep his distance from the president.

There are pending committee inquiries into Trump matters that Gowdy now inherits. In late May, for instance, the FBI responded to Chaffetz’s request for Comey’s memos by citing Mueller’s appointment and saying it would undertake “appropriate consultation to ensure all relevant interests implicated by your request are properly evaluated.”

“How [Gowdy] deals with that, what he does, I don’t yet know,” Chaffetz said of the special counsel. “It’s up to him.”

Even if Gowdy were to give Mueller a wide berth, Democrats say he still has plenty of space to explore other Trump allegations — particularly whether the president is violating his hotel lease and potentially the Constitution by continuing to own major assets while in office.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who also served with Gowdy on the Benghazi panel, said he hoped Gowdy would “show the same diligence about looking into this administration as they did looking into the last one” and cited the constitutional prohibition on accepting foreign gifts or “emoluments.”

“There certainly appear to be violations of the emoluments clause on a pretty daily basis, and somebody needs to investigate those,” Schiff said. “Those are not within the purview, for the most part, of the Intelligence Committee. They are directly under the purview of Government Reform.”

Trey "Benghazi" Gowdy would move heaven and earth to investigate every single word said if Hillary had been elected, but I'm sure he'll turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the orange menace. Maybe he'll open more hearings on Hillary's emails and Benghazi; that would be such a great use of tax dollars. (end sarcasm).

[GreyhoundFan]

WaPo's Fact Checker examined McTurtle: "Mitch McConnell on the health-care legislative process, 2010 vs. 2017"

Spoiler

“Unfortunately, it will have to be a Republicans-only exercise. But we’re working hard to get there.”
— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in remarks to reporters June 13

It has become a regular feature of the U.S. political system that the politicians in the minority accuse the politicians in power of cutting deals behind closed doors to advance controversial legislation — only to engage in similar tactics once they regain power.

This has become increasingly clear as Republicans in the Senate struggle to craft a health-care deal that will gain at least 50 votes, the bare minimum necessary under the legislative path — known as reconciliation — chosen by the GOP. Republicans have only 52 senators, so only two can oppose a deal for Vice President Pence to cast the tie-breaking vote. Thus far, the negotiations on a bill to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a new law have been conducted in secrecy, leaving critical details unclear.

When the Affordable Care Act was debated in 2009-2010, the process initially was different. There were 58 Democrats and two independents who voted with them, meaning that if the party stood together, the majority could avoid a filibuster by Republicans. The bills were drafted in various committees, numerous amendments were offered by Republicans, and there were efforts to win Republican support. (One Republican, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, even voted to approve a health-care bill at the committee level.) We described that process at length in a previous fact check.

In the Senate, the bills that emerged from the committees were ultimately merged into a single bill in the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) — what was decried at the time by Republicans as an overly secret process. Then the Senate engaged in 25 days of debate on the legislation before passing the bill on a partisan vote of 60 to 39.

Before the House and Senate versions of the health-care law could be merged through a conference committee, however, the Democrats lost their 60-vote majority when a Republican won a special election in Massachusetts. With just 59 votes in the Senate, Democrats opted to get over the finish line by using the reconciliation process in the Senate, prompting renewed outrage of legislative sleight-of-hand from Republicans.

With that history in mind, let’s look at how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks about similar situations then and now. (Also see the video above.)

The Facts

McConnell, March 27, 2010: 

“In one of the most divisive legislative debates in modern history, Democrats decided to go the partisan route and blatantly ignore the will of the people.”

McConnell, June 13:

“Unfortunately, it will have to be a Republicans-only exercise. But we’re working hard to get there.”

***

McConnell, Feb. 24, 2010: 

“Democrats on Capitol Hill are working behind the scenes on a plan aimed at jamming this massive health spending bill through Congress against the clear wishes of an unsuspecting public. What they have in mind is a last-ditch legislative sleight-of-hand called reconciliation that would enable them to impose government-run health care for all on the American people, whether Americans want it or not.”

McConnell, June 13:

“There have been gazillions of hearings on this subject when they were in the majority, when we were in the majority, when we were in the majority. We understand this issue pretty well, and we’re now working on coming up with a solution.”

In both cases, the party in power opted for reconciliation (50 votes) to pass a bill. McConnell in 2010 denounced it as a “partisan route” and “legislative sleight-of-hand.” McConnell’s staff argues that he faced from the start absolutely no cooperation from Democrats — who have insisted that the Senate focus on repairing the Affordable Care Act, not repealing it. But Democrats have charged that McConnell, in 2009-2010, shut down efforts at bipartisan cooperation, forcing them to rely only on Democrats. In any case, in 2009-2010, Democrats briefly did obtain one Republican vote, though not on final passage.

Reconciliation is an unusual tactic — generally reserved for budget and tax policy — that gets around Senate rules designed to force a supermajority on bills. McConnell was against it when Democrats used it but has now embraced it from the start.

McConnell, Dec. 22, 2009:

“Americans are right to be stunned — because this bill is a mess. And so was the process that was used to get it over the finish line. Americans are outraged by the last-minute, closed-door, sweetheart deals that were made to gain the slimmest margin for passage of a bill that’s about their health care.”

McConnell, June 13:

“Nobody’s hiding the ball here. You’re free to ask anybody anything.”

***

McConnell, Nov. 21, 2009: 

“So I ask: Why should we consider a bill we already know the American people oppose? This is not anything anybody’s in doubt about. The American people think, if you don’t like this bill, you’ve got an obligation to try to stop it.”

McConnell, June 13:

“We’ve been dealing with this issue for seven years. It’s not a new thing. We’ve spent a lot of time on it, all of us, both sides over the last seven years. We know a lot about the subject.”

