United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[GreyhoundFan]

I still think the Repugs who are saying they are opposed to the McTurtle/Ryan/Drumpf deathcare plan will fall into line behind McTurtle, but I guess there is a tiny glimmer of hope: "With five holdouts on health-care bill, McConnell is in for a final frenzy of negotiation"

Spoiler

The stark divide among Republicans on reshaping the nation’s health system came into full view over the past few days.

Formally unveiled Thursday, the Senate Republican plan came under immediate friendly fire from within Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s GOP conference. The Kentucky Republican has just a few days to navigate the perilous path in trying to appease one bloc of holdouts without losing votes from another bloc.

It sets up a final frenzy of negotiation, as McConnell has determined he will finish with the legislation one way or another by the end of this month. If he’s not careful, the GOP leader could end up being lambasted by conservatives and liberals alike for cutting narrow deals to try to buy off votes from individual senators in a similar manner used for passing the Affordable Care Act.

McConnell can afford to lose only two of the 52 Republicans in the Senate, but as the week went on, he had many more holdouts than that.

The highest-profile defection, for now, came from Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who is usually a go-along-get-along acolyte to party leadership.

But Heller faces the most difficult reelection next year of any Republican, and his state’s governor, Brian Sandoval (R), is extremely popular and remains a staunch supporter of the current funding structure for Medicaid’s expansion, which allowed nearly 300,000 Nevada residents to get health coverage.

“It’s simply not the answer,” he said Friday, with Sandoval at his side. He left some wiggle room to possibly support a rewritten draft but he made clear that his concerns went beyond just the proposed Better Care Reconciliation Act’s phaseout of federal support for the Medicaid expansion beginning in 2021. He questioned the plan’s protection for guaranteed coverage for critical conditions and other proposals.

“It’s going to be very difficult to get me to a yes,” Heller said.

His comments came after a quartet of Senate conservatives announced opposition to the legislation “as written,” shortly after McConnell released the plan Thursday. An additional handful of senators have expressed concerns about various provisions in the 142-page draft.

One of those conservatives, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), received less attention than Heller but made clear just how far apart the two sides are in a nearly 900-word letter Friday to his constituents about the proposal. “No, the Senate healthcare bill released [Thursday] does not repeal Obamacare. It doesn’t even significantly reform American healthcare,” Lee wrote.

He went on to outline a demand that would in some ways undermine the very structure of the bill, allowing states to completely opt out of the law and create their own health-care systems. It’s the sort of demand that conservatives like but will be fiercely opposed by Democrats, as well as some Republicans, who fear that it would create too much chaos in the marketplace.

Republicans are acknowledging that they expect to know by Tuesday — Wednesday at the latest — whether they have the votes to pass the plan. If he can do it, McConnell then must spend the rest of the summer working with the House to see whether they can pass the Senate bill in whole, or negotiate a new compromise.

All of this makes the coming week’s initial vote — a simple parliamentary motion to begin debate — the critical test of support that will signal whether the legislation rises or falls.

“We take great care in doing the whip process, so we know before we go to the floor how the votes will turn out, so we’ll know that before that happens,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the majority whip, said Thursday.

Until now, McConnell has said very little in public, operating what could be called a strategy of political risk minimization.

His secretive process has been criticized loud and clear from Republicans and Democrats, with most of it directed at him. He does not mind taking media lashes if it keeps the heat focused on him and not his Republican colleagues. He did so last year when he absorbed most of the Democratic attack for refusing to consider the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, while his Republican incumbents faced little criticism about it on the campaign trail.

The legislation will be in public view just a few days before the key votes, and by Friday the issue will be resolved, avoiding the long and politically debilitating negotiations that Democrats went through in 2009 and 2010.

But Democrats got a law passed, a really big one that went on to provide insurance to tens of millions of people, and they are now, after years of passively defending the ACA, fully engaged in promoting its benefits and trying to make Republicans look like mean-spirited accountants attempting to balance the books on the backs of the poor.

McConnell must decide if he wants to cut side deals to win or if a good-faith effort that comes up short is a better path forward politically.

So far the proposal includes only a modest $2 billion for a new funding stream to fight the opioid epidemic, an issue critical to a pair of Midwestern Republicans, Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Rob Portman (Ohio).

Once the Congressional Budget Office issues its report in the next few days about the proposal’s financial impact, McConnell will have a better sense of how many billions of dollars more in opioid funding could secure Portman and Capito’s votes.

Will Nevada get a specific carve-out on Medicaid funding to win over Heller?

That’s what McConnell’s nemesis, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), did in 2009 to win over wavering Democrats to pass the ACA. Reid included a provision that provided full federal funding for the Medicaid expansion just to Nebraska, winning the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who saw the initial proposal as an unfunded mandate.

The proposal was blasted as the “Cornhusker Kickback” and was eventually nixed. The final version of the law had 100 percent funding for all states for three years and then phased down to 90 percent federally subsidized funds for Medicaid’s expansion.

“This bill is a legislative train wreck of historic proportions,” McConnell said the day that Reid, Nelson and other Democrats unveiled the final package just before Christmas 2009.

Now, McConnell faces a similar dilemma.

I have sent postcards to McTurtle and a couple of the Repugs who might listen, since their offices basically don't take calls from non-constituents.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a surprise; Chappass constantly messed with Washington, D.C.: "New House Oversight chair Rep. Gowdy pledges not to meddle in District affairs"

Spoiler

District officials are saying the election of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) as the new chairman of the congressional committee in charge of the nation’s capital could reset relations between the city and Capitol Hill - a connection that had grown tense under Gowdy’s predecessor.

“[Gowdy] has been consistent in saying that he wants to respect the District,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who has led a campaign called Hands Off D.C. to try to dissuade members of Congress from overriding local laws and policies. “I’m very hopeful that we’re going to have a member who wants to have that kind of constructive relationship and constructive dialogue.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) had planned to call Gowdy, who was elected chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform committee last week, but he beat her to it and reached out first, the mayor said earlier this week.

She is scheduled to sit down with Gowdy in his office on Capitol Hill when members return from their July recess, according to Beverly L. Perry, the mayor’s chief liaison to Capitol Hill.

“The mayor is very encouraged by his comments and we’re looking forward to meeting with him,” Perry said. “We think that it’s better for them to hear from us who we are — that we have balanced our budget for 23 years, that we pay higher per capita taxes than anyone else and that we serve our country like anyone else.”

Gowdy’s predecessor, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), is retiring from Congress next week. Chaffetz became a boogey man of sorts for District residents, as he tried to reverse the city’s assisted suicide law, opposed its legalization of marijuana, suggested lopping off part of the District and folding it into Maryland and pushed to move federal agencies outside the District.

D.C. activists flooded his office phone lines with complaints, mocked Chaffetz on social media and started a political action committee to unseat him. On the day Chaffetz’s committee voted to oppose the assisted-suicide law, upwards of a thousand D.C. residents attended a “Hands off DC” rally and then a town hall meeting organized by Allen.

Gowdy has said he has no plans to meddle in District affairs but on Friday, he qualified that statement by adding that he would delve into issues when he believes he must.

“I [will] try really hard not to meddle in the affairs of the District of Columbia beyond that which is constitutionally required,” Gowdy told reporters Friday.

Gowdy met on Thursday with Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s nonvoting representative, in her office, and said the pair have a “great relationship.”

.

Allen said that unlike Chaffetz — who slept on a cot in his office for eight years and avoided getting to know the city — Gowdy sounds more open-minded.

But Gowdy’s pledge doesn’t diminish the need for D.C. autonomy, Allen said, noting that several GOP members of Congress are currently trying do away with city’s gun laws.

Gowdy frequently tangled with the ranking member of his committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) during the Benghazi hearings.

Yet Norton said she looked forward to working with him.

“I’ve always found him to be honest in what he says,” she said Wednesday before their meeting. “That may come from being a prosecutor. Prosecutors, unlike members of Congress, are not supposed to exaggerate and go beyond what they can prove or show.”

Gowdy said Friday he doesn’t expect he and Norton will agree on all issues, but he pledged to be straight with her.

“I’m going to do things that she does not like,” he said. “There will be no surprises. She will know about them ahead of time.”

As chairman of a subcommittee with jurisdiction over the District in 2011 and 2012, Gowdy said he “did not foray into the affairs of the District of Columbia beyond that which I thought was unavoidable, and that won’t change.”

Gowdy said he has no plans to hold hearings on the city’s assisted suicide law. Members of Congress, especially those on the Appropriations Committee, however, could add a provision to a spending bill to halt the city’s law, known as Death with Dignity, or another policy they oppose.

“I’m not planning on doing it and under the heading that investigations don’t have to result in hearings, it may be that we gather facts on that and then we just determine that we’re not going to exercise jurisdiction,” he said.

“I was not elected the mayor of the District of Columbia,” he said, repeating a line he has used often since being tapped for the chairmanship. “I don’t think I would do well if I ran, and I don’t think Ms. Holmes Norton would do fabulously well in Jim DeMint’s old congressional district.”

If he does indeed leave DC alone, I will respect him so much more than I have in the past. Of course, I'm reserving judgement to see if his actions match his words.

