United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[GreyhoundFan]

Did McTurtle blink? "Facing GOP opposition, Senate leaders postpone vote to overhaul Obamacare"

Spoiler

Facing a rebellion within their own ranks, Senate Republican leaders on Tuesday postponed a vote to overhaul the 2010 Affordable Care Act until after the July 4 recess.

The delay — which came after five Senate Republicans said they could not support a move to bring up the bill this week in the wake of a new budget analysis — means that lawmakers will be exposed to a barrage of lobbying as they face their constituents over the holiday.

Conservatives are blasting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) plan for leaving too much of the existing law in place, while a coalition of patient advocates, doctors and senior citizens’ groups have joined Democrats in decrying its proposed cuts to the Medicaid program and rollback of taxes imposed on the wealthy.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, McConnell said leaders were “still working to get 50 people in a more comfortable place” on what he described as “a very complicated subject.”

“But we’re going to press on,” he said. “We think the status quo is unsustainable.”

GOP leaders, who had sought to pass legislation they just released Thursday within a few days so the House could take it up and send it to President Trump before the Fourth of July break, are now bracing for attacks from both ends of the political spectrum.

On Tuesday, Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who has clashed with Republican Party leaders in the past, issued a statement saying the proposal “restores Obamacare.”

“Only in Washington does repeal translate to restore,” McIntosh said. “And while it’s hard to imagine, in some ways the Senate’s legislation would make our nation’s failing health-care system worse.”

Meanwhile, progressive groups began laying the groundwork to attend senators’ public events, while medical providers and groups representing Americans with chronic illnesses described how the bill would leave millions without access to medical care. The Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday that the measure would cause an estimated 22 million more Americans to be uninsured by the end of the coming decade while reducing federal spending by $321 billion.

Atul Grover, executive vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told reporters that he and other doctors “take it personally” that the bill would lock people out of insurance for six months if they go for 63 days without a health plan and try to sign up for one the next year.

“We’re there at the bedside,” Grover said, adding that none of his members would be willing to tell a patient: “I’m sorry about your stage-four cancer. Come back in six months, when your insurance kicks in.”

In the wake of the setback, Trump invited GOP senators to meet with him at the White House on Tuesday afternoon to discuss next steps.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who attended the weekly GOP policy lunch Tuesday, told reporters that the meeting at the White House will be “a two-way street” where the senators will share ideas and Trump and his aides will look for ways to help get the bill over the finish line.

Members who publicly opposed the bill had faced a full-court lobbying press from party leaders, but resisted it anyway. Within the past two and a half days, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) has spoken with Trump, Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) spoke by phone with Trump on Monday and was scheduled to meet with him Tuesday before the vote was scuttled.

Johnson said he was “grateful” that the vote was postponed, adding that the “real deadline” would arrive when the ACA insurance markets collapse.

But other Republicans, such as Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), acknowledged that it was hard to predict how the delay would affect the bill’s prospects. More time, Toomey said, “could be good and it could be bad.”

With Pence ready to cast a tiebreaking vote on the measure, Republican leaders can lose only two of their 52 members to pass the bill, which no Democrat is willing to support.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that while “the fight is not over,” he was confident that Republicans would not succeed because their proposals remain unpopular with the public.

“The Republican bill is rotten at the core,” Schumer said. “We have a darn good chance of defeating it, a week from now, a month from now, a year from now.”

Senate leaders had been working with undecided senators to determine whether any skeptics could be won over with additional spending on priorities such as expanding incentives for health-savings accounts favored by conservatives or a fund to help battle opioid addiction favored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Leaders can spend about $188 billion on increased spending without running afoul of Senate budget rules.

But as of Tuesday afternoon, the leaders had not earned the votes of the two members, who put out a joint statement in opposition to the current proposal.

“As drafted, this bill will not ensure access to affordable health care in West Virginia, does not do enough to combat the opioid epidemic that is devastating my state, cuts traditional Medicaid too deeply, and harms rural health care providers,” Capito said.

In a sign of how pervasive opposition to McConnell’s plan was, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), usually a reliable GOP vote, tweeted after the bill was delayed: “The Senate health care bill missed the mark for Kansans and therefore did not have my support.”