During the Affordable Care Act process, McConnell repeatedly decried closed-door negotiations, especially for a bill that fared poorly in opinion polls. But polling indicates the Republican replacement is even less popular — the House version polls at 29 percent, with opposition in every state in the nation — and the bill-writing process has become even less transparent.

The Republican effort is the most unpopular legislation considered by Congress in decades. The ACA, by contrast, averaged about 45 percent approval when it was considered.

Two veteran health-care writers who covered passage of the ACA, Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News and Sarah Kliff of Vox, said they had never seen health-care legislation drafted in such secrecy.

“The extreme secrecy is a situation without precedent, at least in creating health law,” Rovner wrote, though noting that the Democrats had helped lay the track in earlier legislative debates. “Republicans plan to move more quickly and less deliberatively than Democrats did in drafting the Affordable Care Act,” Kliff wrote. “They intend to do this despite repeatedly and angrily criticizing the Affordable Care Act for being moved too quickly and with too little deliberation.”

McConnell’s staff notes that the reconciliation process requires both a floor debate and unlimited amendments from both sides, so eventually the bill would have a full airing.

The Pinocchio Test

It’s often a chicken-or-egg question about which party is responsible for the latest partisan outrage. The ACA ultimately was passed on a partisan vote, crippling it from the start because Republicans had no incentive or inclination to ever help fix it. That is now often cited as justification for repealing the law in a strictly partisan manner.

But it’s also clear that McConnell’s position has changed, even though he will not acknowledge it. He was against the reconciliation process for health care in 2010; he has embraced it now. He was against secrecy and closed-door dealmaking before; he now oversees the most secretive health-care bill process ever. And he was against voting on a bill that was broadly unpopular — and now he is pushing for a bill even more unpopular than the ACA in 2010.

McConnell earns an Upside-Down Pinocchio, for statements that represent a clear but unacknowledged “flip-flop” from a previously-held position.

An Upside-Down Pinocchio

 

I wish the people of Kentucky would stop forcing this jerk on the American people.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a great piece that outlines some of the reasons I despise Newt: "The destruction of political norms started decades ago. Here’s how it happened."

Spoiler

Let it be said that for one lovely moment, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi responded exactly as those in authority should to a shocking assault on human lives and our political system. After last Wednesday’s shooting on a baseball field, both spoke in a spirit of thoughtful solidarity and genuinely mutual concern. Kudos to them.

Unfortunately, so much else that has been said over the past few days is — I will use a family-oriented term — balderdash. We are not, alas, about to enter some new age of civility because of this terrible episode. And our divisions are not just a matter of our failing to speak nicely of and to each other, even though politeness is an underrated virtue these days.

The harsh feelings in our politics arise from a long process — the steady destruction of the norms of partisan competition that began more than a quarter-century ago. Well before President Trump took political invective to a new level, Newt Gingrich was pushing his side to extreme forms of aggressiveness. Journalist John M. Barry cited an emblematic 1978 speech Gingrich gave to a group of College Republicans in which he warned them off “Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics.”

“You’re fighting a war,” the future House speaker said. “It is a war for power. . . . Don’t try to educate them. That is not your job. . . . What’s the primary purpose of a political leader? . . . To build a majority.”

Gingrich won his majority in 1994, but the cost was high. This is not to say that Democrats were pacifists. But I’d argue that the critical shift happened on the Republican side. The turning point came when President George H.W. Bush was punished by members of his own party, including Gingrich, for agreeing with Democrats on the need for a tax increase in 1990. It was a watershed for the GOP. Republicans would never again repeat what they saw as the elder Bush’s “mistake.”

Political scientists Steven Webster and Alan Abramowitz, pioneers in identifying “negative partisanship” (i.e., preferences driven primarily by intense dislike of the other side), have shown that our deepening differences are driven by disagreements on policy. It goes beyond mere name-calling.

Look at the issue of gun violence. When even mild measures such as background checks are cast as draconian impositions on the right to bear arms, we simply cannot have a rational back-and-forth on practical steps to make events such as last Wednesday’s a little less likely.

Or take health care. Say what you will about Obamacare, but it really did try to draw on conservative and Republican ideas (health insurance exchanges, subsidies for private insurance, tax credits and the like). As Ezra Klein wrote recently on Vox, the lesson of the repeal effort (now being carried out in secrecy in the Senate) is that “including private insurers and conservative ideas in a health reform plan doesn’t offer a scintilla of political protection, much less Republican support.” Civility is a lot harder to maintain when you try to give the other side its due and get nothing in return. And it only aggravates already existing policy differences when one side regularly moves the goal posts.

Yes, I am offering a view of our problem from a progressive perspective. For what it’s worth, I have over the years written with great respect for the conservative tradition and conservative thinkers from Robert Nisbet to Yuval Levin. Conservatism has never been for me some demonic ideology, and I am happy to take issue with those who say otherwise.

But I would ask my friends on the right to consider that ever since Bush 41 agreed to that tax increase, conservatives and Republicans in large numbers have shied away from any deal-making with liberals. They have chosen instead to paint us as advocates of dangerous forms of statism. This has nothing to do with what we actually believe in or propose. Every gun measure is decried as confiscation. Every tax increase is described as oppressive. This simply shuts down dialogue before it can even start.

John F. Kennedy once spoke of how “a beachhead of cooperation” might “push back the jungle of suspicion.” So let us begin with that Ryan-Pelosi moment. We can at least agree that political violence is unacceptable and that each side should avoid blaming the other for the deranged people in their ranks who act otherwise. Things have gotten so intractable that even this would be progress.