[Cleopatra7]

Why I don't have any hope that our current situation will improve any time soon:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-emerging-republican-majority_us_594c2b81e4b0326c0a8d06e1

Quote

The more U.S. elections rely on money the more the Republicans win. That’s the reason why Mitch McConnell (then the Senate Minority Leader) was so gleeful when the Supreme Court handed down its Citizens United ruling that he went over to the courthouse to attend the announcement. Good Ol’ Mitch knows that this alone was enough to cement a Republican advantage. Our new normal became historic levels of political corruption thanks to the Republican majority on the Roberts Court that will stand for generations.

...

Besides, even if the Democrats by some miracle were able to take the state governments of those Midwest and Rust Belt states that went for Trump in 2016, their majorities would be so slender that they would probably be just as gutless and weak as ever. In fact, gutlessness and weakness you might say are intrinsic to the Democratic “brand.”

They’re gutless and weak because they choose to be gutless and weak. The party leadership, ever since the hapless “Democratic Leadership Council” days of Bill Clinton and Joe Lieberman, want to stay on the sweet side of the banks and corporations and have therefore done precious little for labor unions over the past thirty years. And without strong and growing labor unions there is no “Democratic Party.”

We also learned during the Clinton and Obama years that the Democrats would turn against their own base in a heartbeat. Elevating a bunch of women and people of color (who all went to Yale or Harvard) is a good thing but it doesn’t do much to mend the disconnect that Trump exploited between the Democratic leadership and the 70 percent of Americans who don’t have college degrees, let alone from Harvard or Yale.

It’s ironic (if the word has any meaning these days) that at a time when the Democratic party under Clinton and Obama was growing more diverse in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity (which is a good thing) it grew more homogenous in terms of the class background of its leaders.

Consider how hard the GOP panders to hard-core fundies and billionaires, and compare that to the eagerness of the Democrats to throw reproductive rights, racial minorities, and LGBT people under the bus so they can get some of that sweet, sweet "white working class" vote and the confidence of Wall Street. If change is going to come it will be in spite of the Democrats, not because of them.

[onekidanddone]

5 minutes ago, Cleopatra7 said:

Consider how hard the GOP panders to hard-core fundies and billionaires, and compare that to the eagerness of the Democrats to throw reproductive rights, racial minorities, and LGBT people under the bus so they can get some of that sweet, sweet "white working class" vote and the confidence of Wall Street. If change is going to come it will be in spite of the Democrats, not because of them.

I so wish I could up vote this comment a million times.

[fraurosena]

I'm not holding my breath, but could there be a glimmer of hope the Kill-Bill won't pass? 

GOP Senators Express Misgivings About Health Bill

Spoiler

Several Republican senators on Sunday expressed reluctance to support their party’s latest health-care bill, adding to the uncertainty about whether some form of the legislation would be able to pass the chamber soon.

All but one had previously indicated they were uncomfortable with the draft legislation to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, including repealing key parts of the Affordable Care Act passed during the Obama administration. Some others have expressed misgivings about the bill without ruling out the possibility of supporting it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is hoping for a vote later this week. His party holds 52 votes in the 100-member Senate, and because all Democrats are expected to oppose the health-care bill, he can lose no more than two GOP votes to pass it.

Sen. Luther Strange (R., Ala.) said Sunday he is “not there yet” in supporting the current plan.

“It’s not perfect,” he said on Fox News. But, he added, “I’m very strongly optimistic that were going to get there.”

The bill would reverse the federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA, a move that could affect millions of people, and would for the first time limit states’ overall Medicaid funding from Washington. It also would eliminate the requirement in the 2010 law that most Americans sign up for health insurance, and provide instead less-robust tax credits than the ACA to help people afford insurance.

In addition, the bill would repeal hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes on businesses and high-income households and retroactively cut taxes on capital gains.

“Right now, I am undecided. There are things in this bill which adversely affect my state,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said Sunday on CBS .

Mr. Cassidy, who had expressed misgivings previously, cautioned the Republican leadership not to proceed with plans to hold a vote on the bill this week, asking for more time to negotiate on the details after Congress’s July recess.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who had said last week he couldn’t support the bill, also raised concerns Sunday on the timing. “I don’t have the feedback from constituencies who will not have had enough time to review the Senate bill. We should not be voting on this next week,” Mr. Johnson said on NBC.

Mr. Johnson and Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky said last week they wouldn’t vote for the bill in its current form because it doesn’t go far enough in rolling back the ACA. Sen. Dean Heller (R., Nev.) said last week he couldn’t support it because of its timetable for a rollback of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid.

The Senate plan echoes a health bill passed by the House last month, but it contains several differences, including a more gradual phasing-out of the funding for the Medicaid expansion.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), who supports the bill, said Sunday on CBS he “strongly disagreed” with the notion that it would end the expansion of Medicaid. The Republican bill allows states to keep the Medicaid expansion, but they wouldn’t get the enhanced federal funding for it. That funding would be phased out beginning in 2021 and eliminated in 2024.

Mr. Toomey also noted conservative Republicans’ concerns it did not go far enough in cutting costs. “I’m sympathetic about the kinds of reforms they’d like to make to lower premiums…but I see this bill as a first step, a first important step,” Mr. Toomey said.

Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine), who had previously expressed worries about the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, said Sunday it would be difficult for President Donald Trump and Mr. McConnell to come up with a bill that she can support. “I’m very concerned about the cost of insurance for older people with serious chronic illnesses, and the impact of the Medicaid cuts on our state governments,” Ms. Collins said on ABC.

Mr. Trump said Sunday he expects to see the Senate pass a health-care bill after further negotiations. “We have a few people that…want to get some points; I think they’ll get some points,” he said during a Fox News interview that aired Sunday. He said of the Republicans who have withheld their support so far: “I don’t think they’re that far off.…I think we’re going to get there.”

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York said members of his party are open to negotiations to “improve” the current law but that they don’t support the Republicans’ current proposal.

Republicans “have, at best, a 50-50 chance of passing this bill,” Mr. Schumer said Sunday on ABC. “The bill is just devastating” and “that’s what’s making it so hard for them to pass.”

Of the underlined (R) senators who claim to oppose the bill, it seems that Susan Collins is well and truely opposed and won't easily change her position - at least that's my impression from what I've read about her so far. Bill Cassidy and Ron Johnson say they have misgivings the bill because they're afraid their constituencies won't support it, so their positions could go either way.

I have a hard time believing that Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul will hold firm in their opposition.

Maybe, just maybe, if either Cassidy or Johnson (or preferably both) are afraid enough of the backlash from their constituents, they'll side with Collins and oppose the Kill-Bill if it comes to a vote on Thursday.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Senate health-care bill is even worse than the House’s version"

Spoiler

The Senate Republicans just released their version of repeal-and-replace Obamacare. I can see why they negotiated in secret. While I fear there’s enough camouflage in the bill to give alleged “moderate” Republicans the cover they need to support the bill, this legislation is even worse for affordable, quality health-care coverage than the House bill.

That may not be obvious, given the lipstick, and there is an improvement or two in aspects of the Senate bill over the House version. But based on what the Senate proposes to do to Medicaid, not only is this version worse for the tens of millions who depend on this source of coverage, but it’s also worse in a way that might not show up in the Congressional Budget Office’s score out next week.

For a quick rundown, check out this side-by-side comparing the Affordable Care Act to the House and Senate bills. The big picture remains the same: large cuts in subsidies and especially in Medicaid that partially pay for big, regressive tax cuts, as tax expert Chye-Ching Huang shows here. For a bit of perspective, Brandon DeBot (our colleague at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) points out that $33 billion of the tax cuts that accrue to the 400 richest households happens to equal the total of the Medicaid cuts from four states.

Compared with the ACA, the new bill both cuts the premium subsidies for those who purchase coverage in the non-group market, and lowers the eligibility threshold for such assistance. As Sarah Kliff from Vox puts it: “The Senate bill will tether the size of its tax credits to what it takes to purchase a skimpier health insurance plan than the type of plans Affordable Care Act subsidies were meant to buy. Essentially, these tax credits buy less health insurance.”

Like the House bill, private insurers can charge older customers as much as five times more than they charge younger customers, up from three times under the ACA.

But my headline point — this bill is worse than the House bill — is in regard to Medicaid. First, most of the noise your hear around the ACA is around the non-group market, and, no question, the exchanges need improvements, though part of that is a function of recent sabotage by those hoping to make good on their proclamations about “failed Obamacare.” But quantitatively, Medicaid is much more important: It covers 20 percent of the population, almost three times that of the non-group market (to be clear, that part of the market must work for the system to adequately function). Medicaid covers just under 50 percent of all births (!), about two-thirds of all nursing home residents, 40 percent of all poor adults — 74 million benefit from Medicaid or CHIP (kids’ version).

And the Senate bill cuts Medicaid more deeply than the House bill. Over the long term, a lot more deeply.

Both the House and Senate bills roll back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, though the Senate bill pushes this back a couple of years to placate some Republican governors in states that took the expansion. But it’s what comes next that makes the Senate bill especially cruel. Starting in 2021, Medicaid goes from a federal-state financing partnership that expands with need, to a block grant that doesn’t. Funding would be capped at a set amount per Medicaid recipient, and starting in 2025 — that year is very important, as I’ll show in a moment — the cap would grow much more slowly than current projections for Medicaid spending per beneficiary, and considerably more slowly than the House bill.