Further complicating GOP leaders’ effort were at least two senatorial absences Tuesday: that of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), whose father died Monday, and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who is undergoing cancer surgery.

Hirono said on the floor Monday that she is committed to returning “as quickly as I can” to official business.

Senate leaders had hoped to salvage the effort by using the CBO’s estimates of deficit savings to allocate additional funds to try to ease some members’ concerns.

But the release of the 49-page CBO ­report late Monday afternoon provided a formidable hurdle for the bill. No new senators immediately said they would back the legislation, and Sens. Johnson, Paul, Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mike Lee (Utah) signaled that they would vote against starting debate on the bill in its current form. A fifth senator, Dean Heller (R-Nev.), had expressed his opposition last week and has not shown subsequent signs of changing his mind.

Collins, a moderate Republican, tweeted that the measure would “hurt [the] most vulnerable Americans” and failed to solve the problems of access to care in rural Maine, where, she wrote, “hospitals are already struggling.”

Several Republican senators said they devoted the bulk of Tuesday’s lunch to questioning representatives from the CBO on their methods and estimates. Senators complained that the estimates provided in Monday’s reports used old data about how many people were covered through Obamacare and how much their coverage cost. Others asked that CBO analysts begin the process over with fresh numbers.

“They’re using the March 2016 insurance market,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). “A lot of what they do is just guessing.”

The CBO estimated that two-thirds of the drop in health coverage a decade from now would fall on low-income people who rely on Medicaid. And among the millions now buying private health plans through ACA marketplaces, the biggest losers would roughly parallel those under legislation passed recently by the House: The sharpest spike in insurance premiums would fall on middle-aged and somewhat older Americans.

Its analysis of the Senate measure’s impact on federal spending — $321 billion saved over a decade — compared with $119 billion for the House’s version.

Paul called the Better Care Reconciliation Act “a terrible bill” Monday and repeated his contention that it would not go far enough in repealing the sprawling health-care law enacted seven years ago by a Democratic Congress and president.

Former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin, a Republican who is now president of the American Action Forum, said the report draws basically the same conclusions as the budget office’s earlier analysis of the House measure. He predicted that GOP senators are “going to get beaten on the head with the CBO report like it’s a club.”

The fresh figures come as Trump, in a sharp pivot from the praise he initially lavished on the House bill, has been urging the Senate to provide Americans with more generous health insurance.

According to the latest report, the Senate bill would mean that an estimated 15 million fewer Americans would have coverage next year, compared with the number if the ACA, commonly called Obamacare, remained in place. At the end of the decade, the 22 million increase in the ranks of the uninsured would include 15 million low-income Americans who would otherwise be on Medicaid and 7 million with private insurance.

That figure, about 1 million less than the House bill, would be equivalent to all the residents in 16 states — Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming — losing health coverage.

The Senate plan would reduce federal spending to help people afford premiums for individual health insurance policies significantly more than under the House version. The Senate’s version would cut spending on tax credits by $408 billion by 2026 — compared with a $276 billion reduction in the House plan. The difference, in part, is because the Senate’s version would not permit people with incomes between 350 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for tax credits and would restrict federal help to health plans sold through the ACA’s marketplaces. The Senate would tie the tax credits to skimpier health plans than the current subsidies.

And while the Senate bill would phase out the ACA’s Medicaid expansion more slowly than the House legislation, cuts to the public insurance program for the poor still would account for by far the largest share of the reduction in federal spending under the Senate bill — $772 billion over the coming decade.

In a briefing for reporters, CBO staff members said that they had not analyzed the bill’s effects on Medicaid cuts beyond the coming decade but that the reductions inevitably would be greater for a second decade.

It would also repeal or delay all of the taxes imposed under the 2010 law, including a tax on richer Americans’ net investment income, an annual fee for insurers, an increase in the hospital insurance payroll tax for the wealthy and the “Cadillac” tax on employers’ more generous insurance benefits.