 

[47of74]

Here's a good article Sorry, I Don’t Feel An Ounce Of Sympathy For Steve Scalise

Quote

Right now, both Democrats and Republicans are pleading for more civility in politics. Paul Ryan has lamented our toxic political climate, complete with fake news and partisan violence, and said that the attack on Steve Scalise is an attack on all of us.

To all of this hand-wringing and blame for the shooting, I say give me a fucking break. Where were the calls for more unity when Gabby Giffords was shot? When all of those children were gunned down at Sandy Hook, the first thing Republicans did was warn their most fanatical followers that this event would lead to President Obama taking their guns.

The price of assault weapons skyrocketed, and trying to find .223 ammo that was affordable was about as hard as trying to get a Republican to admit climate change was real. Ted Nugent suggested killing Hillary Clinton and President Obama, and Donald Trump, a candidate Scalise supported, suggested that 2nd Amendment people could deal with Secretary Clinton was elected.

I have no sympathy for Steve Scalise. This is a man who voted against healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders, takes donations from the NRA, and is part of the GOP plan to gut Obamacare. The man who shot him had no business owning a gun of any kind, much less the assault rifle he was armed with that day. Yet Scalise has opposed any sort of gun regulations, because he cares more about the wishes of the NRA and the fanatics he represents, instead of the thousands of Americans who are killed every year by gun violence.

Yeah I don't have much, if any sympathy for Scalise either.  Sorry, but that's the same level of fucks Scalise and Republicans gave after Sandy Hook or when Giffords was shot. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Zombies, Vampires and Republicans"

Spoiler

Zombies have long ruled the Republican Party. The good news is that they may finally be losing their grip — although they may still return and resume eating conservative brains. The bad news is that even if zombies are in retreat, vampires are taking their place.

What are these zombies of which I speak? Among wonks, the term refers to policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along.

The right’s zombie-in-chief is the insistence that low taxes on the rich are the key to prosperity. This doctrine should have died when Bill Clinton’s tax hike failed to cause the predicted recession and was followed instead by an economic boom. It should have died again when George W. Bush’s tax cuts were followed by lackluster growth, then a crash. And it should have died yet again in the aftermath of the 2013 Obama tax hike — partly expiration of some Bush tax cuts, partly new taxes to pay for Obamacare — when the economy continued jogging along, adding 200,000 jobs a month.

Despite the consistent wrongness of their predictions, however, tax-cut fanatics just kept gaining influence in the G.O.P. — until the disaster in Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback promised that deep tax cuts would yield an economic miracle. What the state got instead was weak growth and a fiscal crisis, finally pushing even Republicans to vote for tax hikes, overruling Brownback’s veto.

Will this banish the tax-cut zombie? Maybe — although the economists behind the Kansas debacle, who have of course learned nothing, appear to be the principal movers behind the Trump tax plan, such as it is.

But even as the zombies move offstage, vampire policies — so-called not so much because of their bloodsucking nature, although that too, as because they can’t survive daylight — have taken their place.

Consider what’s happening right now on health care.

Last month House Republicans rammed through one of the worst, cruelest pieces of legislation in history. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the American Health Care Act would take coverage away from 23 million Americans, and send premiums soaring for millions more, especially older workers with relatively low incomes.

This bill is, as it should be, wildly unpopular. Nonetheless, Republican Senate leaders are now trying to ram through their own version of the A.H.C.A., one that, all reports suggest, will differ only in minor, cosmetic ways. And they’re trying to do it in total secrecy. It appears that there won’t be any committee hearings before the bill goes to the floor. Nor are senators receiving draft text, or anything beyond a skeletal outline. Some have reportedly seen PowerPoint presentations, but the “slides are flashed across the screens so quickly that they can hardly be committed to memory.”

Clearly, the goal is to pass legislation that will have devastating effects on tens of millions of Americans without giving those expected to pass it, let alone the general public, any real chance to understand what they’re voting for. There are even suggestions that Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, might exploit loopholes in the rules to prevent any discussion on the Senate floor.

Why this combination of secrecy and speed? Obviously, this legislation can’t survive sunlight — and I’m by no means the first to make the analogy with vampires.

This is unprecedented. Ignore Republican lies about how Obamacare was passed: the Affordable Care Act went through extensive discussion, and Democrats were always very clear about what they were trying to do and how they were trying to do it.

When it comes to the Republican replacement for Obamacare, however, it’s not just the process that’s secretive; so is the purpose. Vox.com asked eight Republican senators what problem the legislation is supposed to solve, and how it’s supposed to solve it. Not one offered a coherent answer.

Of course, none brought up the one obvious payoff to taking health care away from millions: a big tax cut for the wealthy. As I said, while bloodsucking isn’t the main reason to call this a vampire policy, it’s part of the picture.

Oh, and one more point: What’s going down isn’t just unprecedented, it’s unpresidented. You can blame Donald Trump for many things, including the fact that he will surely sign whatever bad bill is put in front of him. But as far as health care is concerned, he’s just an ignorant bystander, who all evidence suggests has little if any idea what’s actually in Trumpcare. Maybe he’s too busy yelling at his TV to find out.

So this isn’t a Trump story; it’s about the cynicism and corruption of the whole congressional G.O.P. Remember, it would take just a few conservatives with conscience — specifically, three Republican senators — to stop this outrage in its tracks. But right now, it looks as if those principled Republicans don’t exist.

I agree, there don't seem to be three principled Repug senators.

[GreyhoundFan]

More from J.R.: "How will we miss Congress if it doesn’t go away?"