Why 2025 for this hard cap? Because they’re gaming the ref: If CBO does its usual 10-year score, the impact of this cap on the loss of Medicaid coverage will hardly get picked up at all. It’s possible, and we should very quickly all insist on this tweak, that the budget office will give us estimates of coverage losses from this change over a longer window. But if CBO doesn’t, the Senate bill may not look obviously worse than the House bill on this point (14 million lose Medicaid coverage under the House bill according to CBO). Looks, in this case, will be deceiving.

So we’re left with skimpier subsidies for thinner coverage relative to the ACA and, post 2025, increasingly sharper cuts in Medicaid relative to the already draconian House bill.

Surely, moderate Republicans will oppose this madness, right?

I hope so, and a CBO score over a longer period might help, but I’ve come to view “moderate” Republicans as mythical creatures. They’re easily seduced by precisely the kind of lipstick that’s on this bill – e.g., a later start date for winding down the Medicaid expansion and the appearance of putting coverage of preexisting conditions back in the bill when, in reality, allowing states to waive “essential health benefits” means insurers can still drop coverage for maternity care, mental health services and substance abuse treatment.

Then there are the hard-right senators for whom the bill isn’t mean enough. Maybe they’ll block it, and their opposition does potentially create a tough Sudoku problem for Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell: make the bill even meaner to get Sen. Ted Cruz’s vote, and perhaps you lose a “moderate.” There will be a lot of scrambling over the next couple of weeks.*

But please don’t lose sight of what’s going on here: a massive transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars that are now being used to help vulnerable families and moderate-income households to the wealthiest households. The Senate bill solves the problem that the poor in America have too much, and the rich have too little. In fact, it solves that problem even better than the House did.

*You’re going to have to fend for yourself on this one. I’m outta here, heading to the Far East for a few weeks with little intention to look back westward. Please don’t let the bad guys mess things up while I’m gone.

I just have a bad feeling that the Repugs will cave to McTurtle and this abomination will pass.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good analysis of the Repug deathcare bill situation: "Senate Leaders Try to Appease Members as Support for Health Bill Slips"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders scrambled Sunday to rally support for their health care bill even as opposition continued to build outside Congress and two Republican senators questioned whether the bill would be approved this week.

President Trump expressed confidence that the bill to repeal the guts of the Affordable Care Act would pass.

“Health care is a very, very tough thing to get,” Mr. Trump said Sunday on Fox News. “But I think we’re going to get it. We don’t have too much of a choice, because the alternative is the dead carcass of Obamacare.”

Over the weekend, senators and their aides were poring over the bill, drafting possible amendments, preparing speeches and compiling personal stories from constituents who they portrayed as either beneficiaries or victims of the Affordable Care Act.

The bill was drafted in secret by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who unveiled it on Thursday. Mr. McConnell wants a vote this week, before lawmakers take a break for the Fourth of July holiday.

But the bill’s supporters were battling a dire internal threat: reluctant Republicans. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said Sunday that “there’s no way we should be voting” on the legislation this week. “No way.”

“I have a hard time believing Wisconsin constituents or even myself will have enough time to properly evaluate this for me to vote for a motion to proceed” to the legislation, Mr. Johnson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

And Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said: “It’s hard for me to see the bill passing this week, but that’s up to the majority leader. We could well be in all night a couple of nights.”

Senate Republican leaders were trying to lock down Republican votes by funneling money to red states, engineering a special deal for Alaska and arguing that they could insure more people at a lower cost than the House, which passed a repeal bill last month.

But the forces arrayed against the Republican push to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement are formidable. Much of the nation’s $3 trillion health care industry opposes the bill. And Mr. McConnell has done little to woo the health care stakeholders who were assiduously courted by Mr. Obama from his first months in office as he fought for his legislation.

The outside forces against the bill also appear to be growing: Top lieutenants in the conservative Koch brothers’ political network sharply criticized the legislation over the weekend, saying it was insufficiently conservative and did not do enough to rein in the growth of Medicaid. And a number of Republican governors have joined doctors, hospitals and patient advocacy groups in opposing the bill, in part because of its cuts to Medicaid.

Mr. McConnell has only a few days to wheel, deal and cajole reluctant senators to get behind legislation that has grown less popular with more exposure. He has considerable firepower to win votes, by guaranteeing amendments that would address the concerns of individual Republican senators, playing on their loyalty to him and their fealty to conservative voters still demanding an end to the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, Democrats say, he has striking liabilities. Mr. Trump has endorsed the bill, and Democrats say they will take every opportunity to link the legislation to an unpopular president.

Republicans have endlessly cataloged problems with the Affordable Care Act, which they deride as “Obamacare,” but party leaders face a bigger challenge now as they try to persuade wavering Republican senators and a skeptical public that they have a better plan. Democrats have met that push with withering criticism, saying “Trumpcare” is far worse.

And the Democratic wall of opposition is backed by less partisan voices. Senators are being flooded with appeals like this from the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society: “Cancer is scary enough. Don’t take away our coverage.”

The American Childhood Cancer Organization, a charitable group formed by parents, is mobilizing a small army of grass-roots lobbyists with the message that the Senate Republican bill, with its deep cuts in Medicaid, “will threaten the lives of children battling cancer.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Senate bill was “unacceptable as written” and would “wreak havoc on low-income families.” At the same time, the bishops said they liked two sections of the bill that seek to “prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortion or plans that cover it.”

Meantime, Republicans are finding allies to be few and inconstant. Mr. Trump has said that “Obamacare is dead” and that he is “very supportive” of the Senate bill. But that support will be of limited help to Mr. McConnell. Few senators feel loyal to Mr. Trump, whose erratic message has often weakened his influence on Capitol Hill.

After pushing for passage of the House repeal bill, he criticized it as “mean” a few weeks later. A spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said last week that Mr. Trump did not necessarily support cuts to Medicaid, even though his budget and the Senate bill would make such cuts.

So far, five Republican senators have announced they cannot support the health care bill as drafted: Dean Heller of Nevada, who says the measure cuts coverage too deeply, and four conservatives — Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Mr. Johnson — who say it does not do enough to lower health costs. Other Republicans, like Ms. Collins and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have expressed misgivings.

Republicans have assembled reams of data to show that premiums are soaring and choices are shrinking as insurers withdraw from markets in many states. They assert that Democrats have no constructive solutions. And they will use Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont as a punching bag.

Mr. Sanders has long advocated a single-payer health care system, what he calls “Medicare for all,” and he repeated that position on “Meet the Press’’ on Sunday. The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, said Mr. Sanders had become “the chief spokesman for the Democrats in the Senate” on solutions to “the failures of Obamacare.”

But that criticism comes amid a striking shift in public opinion. Fifty-one percent of Americans now have favorable views of the Affordable Care Act, according to a monthly tracking poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. “That’s the first time in our 79 tracking polls over seven years that this share has topped 50 percent,’’ said Craig Palosky, a spokesman for the foundation.

Medicaid is by far the largest program of federal grants to the states, and state officials are always trying to tweak the formula for distributing that money to their advantage.

In his budget request to Congress, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “cap federal funding for the Medicaid program,” and the House and Senate bills would do just that, converting Medicaid from an open-ended entitlement program to a system of per-capita payments for beneficiaries.

A novel feature of the Senate bill would redistribute federal Medicaid money from higher spending states like New York to lower spending states like Alabama.

One noteworthy exception to this provision is tailor-made for Alaska. “This paragraph shall not apply to any state that has a population density of less than 15 individuals per square mile,” it says.

Only five states — Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — meet that criterion, and Alaska’s two Republican senators have expressed concern about the bill’s potential effect on their state, where medical costs are exceptionally high.

Ms. Murkowski said federal legislation must recognize the state’s high costs. Premiums on the insurance exchange in Alaska average about $1,000 a month for an individual, according to federal data. But the special provision may not be enough to win her vote. Ms. Murkowski is also concerned about two other sections of Mr. McConnell’s bill, one that would cut federal funds for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and another that would block federal Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood.

The Senate Republican bill sets Medicaid spending targets for each state. A state that exceeds its target is subject to financial penalties. But the bill would tweak these targets “to promote program equity across states.”

If a state’s Medicaid spending per beneficiary is more than 25 percent above the national average, its spending target would be reduced by the secretary of health and human services. If a state’s spending is more than 25 percent below the national average, its target would be increased.

These adjustments must be made in a way that does not increase federal spending, so states will, in effect, be vying with one another for a limited pot of federal money.

Democrats said the reallocations would often take money from blue states and give it to red states, because Democratic states often have more generous Medicaid programs with higher levels of spending.

Republicans said the reallocations were not only good politics, but also good policy. “Some states are fiscally conservative, and others are fiscally out of control,” said a Republican aide working on the legislation. “Some states may be overspending while others may not be spending enough.”

Senate Republicans say that other provisions of their health care bill will make it possible to insure more people at lower cost than the House bill.

Sheryl R. Skolnick, an analyst at Mizuho Securities who follows the health care industry, said this might be possible if the subsidies are smaller and the benefits are “skinnier.” Currently, she said, subsidies are tied to the price of a “silver plan” that covers 70 percent of the medical costs for a typical consumer. Under the Senate bill, the subsidies would be linked to the price of a plan that covers 58 percent of those costs.

“Smaller subsidies on lower premiums mean lower spending and more coverage,” Ms. Skolnick said.

But those lower-price plans typically have much higher deductibles. “People may be paying less, but they will be getting less,” said Jeanne M. Lambrew, a health policy coordinator at the White House under Mr. Obama.