Spoiler

The worst-kept secret in Washington is that the Senate’s  secret health-care discussions almost certainly won’t produce a health-care bill, let alone one that can pass, in the two weeks before the July 4 congressional holiday recess. The Hill reports that some GOP senators are pushing to cancel or shorten the August recess (scheduled for the entire month): “With the party still sharply divided on healthcare and tax reform, it looks increasingly possible that Republican lawmakers will leave town in July for a monthlong break without any major accomplishments under their belts.”

There are plenty of reasons why this is unlikely to happen. It’s not even clear that staying in the District would be a good thing for Republicans.

First, as much as lawmakers fear raucous town halls where angry voters berate them for accomplishing nothing (or in the House for passing a monstrous health-care bill), the bigger fear is losing face time back home, not to mention the opportunity to meet with donors. Lawmakers unfortunately have become adept at avoiding large meetings with constituents and can project the appearance of access by holding smaller group meetings, many of which get little or no national coverage. No incumbent on the ballot in 2018 wants his or her opponent to claim the voters’ representative “never comes home” or has become “out of touch” with the district or state.

Second, the problem for the Senate is not simply a lack of time but rather the absence of a workable consensus on health-care legislation. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and perhaps others want no guaranteed tax credit to subsidize people who cannot get health insurance through their employers. Several senators (e.g. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine)) insist on funding Planned Parenthood, which is anathema to most of the 52 GOP senators. The likelihood of them reaching agreement with just a few more weeks of wrangling is not high. We’ve yet to see a bill that could gain support, say, from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).

Third, any bill that would come up for a vote would put numerous senators in a tight spot when it comes to Medicaid. Senators in states where Medicaid expansion has extended coverage to large numbers of people are reluctant to return to the pre-Obamacare era. Thirty-one states plus the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, sweeping tens of millions of people into the system. (According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicaid enrollment before Obamacare was approximately 57 million; after Obamacare, the number rose to 74.6 million, an increase of 30 percent.) Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who will be up for reelection in 2018, represents a state where the Medicaid rolls went up 90 percent. In other words, no deal is probably preferable to explaining to governors, state lawmakers and ordinary voters that the poorest residents — or people who could find themselves in a similar situation in the future — are not going to have coverage.

Fourth, the longer Congress remains in session, the bigger and easier a target members become for the Democrats’ planned Resistance Summer, a nationwide grass-roots movement that will target Obamacare. The presence of lawmakers working hard to reduce or eliminate coverage is the best recruiting tool Democrats have. Each detail that leaks out becomes grist for the Democrats’ mill.

Now, there might be reason to curtail the August recess if the subject is not health care. A health-care bill that would be passed by budget reconciliation requires, well, a budget. It’s far from clear now that Republicans have the ability to forge a budget deal and keep the government running when the fiscal year runs out on Sept. 30. If Congress takes its full August recess, it won’t have much time according to the current calendar to pass a budget. The House will of course insist on including its health-care proposal while the Senate may or may not have something. Dicey issues including defense spending will remain. Put differently, if the Congress doesn’t get to work early, it’s entirely possible it will not pass a budget, let alone tax reform or anything else it has on the agenda. That means either a continuing resolution or a shutdown, neither of which demonstrate the GOP is capable of governance.

In sum, strong reasons abound for Congress to put health care aside if the Senate comes up empty in the next couple of weeks. However, responsible leaders who want to avoid a budget disaster, or maybe even work on tax reform, might think about calling its members back before Labor Day.

It is amazing that congress is so dysfunctional.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Senate Democrats intensify criticism of emerging GOP health bill"

Spoiler

Senate Democrats ramped up opposition Monday to the emerging Republican health-care bill, launching a series of mostly symbolic moves including speeches that went late into the evening and a push to slow other Senate business to a crawl.

The aim, Democrats said, was to draw attention to the secretive process Republican leaders are using to craft their bill and argue that the GOP proposals would hurt Americans. The Democrats lack the power to prevent a vote and they don’t have the numbers to defeat a bill without Republican defections. So they are focusing this week on nonbinding protests.

At one point early Monday evening, more than a dozen Democratic senators sat at their desks on the Senate floor and took turns standing and asking for committee hearings on the bill and for the text to be released for greater scrutiny.

Each time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calmly rose from his desk at the front of the chamber and objected to their requests.

“This is going to be a long evening because there are a lot of folks who are frustrated,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said. In the hours that followed, Democratic senators, some who brought charts and other visuals, took turns delivering remarks on the Senate floor in which they upbraided Republicans.

The coordinated Democratic effort came amid a broader push by allied advocacy groups to try to pressure Republican senators not to vote for the bill, which aims to repeal and replace key parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. McConnell can afford to lose only two Republican votes.

The maneuverings also came on the eve of a closely watched special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which Republicans are trying to hold. A Democratic victory could jolt the debate over health care by raising new questions about President Trump and the Republican agenda, in which health care is playing a feature role.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats would also start objecting to all unanimous consent requests in the Senate, which are typically made to approve noncontroversial items, “save for honorary resolutions.”

“These are merely the first steps we’re prepared to take in order to shine a light on the shameful Trumpcare bill and reveal to the public the GOP’s backroom dealmaking,” said the Democratic leader on the Senate floor.

McConnell is trying to complete work on the bill and bring it to the Senate floor next week. But stark disagreements among Republicans over the direction the proposed legislation should go — and how it should differ from a bill that passed the GOP-controlled House in May — threaten to derail those plans.

One of the biggest issues yet to be resolved involves how to structure Medicaid, and plans appeared fluid on Monday evening, according to several Republicans familiar with the talks. Some Republicans in states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA were pushing for a significantly more gradual phaseout of that initiative than the House bill, while some conservatives were angling to try to slow the growth of Medicaid’s costs. Other questions remained on how to handle the taxes and regulations in Obamacare.

McConnell said Monday that Republicans are moving forward, but he did not discuss specifics.

“Senate Republicans will continue working because it’s clear that we cannot allow Americans’ health care to continue on its current downward trajectory under Obamacare, taking so many families with it,” McConnell said. “The Obamacare status quo is simply unsustainable. The American people deserve relief. And we’ll keep working to provide it.”

At one point, McConnell and Schumer, whose desks are near each other at the front of the chamber, engaged in a tense back-and-forth. McConnell said there would be “ample” opportunity for senators to review the measure and that it would be open for amendments.

“Will it be more than 10 hours?” Schumer replied.

“I think we’ll have ample opportunity to read and amend the bill,” McConnell responded, repeating himself.

“I rest my case,” concluded Schumer.

Republicans say they are working toward a goal of lowering insurance premiums for Americans. But the specifics in their bill have been closely guarded. McConnell and a small clutch of aides are crafting the bill as he consults GOP senators. Most of them say they don’t know what shape the bill is taking, and some have complained about the tightly controlled effort. Republicans do not plan to hold committee hearings on their bill.

Beyond the Capitol, Community Catalyst Action Fund, an organization that opposes the GOP effort, kicked off an advertising campaign Monday pressuring five Republican senators not to vote for the legislation.

The group is spending $1.5 million targeting the lawmakers with ads that include a TV commercial that begins with the scene of a young boy wheezing in his bedroom and his mother rushing to get his asthma medication.

“When this happens, she isn’t thinking about the health-care bill in Congress,” the narrator says. “She isn’t thinking that it’ll force her to choose between filling his prescriptions or paying their mortgage.”

The organization, which bills itself as a consumer health group, is targeting Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine), Dean Heller (Nev.) and Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.).

All except Collins come from states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. McConnell has proposed a three-year phaseout of the expansion. Some Republicans, including Capito, have pushed for a more gradual seven-year rollback.

Other organizations have been waging efforts to oppose the Senate GOP push. Last week, a coalition of medical and consumer groups held an event in Cleveland that was billed as the first of a series of gatherings to speak out against the House bill and the direction that Republican senators appear to be heading.

The coalition — which includes AARP, two hospital associations and four disease-fighting organizations — has said it will convene events in at least three other states in coming weeks, with the next one Wednesday in Reno, Nev.

I saw a bit of Cory Booker's and Tim Kaine's speeches. Sadly, McTurtle couldn't care less. He just wants to screw over the American people.

[candygirl200413]

@47of74 THIS!!! I saw Nancy Pelosi and weasel talking before the game and he was going on about how you can disagree on politics but we're coming together and my eyes got stuck rolling so hard. He is destroying with his old minions and give no fucks. I was so pissed the democrats gave him the trophy, especially him calling himself a lite david duke.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because, of course: "GOP congressman wants his colleagues to be able to carry guns everywhere, including in D.C."

Spoiler

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said witnessing the shooting attack on House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and four others last week motivated his call for members of Congress to circumvent D.C. gun laws and arm ­themselves.

Brooks, who was on the playing field when the shooting began last week at the Republican congressional baseball practice, plans to introduce legislation this week to allow members of Congress to carry concealed weapons anywhere in the United States, except the Capitol or events where the president and vice president are present.

Brooks told The Washington Post that he has a concealed-carry permit in Alabama but declined to say whether he carries a weapon because he doesn’t “want the bad guys to know about our defense capabilities.”

Brooks, who took cover in the first-base dugout during the shooting, said that if he had had his pistol he would have fired at the gunman “with a surprise short-range attack.”

“As a consequence of none of us in that dugout having the ability to defend ourselves, that shooter was able to wound three more people,” he said.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) accused Brooks of politicizing the shooting and trying to interfere with local laws passed by elected officials.

“Representative Brooks apparently did not want to be left out as members use last week’s horrific shooting to go after D.C.’s local gun safety laws,” Norton said in a statement.

Brooks said Norton might react differently if she was pinned in a dugout during a shooting.

“Maybe Eleanor Holmes Norton is willing to go down without a fight. I’m not,” he said. “It’s one thing to talk hypothetical, it’s another thing to talk real life. . . . I suspect Eleanor Holmes Norton would have a different opinion if she experienced the kind of situation and frustration that we experienced.”

Brooks’s proposal comes after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would require the District to honor concealed-carry permits from other states, which it currently does not do.

The bill has 21 co-sponsors, all of whom are Republican, including Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who on the day of the shooting advocated for lawmakers to be armed.

Asked last week about Loudermilk’s call for lawmakers to carry guns, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said she could not take a position without reviewing the legislation.

“We, of course, with the council of the District of Columbia pass the laws that we think help make D.C. safer and stronger, and that’s going to be our view,” she said at a news conference Thursday. “I don’t have any idea what [Loudermilk’s legislation] is, so I would have to see it first.”

D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who is chairman of the judiciary and public safety committee, said the District should be able to make its own laws without interference from Congress.

After the election, Allen led a campaign called Hands Off DC to try to stop members of Congress from overriding D.C. laws.

“It feels like, unfortunately, here they go again,” he said Monday. “The voters of the District of Columbia should be the ones who decide what our gun laws are.”

Allen, who is originally from Birmingham, Ala., “where there’s a healthy respect for firearms,” said, “I’m pretty sure the people of Alabama wouldn’t want us running their laws from here in D.C.”

He noted that the shooting took place in Virginia, where gun laws are less restrictive than in the District. It’s a state where owners can carry their guns openly without special permission and obtain a concealed-carry permit and, as of last summer, where gun permits issued by other states are recognized.

The District also has a concealed-carry permit process, but few people meet the qualifications.