Sigh, just sigh.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Senate’s three big lies about health care"

Spoiler

To succeed in gutting health coverage for millions of Americans, Senate Republican leaders need to get a series of lies accepted as truth. Journalists and other neutral arbiters must resist the temptation to report these lies as just a point of view. A lie is a lie.

Lie One: Democrats and progressives are unwilling to work with Republicans and conservatives on this issue. “If we went and got the single greatest health-care plan in the history of the world, we would not get one Democrat vote,” President Trump told an Iowa crowd last Wednesday.

In fact, Democrats, including President Barack Obama when he was in office, have said repeatedly that they would like to work with Republicans to improve the Affordable Care Act. Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer’s office put out a list of such offers, including a June 15 letter from Schumer to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for a cross-party meeting to “find a way to make health care more affordable and accessible.”

But Democrats can never be complicit in a wholesale repeal of Obamacare that would take health coverage away from millions of Americans.

This first lie is important because it rationalizes the Republican claim that the bill has to be draconian because it can’t pass without support from the party’s most right-wing legislators. “This is not the best possible bill,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). “It is the best bill possible under very difficult circumstances.”

But those “circumstances” have been created by the GOP itself. A completely different coalition is available, but Republicans don’t want to activate it because they are hellbent on repealing Obamacare. Why?

This brings us to Lie Two: This bill is primarily about improving health care for American families. No, this effort is primarily about cutting taxes. When it comes to health care, the main thing the bill does is take money away from providing it to pay for the tax reductions it contains and for future bonanzas the Republicans have promised.

The tax cuts in this legislation alone would amount to some $700 billion over a decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. About $33 billion of this would go to tax cuts conservatively averaging $7 million every year to each of the 400 highest-income families in the country. What could $33 billion buy? The CBPP reports it would be enough to pay for the expansion of Medicaid in Nevada, West Virginia, Arkansas and Alaska. Talk about income redistribution.

A telltale: One of the main Republican complaints about Obamacare has been that the deductibles and co-pays under ACA policies are too high. But the Republican bill only makes this problem worse.

As the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz wrote: “Many middle-income Americans would be expected to pay a larger share of their income to purchase health insurance that covers a smaller share of their care.”

If this bill were truly about health care, Republicans would take all the tax cuts out and use that money to ease the pain their bill would cause. But they won’t, because the tax cuts are the thing that matters to them.

Lie Three: The Senate bill is a “compromise.” Really? Between whom? The House wants to destroy Obamacare quickly, the Senate a bit more slowly while also cutting Medicaid more steeply over time. This is only a “compromise” between two very right-wing policies.

Imagine you are negotiating with two creditors who say you owe them $1,000 and you insist you owe nothing. The first creditor wants the money quickly. The second says you can take a bit little longer, but you have to pay $1,200 — and he has the nerve to call this a “compromise.” Nowhere in this deal is your position taken into account. Welcome to the logic of the Senate health-care bill.

I hope I never have to write about Lie Four, which would be Republican senators who surely know better — including Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Shelley Moore Capito and Rob Portman — justifying their votes for this monstrosity by claiming that it’s the best they could do.

Heller signaled doubts about the proposal on Friday, which is a step in the right direction. But only by killing this bill would these senators open the way for reasonable fixes to the ACA. Do they really want to say someday that one of their most important votes in the Senate involved taking health care away from millions of Americans? I would like to believe they are too decent for that. I hope I’m not lying to myself.

This article is so true.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "How could any senator justify a vote for a bill this bad?"

Spoiler

The Post reports:

There was new talk among key GOP figures about wooing moderates by altering the bill’s Medicaid changes, according to two people involved who would not speak publicly. By tweaking how federal funding is determined for Medicaid recipients and linking aspects to the medical component of the consumer price index, there is a belief that some moderates could be swayed, because they want assurances that funding would keep up with any rises in the cost of care, the people said.

Then would come the tightrope: If some senators can be persuaded to support revisions to the Medicaid portion of the bill, several conservatives are warning that unless their amendments are also included, they are unlikely to support the legislation. The hope is that a combination of those Medicaid changes and amendments from conservatives could pave the way to passage.

Unless the Senate eviscerates the part of the bill that GOP hard-liners like — cutting Medicaid to pay for big tax cuts — moderates will have a hard time explaining how ending the federal match for Medicaid expansion (even at a slower pace) and providing less money on an inflation-adjusted basis doesn’t violate their promise.

It would be one thing if hard-right and moderates had said: We think spending less money or giving states more flexibility is more important than covering everyone who is now guaranteed coverage. But they and President Trump promised “no one” would lose coverage, and there would be “no cuts” to Medicaid. The Senate bill plainly does not meet those ends. Rather than continue to lie about what the bill does and doesn’t do, they should be compelled to make the argument on the merits. What is the argument for taking more than $800 billion out of the Medicaid system in order to spare the super-rich some taxes — before turning to tax reform and driving their tax liability down even further?

We have some specific questions for lawmakers who should consider how the bill specifically impacts their states:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): You helped block most payments to insurers going through the risk corridors to compensate for excessive losses. Do you admit that this was a significant reason the exchanges have lost many insurers (in some cases, all of them)? Why would you support a bill now that explicitly makes the very same payments to insurers for two years that you sought to block? Oh, and how many Floridians in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities (AFLs) rely on Medicaid? (I will save him the trouble: “There are 683 licensed nursing homes in Florida, representing approximately 83,587 beds …  [and 3,089 licensed AFL’s in Florida, representing approximately 92,000 beds.] … Medicaid, which covers health care costs for low-income individuals, pays for approximately 60 percent of all long-term care spending.”)

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.): You have rightly pointed to huge premium increases in your state exchange as evidence that Obamacare is not working. But why then turn the bill into a jumbo tax cut for the rich and cut back on Medicaid? Gov. Doug Ducey (R) “wants a slower phase-out of higher Medicaid expansion matches, higher inflation adjustments, elimination of a penalty for states that expanded parts of Medicaid early, and explicit flexibility for the program covering 1.9 million Arizona.” He says the Senate bill would cost the state $7 billion. (“Currently, approximately 400,000 Arizonans receive coverage through Medicaid. Changes to federal matching payments for the state’s 1.9 million Medicaid recipients would cost $2.9 billion. Limiting inflation adjustments would cost $2.2 billion. Another $2 billion loss would occur when a hospital assessment that pays the state costs of covering 82,000 people in the expanded program and 319,000 childless adults stops. That will happen in 2022 when federal matching rates hit an 80 percent trigger in the 2013 state law authorizing expansion. Raising taxes to replace the money is unlikely in a Republican-controlled state.”) If he’s right, will you vote against the bill?

Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Kennedy (R-La.): Louisiana belatedly expanded Medicaid. More than 400,000 enrollees were added. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) strongly opposes the Senate health-care bill. It’s easy to see why: “In Fiscal Year 2017, Louisiana has saved an estimated $200 million from expanding Medicaid. In the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2017, the state is expected to save more than $300 million. Without these savings, K-12 education, higher education and health care would be forced to shoulder deep cuts in the state budget.” Can you explain, senators, how the Senate bill will impact Louisiana residents? Will the state raise taxes to make up revenue it loses from the feds? No, I didn’t think so.

Sens.  Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio): Your states are at or near the top of the list of states with the most opioid-related deaths. At the end of 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that “in 2015, the five states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose were West Virginia (41.5 per 100,000), New Hampshire (34.3 per 100,000), Kentucky (29.9 per 100,000), Ohio (29.9 per 100,000), and Rhode Island (28.2 per 100,000).” Have you asked your state governor how many fewer people would receive treatment and what that might do to the death rates? (Even if the GOP leaders sweeten the pot by throwing in more money for opioid treatment, you do realize this does not guarantee that sufficient funding will be there, don’t you?)

Just three of these senators (two, if you think Sen. Rand Paul is a certain “no”) can stop the bill. They would be wise to tell their colleagues that this is not the time to whack Medicaid. If their colleagues want to talk about repairing the exchanges, the senators should offer whatever ideas they have and invite Democrats to join. But other than lust for revenue for tax cuts, there is no reason to address Medicaid now. On that, a bipartisan commission of governors could come up with a list of proposals (some governors already have). If, however, they allow the party to turn “repair and replace Obamacare” into a raid on Medicaid, affecting the most vulnerable people in their states, they’ll never live it down. Frankly, I don’t know how they could even sleep at night.

I'm still worried that enough arms will be twisted to screw the American people.

[GreyhoundFan]

Boy, they truly want to screw the American people: "CBO: Senate GOP health-care bill would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026'

Spoiler

...

Senate Republicans’ bill to erase major parts of the Affordable Care Act would cause an estimated 22 million more Americans to be uninsured in the coming decade — just over a million fewer than similar legislation recently passed by the House, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The forecast issued Monday by Congress’s nonpartisan budget scorekeepers also estimates that the Senate measure, drafted in secret mainly by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and aides, would reduce federal spending by $321 billion by 2026 — compared with $119 billion for the House’s version.

The CBO’s analysis has been awaited as a crucial piece of evidence as McConnell (Ky.) and other Republican leaders try to hurry a vote on the bill this week. But they are navigating an expanding minefield of resistance from their own party’s moderate and conservative wings, while Democrats are united against it.

Several moderates have said they will decide whether they can support the Better Care Reconciliation Act based on how it will affect Americans who have gained coverage under the ACA during the past few years, while their conservative colleagues are focused on its impact on the federal deficit.