As of June 3, D.C. police approved 125 concealed-carry licenses, including 46 for District residents and 79 for nonresidents, according to police. There were 403 denied concealed-carry applications.

Rep. Thomas Garrett (R-Va.), a freshman and member of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced legislation in March mirroring a bill from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would repeal the District’s gun laws and replace them with much looser federal laws.

“Law-abiding citizens from everywhere should be allowed to travel [to the District] without fear,” he said in a text message after declining an interview. “People are ten times more likely to own a gun in Virginia, and ten times more likely to be a victim of a gun crime in D.C.”

Asked last week whether he thinks members of Congress should carry guns, former House majority leader Eric Cantor, the target of multiple death threats while in office, said he had full confidence in his law enforcement team and would not have needed to be armed.

“I think it’s up to the individual if they feel it’s necessary to have protection,” he said.

Cantor was beaten by Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) in a summer 2014 primary campaign stunner. Through a spokeswoman, Brat declined to comment.

You know, DC has tight gun laws for a reason. And I agree with Charles Allen: people in Alabama wouldn't want the people of DC telling them what laws to enact. I also disagree with Mo Brooks: if even one other person on that field had a gun, it would have likely led to more injuries and/or fatalities. Police officers are trained to handle weapons in an active shooter situation, most people are not, leading to hesitation or panic.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because, of course: "GOP congressman wants his colleagues to be able to carry guns everywhere, including in D.C."

  Hide contents

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said witnessing the shooting attack on House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and four others last week motivated his call for members of Congress to circumvent D.C. gun laws and arm ­themselves.

Brooks, who was on the playing field when the shooting began last week at the Republican congressional baseball practice, plans to introduce legislation this week to allow members of Congress to carry concealed weapons anywhere in the United States, except the Capitol or events where the president and vice president are present.

Brooks told The Washington Post that he has a concealed-carry permit in Alabama but declined to say whether he carries a weapon because he doesn’t “want the bad guys to know about our defense capabilities.”

Brooks, who took cover in the first-base dugout during the shooting, said that if he had had his pistol he would have fired at the gunman “with a surprise short-range attack.”

“As a consequence of none of us in that dugout having the ability to defend ourselves, that shooter was able to wound three more people,” he said.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) accused Brooks of politicizing the shooting and trying to interfere with local laws passed by elected officials.

“Representative Brooks apparently did not want to be left out as members use last week’s horrific shooting to go after D.C.’s local gun safety laws,” Norton said in a statement.

Brooks said Norton might react differently if she was pinned in a dugout during a shooting.

“Maybe Eleanor Holmes Norton is willing to go down without a fight. I’m not,” he said. “It’s one thing to talk hypothetical, it’s another thing to talk real life. . . . I suspect Eleanor Holmes Norton would have a different opinion if she experienced the kind of situation and frustration that we experienced.”

Brooks’s proposal comes after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would require the District to honor concealed-carry permits from other states, which it currently does not do.

The bill has 21 co-sponsors, all of whom are Republican, including Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who on the day of the shooting advocated for lawmakers to be armed.

Asked last week about Loudermilk’s call for lawmakers to carry guns, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said she could not take a position without reviewing the legislation.

“We, of course, with the council of the District of Columbia pass the laws that we think help make D.C. safer and stronger, and that’s going to be our view,” she said at a news conference Thursday. “I don’t have any idea what [Loudermilk’s legislation] is, so I would have to see it first.”

D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who is chairman of the judiciary and public safety committee, said the District should be able to make its own laws without interference from Congress.

After the election, Allen led a campaign called Hands Off DC to try to stop members of Congress from overriding D.C. laws.

“It feels like, unfortunately, here they go again,” he said Monday. “The voters of the District of Columbia should be the ones who decide what our gun laws are.”

Allen, who is originally from Birmingham, Ala., “where there’s a healthy respect for firearms,” said, “I’m pretty sure the people of Alabama wouldn’t want us running their laws from here in D.C.”

He noted that the shooting took place in Virginia, where gun laws are less restrictive than in the District. It’s a state where owners can carry their guns openly without special permission and obtain a concealed-carry permit and, as of last summer, where gun permits issued by other states are recognized.

The District also has a concealed-carry permit process, but few people meet the qualifications.

As of June 3, D.C. police approved 125 concealed-carry licenses, including 46 for District residents and 79 for nonresidents, according to police. There were 403 denied concealed-carry applications.

Rep. Thomas Garrett (R-Va.), a freshman and member of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced legislation in March mirroring a bill from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would repeal the District’s gun laws and replace them with much looser federal laws.

“Law-abiding citizens from everywhere should be allowed to travel [to the District] without fear,” he said in a text message after declining an interview. “People are ten times more likely to own a gun in Virginia, and ten times more likely to be a victim of a gun crime in D.C.”

Asked last week whether he thinks members of Congress should carry guns, former House majority leader Eric Cantor, the target of multiple death threats while in office, said he had full confidence in his law enforcement team and would not have needed to be armed.

“I think it’s up to the individual if they feel it’s necessary to have protection,” he said.

Cantor was beaten by Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) in a summer 2014 primary campaign stunner. Through a spokeswoman, Brat declined to comment.

You know, DC has tight gun laws for a reason. And I agree with Charles Allen: people in Alabama wouldn't want the people of DC telling them what laws to enact. I also disagree with Mo Brooks: if even one other person on that field had a gun, it would have likely led to more injuries and/or fatalities. Police officers are trained to handle weapons in an active shooter situation, most people are not, leading to hesitation or panic.

GRRRRR, gun nuts! Hey, Mo, nobody was keeping you from taking your gun to softball practice. It's stunning that you're a member of Congress who feels the need to use this tragedy to advance your political agenda, especially when you use an argument that's not supported by current law. Do you really not know when you are in the District and when you're not?

Second, I'd be careful of having Congress tell the residents of the District what they can and can't do until you allow the District to be represented in congress.

And a "surprise short range attack"? You're a moron. You are the reason we need MORE gun control. You're just going to wait while he kills more of your colleagues until he's close enough for your "surprise" attack so you can be a hero? Stop playing Call of Duty, you're clearly not that person. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Paul Ryan’s passionate call to cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations"

Spoiler

While Republicans in the Senate work out how to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) turns his attention to the other great crusade that animates his career: tax cuts. This afternoon, Ryan is giving a speech to a friendly audience of lobbyists at the National Association of Manufacturers, in which he will lay out his vision for the next phase of the great Republican project, once health care is (one way or another) out of the way.

Ryan may not be the hard-nosed, number-crunching policy wonk he’s often portrayed as in the press, but he is certainly a man of substantive beliefs. Unlike his Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who plainly has no sincerely felt goal other than acquiring and holding power, Ryan has policy changes he desperately wants to see. Among them, only destroying the safety net can rival his deep and abiding wish that America might ease the burden of taxation under which our country’s rich, super-rich and corporations suffer so unjustly.

According to excerpts of his speech released in advance, he’ll tell his audience: “We need to get this done in 2017. We cannot let this once-in-a-generation moment slip.” While cutting taxes might slip into 2018, Ryan is basically right. It may not be quite a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but it only comes along when Republicans have unified control of government — which they might only have until 2018.

While Ryan may not get everything he wants out of tax reform, he stands a very good chance of getting most of it. Republicans will move heaven and earth to pass something not because they feel pressure from their constituents — Americans are not exactly crying out for tax cuts — but because they believe in it. If we can’t cut taxes on the wealthy, they ask each other, then why are we here? What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it for this? So here’s what Ryan is proposing to do, per the speech excerpts:

• Lower income-tax rates
• Reduce the number of tax brackets
• Raise the standard deduction
• Eliminate the inheritance tax (Big congrats to Donny Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Barron for not having to worry about paying taxes! Oh, and Tiffany — she’ll probably get something, too.)
• Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is meant to ensure that the wealthy can’t get away without paying anything
• Eliminate unspecified loopholes
• But keep the mortgage interest deduction and charitable giving deduction
• Cut the corporate tax rate
• Allow corporations to pay reduced taxes on profits they bring back from overseas
• Institute a border adjustment tax to favor exports over imports

Among these, only the increase in the standard deduction is aimed at the non-wealthy. As the Tax Policy Center wrote last year about an earlier version of this plan:

Three-quarters of total tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, who would receive an average cut of nearly $213,000, or 13.4 percent of after-tax income. The top 0.1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $1.3 million (16.9 percent of after-tax income). In contrast, the average tax cut for the lowest-income households would be just $50.

While the figures for this latest iteration will vary somewhat, the essential idea will be the same. This is part of the Republican tax template going way back: Make sure that even lower-income people get something in your tax cut, even if it’s tiny and the vast majority of the benefits go to the wealthy. Then you can say, “This isn’t about the wealthy — we’re cutting taxes for everybody!”

There are differences among Republicans on some points. For instance, many of President Trump’s economic advisers don’t like the border adjustment tax (which is essentially a big tariff on imported goods that would be paid by consumers), which means it will probably be dropped. But the good news for Ryan and Republicans is that even if cutting taxes for the wealthy isn’t popular, it tends not to generate intense, concentrated resistance of the kind that makes members of Congress skittish about voting for it.

That’s because, unlike health-care reform, taxes are not an issue where it’s easy (or even possible) for citizens to see a direct harm Republican policies might do to them. If I take away your coverage or enable insurers to deny you coverage because of your preexisting condition, you’ll know that’s bad for you. But if I give a tax break to the millionaires who live in that gated community on the other side of town? You may think it’s unfair and you may not like it, but since it doesn’t seem like it will have an immediate impact on you, you’re much less likely to march in the streets or call your member of Congress to stop it from happening.

Furthermore, Ryan and the Republicans know that the public has virtually no historical memory, which enables the GOP to make bogus arguments about taxes and convince many people that they’re true.  Why is it necessary to make these tax cuts? “Because this will create jobs,” Ryan will say in his speech, according to the excerpts. “That is what this is all about: jobs, jobs, jobs. Good, high-paying jobs.”

Just like all those millions of high-paying jobs that were created when George W. Bush passed a similar set of tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, which brought about the economic nirvana of explosive job and wage growth Republicans like Ryan promised the tax cuts would produce. That’s what happened, right?

That’s not what happened, of course — just the opposite. But Paul Ryan is undeterred. He’s a man of substance, but he’s no empiricist. What experience teaches him about the world we live in is far less important than the dream that implanted itself in his heart when he read “Atlas Shrugged” as an impressionable youth. Whatever else does or doesn’t make it through Congress, Ryan will get his tax cuts.

Another thing to contact your senators and reps about. Eliminating the AMT and inheritance tax really only benefits the super-wealthy. Let's not take away our healthcare to fund these ridiculous policies.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Things just got worse for the GOP’s weakest senator"

Spoiler

Democrats on Monday got some good news for 2018. Politico reports:

Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) plans to run against Republican Sen. Dean Heller for his Senate seat in Nevada, according to multiple people familiar with her plans.

Heller is widely considered the most vulnerable Republican up for re-election in 2018 and is the only GOP senator this cycle who represents a state won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. A Public Policy Polling survey released Monday had Heller receiving just 39 percent of the vote if the match-up were held today against a generic Democrat, who earned 46 percent of support among Nevada voters.