The fresh figures come as President Trump, in a sharp pivot from the praise he initially lavished on the House bill, is urging the Senate to provide Americans more generous help with health insurance. On Sunday, the president repeated during a “Fox and Friends” TV appearance a word he had used in a private White House lunch earlier this month with a group of GOP senators: that the House’s version is “mean.”

The CBO has been regarded over its four-decade history as a source of neutral analyses devoid of political agenda. Its current director, Keith Hall, is a conservative economist who served in the administration of President George W. Bush and was appointed to his current role two years ago by a Republican Congress.

Nevertheless, senior Trump aides have repeatedly sought to cast doubt on the budget office’s credibility. “If you’re looking at the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on the March day that the budget office issued its cost estimate of a preliminary version of the House GOP’s health-care legislation.

While they differ in important details, both the Senate GOP’s plan and the American Health Care Act narrowly passed by House Republicans in May share the goal of undoing central aspects of the sprawling health-care law enacted by a Democratic Congress seven years ago.

Both bills would eliminate enforcement of the ACA’s mandate that most Americans carry health insurance, relying on subtler deterrents to keep people from dropping coverage. The House version would let insurers temporarily charge higher rates, while the Senate added a provision Monday that would let health plans freeze out customers for six months if they let their coverage lapse.

In different ways, both would replace federal subsidies that help the vast majority of consumers buying coverage through ACA marketplaces, instead creating smaller tax credits that would provide greater assistance to younger adults while making insurance more expensive for people from middle age into their 60s.

After two years, both also would end subsidies that now help about 7 million lower-income people with ACA health plans afford deductibles and copays. And both would repeal an array of taxes that have helped to pay for the ACA’s benefits, including levies on health insurers and on wealthy Americans’ investment income.

For the Senate bill, the CBO’s estimates of insurance coverage and federal spending are influenced by the fact that its forecast covers a 10-year window and the legislation’s most profound changes for the nation’s health-care system are tilted toward the latter part of that period.

The bill would, for instance, leave in place the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid through 2020. After that, it would begin a three-year phaseout of the federal money that under the ACA has paid almost the entire cost of adding 11 million Americans to the program’s rolls in 31 states.

That means the extra funding wouldn’t disappear until the mid-2020s — roughly when sharp new restrictions on federal payments for the entire Medicaid program would take effect.

Over the weekend, the senior Democrat on the Senate subcommittee that oversees the CBO said in a tweet that he had asked the budget office to estimate the Senate bill’s effect on insurance coverage over a longer time horizon. “GOP is hiding the worst Medicaid cuts in years 11, 12, 13 and hoping CBO stays quiet,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

This just makes me want to scream.

[GreyhoundFan]

More from Jennifer Rubin: "The CBO confirms: Senate Republicans’ health-care bill is a turkey"

Spoiler

The Congressional Budget Office’s highly anticipated scoring of Senate Republicans’ health-care bill was released Monday. To no one’s surprise, it leaves about as many more Americans uninsured (22 million) as the House version (23 million) by 2026; in fact the shock is greater under the Senate’s bill that would prompt 15 million to lose coverage in the first year. The CBO forecast states, “By 2026, an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.”

Make no mistake: This bill is about cutting Medicaid and giving tax cuts to the rich, with health care for everyone else an afterthought. According to the CBO:

The largest savings would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid — spending on the program would decline in 2026 by 26 percent in comparison with what CBO projects under current law — and from changes to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) subsidies for nongroup health insurance (see Figure 1). Those savings would be partially offset by the effects of other changes to the ACA’s provisions dealing with insurance coverage: additional spending designed to reduce premiums and a reduction in revenues from repealing penalties on employers who do not offer insurance and on people who do not purchase insurance.

The largest increases in deficits would come from repealing or modifying tax provisions in the ACA that are not directly related to health insurance coverage, including repealing a surtax on net investment income and repealing annual fees imposed on health insurers.

As it did for the House version of the bill, the CBO confirms that the individual insurance market is more stable than the GOP makes it out to be, although “a small number of people live in areas of the country that have limited participation by insurers in the nongroup market under current law.” Under the proposed Senate bill, “the agencies expect that the nongroup market in most areas of the country would continue to be stable in 2020 and later years as well, including in some states that obtain waivers that would not have otherwise done so.” However, there is far more uncertainty for some segments of the population:

In the agencies’ assessment, a small fraction of the population resides in areas in which — because of this legislation, at least for some of the years after 2019 — no insurers would participate in the nongroup market or insurance would be offered only with very high premiums. Some sparsely populated areas might have no nongroup insurance offered because the reductions in subsidies would lead fewer people to decide to purchase insurance — and markets with few purchasers are less profitable for insurers. Insurance covering certain services would become more expensive — in some cases, extremely expensive — in some areas because the scope of the EHBs would be narrowed through waivers affecting close to half the population, CBO and JCT expect. In addition, the agencies anticipate that all insurance in the nongroup market would become very expensive for at least a short period of time for a small fraction of the population residing in areas in which states’ implementation of waivers with major changes caused market disruption.

In other words, things may be tough for President Trump’s base.

...

Insurance premiums in the short run will rise. And — precisely as critics predicted — the changes in subsidies will bring back high deductible plans, something voters say they do not want. ts on out-of-pocket spending and prohibitions on annual and lifetime limits on payments for services within the EHBs, all plans must pay for most of the cost of high-cost services. To design a plan with an actuarial value of 60 percent or less and pay for those high-cost services, insurers must set high deductibles — that is, the amounts that people pay out of pocket for most types of health care services before insurance makes any contribution.”) This goes to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) point that without looser regulations, insurance companies will need to resort to high deductibles to manage costs. And people will certainly be priced out of the plan:

Under this legislation, starting in 2020, the premium for a silver plan would typically be a relatively high percentage of income for low-income people. The deductible for a plan with an actuarial value of 58 percent would be a significantly higher percentage of income — also making such a plan unattractive, but for a different reason. As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan, CBO and JCT estimate …

Some people enrolled in nongroup insurance would experience substantial increases in what they would spend on health care even though benchmark premiums would decline, on average, in 2020 and later years. Because nongroup insurance would pay for a smaller average share of benefits under this legislation, most people purchasing it would have higher out-of-pocket spending on health care than under current law. Out-of-pocket spending would also be affected for the people — close to half the population, CBO and JCT expect — living in states modifying the EHBs using waivers. People who used services or benefits no longer included in the EHBs would experience substantial increases in supplemental premiums or out-of-pocket spending on health care, or would choose to forgo the services. Moreover, the ACA’s ban on annual and lifetime limits on covered benefits would no longer apply to health benefits not defined as essential in a state. As a result, for some benefits that might be removed from a state’s definition of EHBs but that might not be excluded from insurance coverage altogether, some enrollees could see large increases in out-of-pocket spending because annual or lifetime limits would be allowed.

Critics of the plan will have a field day pointing out the inequities. (“Premiums for a 64-year old with middle income go from $6,800 under ACA to $20,500 under BCRA.”) Older and poorer people will get hit the worst, according to the CBO. “CBO and JCT expect that this legislation would increase the number of uninsured people substantially. The increase would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower income — particularly people between 50 and 64 years old with income of less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.” The notion that the bill doesn’t cut Medicaid is given the back of the hand. (“Enrollment in Medicaid would be lower throughout the coming decade, with 15 million fewer Medicaid enrollees by 2026 than projected under current law in CBO’s March 2016 baseline … Some of that decline would be among people who are currently eligible for Medicaid benefits, and some would be among people who CBO projects would, under current law, become eligible in the future as additional states adopted the ACA’s option to expand eligibility.”)

And finally, the Senate bill may give employers an incentive to drop their group coverage. “Under current law, the prospect of paying the employer mandate penalty tips the scale for some businesses and causes them to decide to offer health insurance to their employees. Thus, eliminating that penalty would cause some employers to not offer health insurance.”

As we said, this is not a bill about providing cheaper, better health care to the masses. It’s not about helping older or rural Americans. It’s about taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicaid and giving the money to rich people in the form of tax cuts. The CBO report makes clear what a total disgrace the bill really is.

...

It is truly amazing that the Repugs can do this with a straight face.

[GreyhoundFan]

Senator Susan Collins posted this on twitter. I hope she stands firm and two more Rs will pledge to vote no:

[AmericanRose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-gop-updates-health-care-bill-include-6-month-lockout-uninsured-171509672.html

"This change is meant to prevent a “death spiral” of healthy people waiting until they become sick to buy insurance, driving up costs for everyone."

So... they'll have to wait for 6 months after becoming sick to have health insurance, and thus become even sicker? That... makes no sense. Clearly no one who worked on this has a clue how health in general works.

 

 

 

[fraurosena]

Take note, Americans. You are being conned. Bigly!

 

Appalling, horrific, horrible, terrible, dismaying, shocking...

No matter what adjective I try, none of them truly conveys the feelings I have about this.

So   and  and  will have to do.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Is the GOP trying to repeal and replace itself?"

Spoiler

This is a week to keep focused on the most urgent question in domestic policy and politics: Will Republicans snatch health insurance from millions of Americans and slash the vital Medicaid program by $770 billion , all to enable massive tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful?

Plenty of other news is vying for attention. President Trump spent Monday morning venting on Twitter about how President Barack Obama did “NOTHING about Russia” and its election meddling — despite Trump’s frequent claims that the whole Russia controversy is “fake news” and a Democratic Party “hoax.” The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on Trump’s travel ban, which lower courts have deemed unconstitutional; and to decide whether business owners who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage can refuse to provide goods or services for gay couples’ weddings.

There’s much to say about all of those topics, and there will be occasions to say it. But meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to ram through legislation that would return us to the days when hard-working families had to choose between seeing a doctor and paying the rent — legislation that will surely cost lives.

The House has already passed the American Health Care Act, which Trump described as “mean” and lacking “heart.” The Senate bill is no more compassionate. If Trump really meant what he said, he’d insist that Congress abandon its effort to repeal and replace Obamacare and instead work across party lines to fix it. Or perhaps he might convene a panel of experts to design a truly universal system of health coverage from the ground up. I expect these things to happen shortly after pigs begin to fly.

One thing we have learned about Trump is that he will always choose politics over policy. He and the GOP ran on a categorical promise to obliterate Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and the president is desperate for a big legislative victory.

Accordingly, he doesn’t much seem to care what’s in the Senate bill — or even if it actually repeals the ACA. Conservative doubters such as Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) say it doesn’t. Moderate GOP senators are complaining privately that the bill goes too far. It is not at all certain that McConnell, who is pushing hard for a vote this week, will be able to get the needed 50 (out of 52) Republican senators to vote yes.

But it’s also not clear that he will fail. That is why concerned citizens must make it known that the politics of this atrocious legislation are every bit as hazardous for the Republican Party as the underlying policies would be for the health of the nation.

Trump tries to claim that Democrats “own” the Affordable Care Act, which is about to “crash & burn,” and that perhaps Republicans ought to let this disaster happen and reap the resulting political benefit. His loyal base may buy this line of argument, but the historical record disagrees.

The fact is that the party that tries to make substantial changes in health-care policy owns the issue and gets blamed for everything that goes wrong. Veterans of the Johnson, Nixon, Clinton and Obama administrations bear the resulting scars — and they all tried to expand access to affordable health care, not shrink it. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the House bill would snatch insurance coverage away from 14 million people within a year, 23 million within a decade; the CBO estimated Monday that the Senate bill would mean 22 million more people would be uninsured. Does anyone think this will go over well?

Health care, as a political issue, is both universal and intensely personal. Voters whose households are not directly affected by whatever Congress and Trump end up doing will hear of friends, relatives and neighbors who lose their insurance despite having critical health-care needs. One sick child’s heartbreaking story has more impact than a dozen Heritage Foundation white papers.

Republicans worry about having spent seven years promising to “repeal and replace” the ACA and then failing to follow through. But if they do take the leap, Democrats competing in the 2018 midterms will be able to turn that slogan around with a clarion call to “repeal and replace” the American Health Care Act, or whatever the final legislation ends up being called.

Republicans have no great political options here, so maybe they should just do what is right: stop sabotaging Obamacare and start working with Democrats to make it better.

Yeah, that last line is not going to happen.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Will GOP moderates fold and give Trump a win? If so, they lied to you."

Spoiler

The Senate’s health-care bill is on the verge of collapse, multiple reports tell us this morning, with numerous GOP senators balking at the brutal new Congressional Budget Office analysis, which found that the bill would leave 22 million more uninsured by 2026, 15 million of them in the next year alone.

But the bill is far from dead. The big question now is whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) can buy off a few moderate senators with “side deals.” Politico reports that such discussions are well underway as we speak.

But what the CBO report really tells us is this: No side deal can actually rescue the bill in any meaningful sense from the moral criticism that these moderate Republicans themselves have lodged against it. A few moderates may end up backing the bill — and it may even pass — but if so, they will be largely embracing priorities that they basically asked us to believe they reject as unacceptable.

The CBO analysis is mostly unsparing. It finds that the Senate bill would cut Medicaid by $772 billion over 10 years, resulting in 15 million fewer covered by that program (out of a total of 22 million fewer covered). Republicans are touting the fact that the CBO found that premiums would decrease on average over time. But as Margot Sanger-Katz notes, this is because, by allowing states to waive minimum standards for coverage, it would make the insurance itself less comprehensive and valuable, and many Americans with serious conditions would end up paying much more out of pocket. And as Jonathan Cohn explains, the bill would also cut about $400 billion in subsidies for the working poor and lower middle class, and allow higher premiums on older people, compounding the damage to the less fortunate.

Ultimately, the CBO confirmed the bill’s profound regressiveness. It would slash health spending on poor people by hundreds of billions of dollars to facilitate an enormous tax cut for the rich.

The latest whip count shows that at least six moderate Republicans — Susan Collins (Maine), Dean Heller (Nev.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Bill Cassidy (La.) — oppose or have serious concerns about the bill. Collins has balked at the Medicaid cuts harming the “vulnerable.” Heller has decried tens of millions losing insurance. Capito, Murkowski and Portman have all expressed varying concerns about their states’ Medicaid expansion population losing coverage. (Four conservatives also are leaning against the bill; a total of three “no” votes would sink it.)

It’s true that some, such as Capito and Portman, have said they’re open to a slow Medicaid expansion phase-out, such as that in the Senate bill. But Capito has said she wants those displaced from Medicaid to continue to have access to insurance, and Portman has said he wants to continue protecting “the most vulnerable.” And we now know that the CBO has concluded that 15 million of these “most vulnerable” people would be left without coverage. The total of 22 million equates to the “tens of millions” that Heller drew as his line.

How can any “side deal” make up for this? Politico reports that another key CBO finding — that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars — has left McConnell some money with which to make these deals. Among the ideas being mulled: putting more money into Medicaid; adding more funding to treat the opioid epidemic that has worried some of these moderates.

But this money cannot go very far in mitigating the massive coverage rollback that this bill would produce. And that rollback is a function of a simple fact: The bill cuts taxes enormously on the rich. Nicholas Bagley, a health policy expert at the University of Michigan, emails me:

The Senate bill cuts taxes by $700 billion, largely on the wealthy. Offsetting those tax cuts requires commensurately large cuts to Medicaid and the Obamacare subsidies. You can cut all the side deals you want — opioid funding, an extension of the Medicaid phase-out, more market stabilization money, whatever — but without the tax revenue, you don’t have enough money to play with to put much of a dent in the coverage numbers. That’s just math.

Even if these side deals brought down the number who would lose coverage by a few million — and that is unlikely — the profound, overriding regressiveness of this bill would basically remain undisturbed. It is possible, of course, for Republicans to defend such a large coverage loss on principle — by arguing that the tax cuts and deregulation will have other positive effects on the country that make the rollback of coverage worth the trade-off, or by arguing that those who lose Medicaid will benefit from having to find insurance on the private market.

But these moderates are not prominently making those arguments. They are on record saying, in one form or another, that coverage losses of the enormous magnitude the GOP bill would produce — which have now been officially projected by the CBO — are not acceptable outcomes. They asked us to believe that they reject the GOP bill’s deeply regressive priorities. Perhaps they will harbor other reasons to vote for the bill  — and justify it by saying the “side deals” have marginally improved it. But if so, those side deals will be largely meaningless relative to the pain the bill will produce and to the larger scheme of values they will have embraced. And their previous moral protestations will have basically been rendered lies.

I hope some of the moderate Reps do stand up to McTurtle.

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-gop-updates-health-care-bill-include-6-month-lockout-uninsured-171509672.html

"This change is meant to prevent a “death spiral” of healthy people waiting until they become sick to buy insurance, driving up costs for everyone."

So... they'll have to wait for 6 months after becoming sick to have health insurance, and thus become even sicker? That... makes no sense. Clearly no one who worked on this has a clue how health in general works.

 

 

 

Yeah, your premiums are going to skyrocket but don't you dare cancel or we won't let you back in the door. Let's see, who does this benefit? 

[GrumpyGran]

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Will GOP moderates fold and give Trump a win? If so, they lied to you."

  Reveal hidden contents

The Senate’s health-care bill is on the verge of collapse, multiple reports tell us this morning, with numerous GOP senators balking at the brutal new Congressional Budget Office analysis, which found that the bill would leave 22 million more uninsured by 2026, 15 million of them in the next year alone.

But the bill is far from dead. The big question now is whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) can buy off a few moderate senators with “side deals.” Politico reports that such discussions are well underway as we speak.

But what the CBO report really tells us is this: No side deal can actually rescue the bill in any meaningful sense from the moral criticism that these moderate Republicans themselves have lodged against it. A few moderates may end up backing the bill — and it may even pass — but if so, they will be largely embracing priorities that they basically asked us to believe they reject as unacceptable.

The CBO analysis is mostly unsparing. It finds that the Senate bill would cut Medicaid by $772 billion over 10 years, resulting in 15 million fewer covered by that program (out of a total of 22 million fewer covered). Republicans are touting the fact that the CBO found that premiums would decrease on average over time. But as Margot Sanger-Katz notes, this is because, by allowing states to waive minimum standards for coverage, it would make the insurance itself less comprehensive and valuable, and many Americans with serious conditions would end up paying much more out of pocket. And as Jonathan Cohn explains, the bill would also cut about $400 billion in subsidies for the working poor and lower middle class, and allow higher premiums on older people, compounding the damage to the less fortunate.

Ultimately, the CBO confirmed the bill’s profound regressiveness. It would slash health spending on poor people by hundreds of billions of dollars to facilitate an enormous tax cut for the rich.