“You can’t call someone an A-list candidate who has been in office for six months and might have lost to any Republican not named [Danny] Tarkanian,” Nevada political guru Jon Ralston tweets about Rosen. “On the other hand, Rep. Jackie Rosen was perhaps the most impressive first-time candidate for Congress I have seen. And she is disciplined.” She won in 2016 in the tossup seat vacated by Sen. Joe Heck (R-Nev.), who lost his Senate race by 2.4 points to replace Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Ralston, noting that Heller is already being bombarded by negative ads, further comments, “I get the sense that this will be the longest campaign season in history, 600 days of unrelenting ads on various platforms from myriad groups targeting Heller.” He adds, “The senior senator, of course, has looked like a political corpse before — he was elected to Congress in 2006 after barely winning a primary and won election to the Senate by 12,000 votes in 2012 despite Barack Obama winning the state by 6 points.”

Heller is widely seen as the weakest Republican senator on the ballot in 2018, perhaps the weakest incumbent in either party. Recently he has reluctantly signaled his agreement to roll back Medicaid expansion over a seven-year period. However, in a state where Medicaid enrollment rose 90 percent since 2013 and the rate of uninsured residents dropped by 28 percent from 2013 to 2015, Trumpcare is going to be unpopular. Sure enough, according to one polling methodology, Nevada voters oppose the American Health Care Act by a 53 to 28 percent margin.

Heller’s biggest problem may be Trump, whose approval rating nationally on average is about 14 points lower than his disapproval rating. In addition to the AHCA, Trump’s budget got a frosty reception in Nevada. On the perennial issue of nuclear waste: “The budget also includes $120 million the administration is seeking to restart the licensing process for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, identified by Congress as the permanent storage site for used nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste. … Yucca Mountain is opposed by Sandoval and the majority of the state’s congressional delegation, both Republicans and Democrats.” (Heller opposes Yucca Mountain, but if he cannot halt the program — as Reid was able to do under Obama — he’ll be seen as weak and ineffective.)

Other objections to the Trump budget include cuts to food stamps (“The proposed budget would also impact the food stamp program or SNAP and the nearly 440,000 SNAP recipients in Nevada as of March of this year”) and to federal land funding, a major source of revenue in the state. (“The budget also proposes cutting $230 million of funding from the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act program which uses the revenue from the sale of some public land around Las Vegas to invest in infrastructure development and wildlife restoration. … Nearly 85 percent of Nevada is managed by the federal government and the PILT program helps pay for county and state law enforcement, and infrastructure maintenance of federal land since that land can’t be developed or taxed.”)

Rosen, like many Democratic challengers, will seek to tie Heller to Trump and make the election a referendum on the Trump agenda. If Trump remains as unpopular as he is, Heller will be torn between trying to shore up his GOP base and trying to distance himself from Trump. In what was once thought to be an opportunity for several Senate seat pickups for the GOP, Heller’s seat may be one of the few that changes hands. Such is the plight of an undistinguished GOP senator in the Trump years.

Wouldn't be sad to see him voted out.

[GreyhoundFan]

Alexandra Petri often writes snarky or funny columns for the WaPo. this one is neither, but is a good look at the healthcare issue in the senate: "Goodnight, Health Care"

Spoiler

In a dark, dark wood-paneled room
Down a dark, dark hall
Down a dark, dark staircase
In a dark, dark building
Down another equally long hall
Past a row of statues
And three ominous guards
And two American flags
And a man whispering “hush”
And a series of paintings of the Founding Fathers in various attitudes of saintliness and undress
Through several thick doors
Inaccessible to journalists and far from the keen eyes of the Senate
Behind a pile of papers
And another pile of papers
In a dark, dark box
There is
The Senate version of the health-care bill.
Which of course everyone knows about and which has been discussed perfectly openly.

Do not fear the Senate version of the health-care bill, my child.
It is perfectly secure, behind those locked doors and the press secretaries holding silent fingers to their lips.
We discussed this concept several years ago, and so no further discussion is needed.
Besides, if someone saw it who was not already pure in heart (which includes many in the GOP caucus but excepts McConnell staffers) it might fill them with an unspeakable dread and cause chaos to rein throughout the land, and town halls might be full of yelling and discord instead of joy and mirth.

Therefore, it must be kept there under lock and key, lest it escape and bring disharmony among the people.
They would not be able to breakfast in comfort because fear would grip them as they gazed down into their cereal bowls.
It might alarm them. They would come and make loud complaints. They would not wish immediately for their senators to vote for it, and it might be allowed to devour entire weeks of the discourse.
That is why Sen. Mitch McConnell has undertaken to guard it by day and by night, so that the people may not be startled, and that it will be seen only for a short time, so that our eyes may bear it.
He is only protecting us from the things this bill will do.
Those few who have laid eyes on it have been stricken silent with amazement, and their faces have appeared on the television across the land crying in anguish (although not so often as you might expect).
It is good that this thing has been contained and is being kept safe behind closed doors where it can be revised safely.
For if it were allowed to escape early it would be quite startling indeed and who knows what changes might have to occur.

So it remains in that dark room
Down those dark stairs
Surrounded by men in dark suits (and sometimes seersucker)
For who knows what may happen if it is seen?
It may even turn people to stone.
It may harm you once it gets out, if it sees you.
But in the meantime it is safely locked away
Down a dark, dark staircase
In a dark, dark wood-paneled room
In a deep, deep swamp
And no debate is needed.

 

 

 

 

Damn it, damn it, damn it -- it looks like Karen Handel is going to beat Jon Ossoff in GA-6, according to CNN.