The latest whip count shows that at least six moderate Republicans — Susan Collins (Maine), Dean Heller (Nev.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Bill Cassidy (La.) — oppose or have serious concerns about the bill. Collins has balked at the Medicaid cuts harming the “vulnerable.” Heller has decried tens of millions losing insurance. Capito, Murkowski and Portman have all expressed varying concerns about their states’ Medicaid expansion population losing coverage. (Four conservatives also are leaning against the bill; a total of three “no” votes would sink it.)

It’s true that some, such as Capito and Portman, have said they’re open to a slow Medicaid expansion phase-out, such as that in the Senate bill. But Capito has said she wants those displaced from Medicaid to continue to have access to insurance, and Portman has said he wants to continue protecting “the most vulnerable.” And we now know that the CBO has concluded that 15 million of these “most vulnerable” people would be left without coverage. The total of 22 million equates to the “tens of millions” that Heller drew as his line.

How can any “side deal” make up for this? Politico reports that another key CBO finding — that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars — has left McConnell some money with which to make these deals. Among the ideas being mulled: putting more money into Medicaid; adding more funding to treat the opioid epidemic that has worried some of these moderates.

But this money cannot go very far in mitigating the massive coverage rollback that this bill would produce. And that rollback is a function of a simple fact: The bill cuts taxes enormously on the rich. Nicholas Bagley, a health policy expert at the University of Michigan, emails me:

The Senate bill cuts taxes by $700 billion, largely on the wealthy. Offsetting those tax cuts requires commensurately large cuts to Medicaid and the Obamacare subsidies. You can cut all the side deals you want — opioid funding, an extension of the Medicaid phase-out, more market stabilization money, whatever — but without the tax revenue, you don’t have enough money to play with to put much of a dent in the coverage numbers. That’s just math.

Even if these side deals brought down the number who would lose coverage by a few million — and that is unlikely — the profound, overriding regressiveness of this bill would basically remain undisturbed. It is possible, of course, for Republicans to defend such a large coverage loss on principle — by arguing that the tax cuts and deregulation will have other positive effects on the country that make the rollback of coverage worth the trade-off, or by arguing that those who lose Medicaid will benefit from having to find insurance on the private market.

But these moderates are not prominently making those arguments. They are on record saying, in one form or another, that coverage losses of the enormous magnitude the GOP bill would produce — which have now been officially projected by the CBO — are not acceptable outcomes. They asked us to believe that they reject the GOP bill’s deeply regressive priorities. Perhaps they will harbor other reasons to vote for the bill  — and justify it by saying the “side deals” have marginally improved it. But if so, those side deals will be largely meaningless relative to the pain the bill will produce and to the larger scheme of values they will have embraced. And their previous moral protestations will have basically been rendered lies.

I hope some of the moderate Reps do stand up to McTurtle.

I do worry about the side deals that some Rep. Senators may take and I think it may depend on how long they have before they have to answer for it at the polls.

The Medicaid aspect of this is out there, bigly, and is YUGE but I think the Dems need to really start hammering home the cost increase for the older demographic. These are people who vote, and vote Republican in large numbers. They really like to hold onto their money and some are on fixed incomes. They are likely to be more educated and, I believe for many, their voting habits are just that, habits. I think quite a few of them are trying hard to ignore the mess that Trump is so getting hit with higher health care costs might be a breaking point for them. It should also be pointed out to them that those tax breaks are NOT for them.

That's my hope, that some of these people will wake up and see that these "representatives" don't really represent their interests. But I'm also hoping Santa brings me a pony for Christmas so...

[GreyhoundFan]

4 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think the Dems need to really start hammering home the cost increase for the older demographic. These are people who vote, and vote Republican in large numbers. They really like to hold onto their money and some are on fixed incomes. They are likely to be more educated and, I believe for many, their voting habits are just that, habits.

AARP is working hard to rally members to speak out against this awful "plan".  I just talked to my senators' offices again. They are being flooded, even though they are both Dems who have come out strongly against McTurtle's plan. I pointed out to staffers at both offices that some folks may not be as informed and need to hear what will happen in plain English.

 

[GrumpyGran]

10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

AARP is working hard to rally members to speak out against this awful "plan".  I just talked to my senators' offices again. They are being flooded, even though they are both Dems who have come out strongly against McTurtle's plan. I pointed out to staffers at both offices that some folks may not be as informed and need to hear what will happen in plain English.

 

Thanks for that @GreyhoundFan. At least you've got some good representatives. Who knows what that wacky stand-up comedian Lindsey Graham is going to do? And Tim Scott is...just not a real person? Graham seems to at least have a soul somewhere down in there but I think he may be considering full-time golf in the near future. The only reason I hold out hope for him is that he now seems to be perpetually pissed.

And, yeah, the AARP has already wrangled me into screaming at them. But believe me, the older middle-class white folk who inhabit these parts are just happy to golf, go to the pool or beach and tan at an alarming speed (Yikes! No!) and celebrate not having to pay those New York taxes anymore. Hard to get their attention.

[GreyhoundFan]

I despise Paul Ryan. I wish the citizens of Wisconsin would stop inflicting him on us: "Paul Ryan: Republicans will be vindicated in 2018 on healthcare"

Spoiler

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday that Americans are rejecting the Democrats' knee-jerk opposition to President Trump and boldly predicted that Americans would reward Republicans in 2018 for following through on a healthcare agenda that, for now, is deeply unpopular.

In an impromptu interview to discuss the Republicans' four special election victories, including last week's crucial win in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Ryan said the liberal strategy for dealing with Trump has been discredited. So, too, the speaker added, would doubters of his party's legislation to partially repeal Obamacare.

"The Democrats are in disarray. All they're doing is suggesting they're going to come and fight and resist, and I don't think that's what voters want," the Wisconsin Republican told the Washington Examiner. "We just saw four victories for tackling problems and addressing issues, and four defeats for just simple resistance — and that was the basis of their campaign."

The "resistance" is a slogan used by many of Trump's opponents on the Left.

Just days away from a critical Senate vote for companion legislation to the House-passed American Health Care Act, Ryan's happy talk on healthcare struck a familiar tone.

Back in 2009 and 2010, as President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were closing in on final passage the extremely unpopular Affordable Care Act, they vowed that Americans would embrace Obamacare once it was implemented and they experienced the benefits.

It never happened, and Democrats paid a heavy price in dozens and dozens of lost seats in consecutive midterm elections. Until, that is, this year, when the Republicans' plans to replace the law got rolling. For the time in its existence, Obamacare has spent consecutive months more popular than not.

Republicans are pushing forward, but they're concerned about blowback in 2018, especially with Trump in the White House. They shouldn't be, Ryan insisted.

"Whether or not it's being perceived well, or understood fairly, is not the question so much as: Do we achieve the result? That means we have to pass our policies to achieve good results and let the results speak for themselves," Ryan said. "Whether or not we can communicate in the fog of the moment is not as important as: Do our policies make a difference and do they solve the problem? And, the answer is, ‘yes.' And, that's why we have to see it through."

Ryan's bullishness isn't without some justification.

Georgia's suburban Atlanta 6th District is educated and upscale. It's been Republican for decades but barely chose Trump in November over Democrat Hillary Clinton. It's the type of seat Democrats needs to compete for to have any chance of winning back the House next year.

Democratic energy and money poured into the race from all over the country, and polls showed Democrat Jon Ossoff poised to pull an upset until the very end, when the race started to turn. It was the fourth victory in as many House specials that included narrower than expected wins in three other districts that are solidly conservative.

It also happened with Trump's job approval hovering around 40 percent, after the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election that could implicate the president.

It also happened during the debate, and after passage, of a health care overhaul in the House that, according to a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, only 16 percent of Americans think is a "good idea," with 48 percent saying it's a "bad idea."

Still, it was unusual to hear Ryan eschew the usual lines about caution and the danger of midterm elections for the party that controls the White House. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose majority appears more secure than Ryan's because of a favorable map, is warning his members that the winds can change quickly.

"Voters want us to do what we said we would do. They like what we said we would do, and we simply have to execute. And, so by executing our agenda, by keeping our momentum, we'll keep a virtuous cycle going," Ryan said. "We are on offense; we need to stay on offense."

Ryan dismissed questions about Trump's drag on his members, especially incumbents running for re-election in districts that Trump lost to Clinton last year despite their tradition of voting for Republicans.

The day that James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired under controversial circumstances, testified before a Senate committee, House Republicans repealed Dodd-Frank, Obama's signature financial reform law, the speaker said, as proof that the president's periodic distractions aren't really that distracting.

But Ryan's robust political operation, and his personal attention to fundraising, suggests that he understands what his party could be up against in 2018.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, and his affiliated super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, were the biggest players for the party in the specials. He is raising record amounts of cash for a speaker, and has already transferred $22 million to the NRCC.

Since January, Ryan has held 154 fundraisers and meetings across the country, traveling to 42 cities and 20 states, raising more than $30 million. The speaker has raised an additional $3.4 million for his colleagues by headlining their fundraisers.

So what's Ryan telling his members to keep them on track and discouraged by the heat, or the tweetstorm, of the moment? "Let's get our work done. We built out a timeline for this agenda for this term. Let's go execute it," he said.

 

[GrumpyGran]

27 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I despise Paul Ryan. I wish the citizens of Wisconsin would stop inflicting him on us: "Paul Ryan: Republicans will be vindicated in 2018 on healthcare"

  Reveal hidden contents

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday that Americans are rejecting the Democrats' knee-jerk opposition to President Trump and boldly predicted that Americans would reward Republicans in 2018 for following through on a healthcare agenda that, for now, is deeply unpopular.

In an impromptu interview to discuss the Republicans' four special election victories, including last week's crucial win in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Ryan said the liberal strategy for dealing with Trump has been discredited. So, too, the speaker added, would doubters of his party's legislation to partially repeal Obamacare.

"The Democrats are in disarray. All they're doing is suggesting they're going to come and fight and resist, and I don't think that's what voters want," the Wisconsin Republican told the Washington Examiner. "We just saw four victories for tackling problems and addressing issues, and four defeats for just simple resistance — and that was the basis of their campaign."

The "resistance" is a slogan used by many of Trump's opponents on the Left.

Just days away from a critical Senate vote for companion legislation to the House-passed American Health Care Act, Ryan's happy talk on healthcare struck a familiar tone.

Back in 2009 and 2010, as President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were closing in on final passage the extremely unpopular Affordable Care Act, they vowed that Americans would embrace Obamacare once it was implemented and they experienced the benefits.

It never happened, and Democrats paid a heavy price in dozens and dozens of lost seats in consecutive midterm elections. Until, that is, this year, when the Republicans' plans to replace the law got rolling. For the time in its existence, Obamacare has spent consecutive months more popular than not.

Republicans are pushing forward, but they're concerned about blowback in 2018, especially with Trump in the White House. They shouldn't be, Ryan insisted.

"Whether or not it's being perceived well, or understood fairly, is not the question so much as: Do we achieve the result? That means we have to pass our policies to achieve good results and let the results speak for themselves," Ryan said. "Whether or not we can communicate in the fog of the moment is not as important as: Do our policies make a difference and do they solve the problem? And, the answer is, ‘yes.' And, that's why we have to see it through."

Ryan's bullishness isn't without some justification.

Georgia's suburban Atlanta 6th District is educated and upscale. It's been Republican for decades but barely chose Trump in November over Democrat Hillary Clinton. It's the type of seat Democrats needs to compete for to have any chance of winning back the House next year.

Democratic energy and money poured into the race from all over the country, and polls showed Democrat Jon Ossoff poised to pull an upset until the very end, when the race started to turn. It was the fourth victory in as many House specials that included narrower than expected wins in three other districts that are solidly conservative.

It also happened with Trump's job approval hovering around 40 percent, after the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election that could implicate the president.

It also happened during the debate, and after passage, of a health care overhaul in the House that, according to a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, only 16 percent of Americans think is a "good idea," with 48 percent saying it's a "bad idea."

Still, it was unusual to hear Ryan eschew the usual lines about caution and the danger of midterm elections for the party that controls the White House. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose majority appears more secure than Ryan's because of a favorable map, is warning his members that the winds can change quickly.

"Voters want us to do what we said we would do. They like what we said we would do, and we simply have to execute. And, so by executing our agenda, by keeping our momentum, we'll keep a virtuous cycle going," Ryan said. "We are on offense; we need to stay on offense."

Ryan dismissed questions about Trump's drag on his members, especially incumbents running for re-election in districts that Trump lost to Clinton last year despite their tradition of voting for Republicans.

The day that James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired under controversial circumstances, testified before a Senate committee, House Republicans repealed Dodd-Frank, Obama's signature financial reform law, the speaker said, as proof that the president's periodic distractions aren't really that distracting.

But Ryan's robust political operation, and his personal attention to fundraising, suggests that he understands what his party could be up against in 2018.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, and his affiliated super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, were the biggest players for the party in the specials. He is raising record amounts of cash for a speaker, and has already transferred $22 million to the NRCC.

Since January, Ryan has held 154 fundraisers and meetings across the country, traveling to 42 cities and 20 states, raising more than $30 million. The speaker has raised an additional $3.4 million for his colleagues by headlining their fundraisers.

So what's Ryan telling his members to keep them on track and discouraged by the heat, or the tweetstorm, of the moment? "Let's get our work done. We built out a timeline for this agenda for this term. Let's go execute it," he said.

 

Breaking News! Paul Ryan's been getting talking point lessons from Kellyanne Conway! Seriously, ah, what? Did you snort bleach at lunch? 

[milkteeth]

56 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I despise Paul Ryan. I wish the citizens of Wisconsin would stop inflicting him on us: "Paul Ryan: Republicans will be vindicated in 2018 on healthcare"

  Hide contents

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday that Americans are rejecting the Democrats' knee-jerk opposition to President Trump and boldly predicted that Americans would reward Republicans in 2018 for following through on a healthcare agenda that, for now, is deeply unpopular.

In an impromptu interview to discuss the Republicans' four special election victories, including last week's crucial win in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Ryan said the liberal strategy for dealing with Trump has been discredited. So, too, the speaker added, would doubters of his party's legislation to partially repeal Obamacare.

"The Democrats are in disarray. All they're doing is suggesting they're going to come and fight and resist, and I don't think that's what voters want," the Wisconsin Republican told the Washington Examiner. "We just saw four victories for tackling problems and addressing issues, and four defeats for just simple resistance — and that was the basis of their campaign."

The "resistance" is a slogan used by many of Trump's opponents on the Left.

Just days away from a critical Senate vote for companion legislation to the House-passed American Health Care Act, Ryan's happy talk on healthcare struck a familiar tone.

Back in 2009 and 2010, as President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were closing in on final passage the extremely unpopular Affordable Care Act, they vowed that Americans would embrace Obamacare once it was implemented and they experienced the benefits.

It never happened, and Democrats paid a heavy price in dozens and dozens of lost seats in consecutive midterm elections. Until, that is, this year, when the Republicans' plans to replace the law got rolling. For the time in its existence, Obamacare has spent consecutive months more popular than not.

Republicans are pushing forward, but they're concerned about blowback in 2018, especially with Trump in the White House. They shouldn't be, Ryan insisted.

"Whether or not it's being perceived well, or understood fairly, is not the question so much as: Do we achieve the result? That means we have to pass our policies to achieve good results and let the results speak for themselves," Ryan said. "Whether or not we can communicate in the fog of the moment is not as important as: Do our policies make a difference and do they solve the problem? And, the answer is, ‘yes.' And, that's why we have to see it through."

Ryan's bullishness isn't without some justification.

Georgia's suburban Atlanta 6th District is educated and upscale. It's been Republican for decades but barely chose Trump in November over Democrat Hillary Clinton. It's the type of seat Democrats needs to compete for to have any chance of winning back the House next year.

Democratic energy and money poured into the race from all over the country, and polls showed Democrat Jon Ossoff poised to pull an upset until the very end, when the race started to turn. It was the fourth victory in as many House specials that included narrower than expected wins in three other districts that are solidly conservative.

It also happened with Trump's job approval hovering around 40 percent, after the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election that could implicate the president.

It also happened during the debate, and after passage, of a health care overhaul in the House that, according to a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, only 16 percent of Americans think is a "good idea," with 48 percent saying it's a "bad idea."

Still, it was unusual to hear Ryan eschew the usual lines about caution and the danger of midterm elections for the party that controls the White House. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose majority appears more secure than Ryan's because of a favorable map, is warning his members that the winds can change quickly.

"Voters want us to do what we said we would do. They like what we said we would do, and we simply have to execute. And, so by executing our agenda, by keeping our momentum, we'll keep a virtuous cycle going," Ryan said. "We are on offense; we need to stay on offense."

Ryan dismissed questions about Trump's drag on his members, especially incumbents running for re-election in districts that Trump lost to Clinton last year despite their tradition of voting for Republicans.

The day that James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired under controversial circumstances, testified before a Senate committee, House Republicans repealed Dodd-Frank, Obama's signature financial reform law, the speaker said, as proof that the president's periodic distractions aren't really that distracting.

But Ryan's robust political operation, and his personal attention to fundraising, suggests that he understands what his party could be up against in 2018.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, and his affiliated super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, were the biggest players for the party in the specials. He is raising record amounts of cash for a speaker, and has already transferred $22 million to the NRCC.

Since January, Ryan has held 154 fundraisers and meetings across the country, traveling to 42 cities and 20 states, raising more than $30 million. The speaker has raised an additional $3.4 million for his colleagues by headlining their fundraisers.

So what's Ryan telling his members to keep them on track and discouraged by the heat, or the tweetstorm, of the moment? "Let's get our work done. We built out a timeline for this agenda for this term. Let's go execute it," he said.

 

Let's hope that Wisconsin decides they're tired of Paul Ryan too and elect Randy Bryce.

Meet the Man Trying to Unseat Paul Ryan in Wisconsin

[JMarie]

Because we all could use some lighthearted humor -- it's Elizabeth Warren as an action figure!  She comes complete with a righteous fist and comfortable slacks!

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/newsy/elizabeth-warren-isnt-just-a-senator-now-shes-an-action-figure

The Kickstarter page is fun!  Who knew there were 7 Stages of Trump Grief?

 

[Cartmann99]

I keep hoping that Paul Ryan will do something that makes the Russians release whatever kompromat they've accumulated on him. I have no desire to watch videos of him getting frisky with his Ayn Rand inspired sex doll, but I definitely want him taken down a peg or two.