 

[onekidanddone]

58 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

watch videos of him getting frisky with his Ayn Rand inspired sex doll

This image is now seared into my brain and will never go away. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope said albatross drags the whole nasty crew down: "‘Repeal and replace’ was once a unifier for the GOP. Now it’s an albatross."

Spoiler

For Republicans, Obamacare was always the great unifier. In a fractious party, everyone agreed that the Affordable Care Act was the wrong solution to what ailed the nation’s health-care system, with too much government and too little freedom for consumers.

Replacing Obamacare has become the party’s albatross, a sprawling objective still in search of a solution. The effort to make good on a seven-year promise has cost the Trump administration precious months of its first year in office, with tax restructuring backed up somewhere in the legislative pipeline, infrastructure idling somewhere no one can see it and budget deadlines looming.

Republicans have been here before on health care, on the brink and scratching for votes. The House eventually found a way through this political and substantive maze. Now it’s left to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to find the puzzle pieces and President Trump, perhaps, to supply some muscle, lest the GOP be forced to admit failure on the party’s top legislative priority.

Was it only Monday that Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) boldly declared there would be no turning back this week, that the Senate health-care bill would be put to a vote before lawmakers leave for the July 4 recess? “I am closing the door,” he tweeted. “We need to do it this week.” So much for that.

If it was a bluff by the leaders, other Republican senators called it. McConnell, a shrewd legislative poker player, quickly folded Tuesday. Instead of moving forward, the bill is now on ice. The original Senate leadership plan called for negotiations in secret by a small group, springing the results on the other members and forcing a quick vote before outside opponents could mobilize. Instead, the calculation that time was of the essence crashed into the reality of vote counting. The new calculus is that delay is better than defeat.

But will more time help to melt away the opposition? It did in the House, after the sudden and spectacular collapse of the leadership’s bill hours before a scheduled vote in late March. By early May, after weeks of negotiations between Freedom Caucus conservatives and members of the less-conservative Tuesday Group, the House approved a bill. The president was so hungry for even a partial victory that he held a ceremony of celebration with House members in the Rose Garden. Later, he privately and then publicly called that House bill “mean,” and it was left to the Senate to make amends.

In a worst-of-all-worlds environment, Republicans continue to struggle with what they’re selling, beyond the stated goal of repealing or revising the Affordable Care Act. Whatever overarching arguments they hope to make on behalf of their legislation have been lost in a welter of competing claims and demands among senators with different priorities and dissimilar ideological viewpoints.

The Republicans’ major selling point is that Obamacare is collapsing. Even Democrats acknowledge weaknesses with the current law, though some Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of deliberately trying to make those problems worse. McConnell said Tuesday that a Republican solution will be superior to the status quo. Exactly how, Senate Republicans haven’t been able to say. But in terms of corralling the votes, McConnell should not be underestimated.

On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put a dagger in the Senate GOP’s efforts. The CBO analysis said the Senate bill would result in 22 million more Americans without health care than under current law, just 1 million fewer than the House bill. Reductions in Medicaid spending pose another obstacle, particularly to GOP senators from states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.

The CBO report wasn’t all bad news for the senators. The Senate bill would save significantly more money than the House bill, giving McConnell and company funds to use to ease the opposition of some senators. But money alone won’t resolve all the differences, particularly among those who want to see the Affordable Care Act largely dismantled. It will be a tedious, though not impossible, process to find the votes.

McConnell was always prepared to tweak the first product that emerged from weeks of closed-door discussions. He was willing to make immediate adjustments to woo and win over the holdouts. He was prepared to do that before the bill hit the floor this week. He was ready to see it changed further through amendments on the floor.

But the timetable proved to be too ambitious, perhaps too highhanded. The resisters wanted changes — and several demanded more time. That was a toxic combination that McConnell could not overcome. Echoing Trump, McConnell acknowledged the complexity of the task. “It’s a very complicated subject,” he told reporters at the Capitol. Such legislation often takes longer to put together than people think, he added. That was a game way of saying he’s on to Plan B, with no guarantees of success.

Health care has highlighted the divisions within the party. After the House vote, Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) resigned as co-chair of the Tuesday Group due to unhappiness with the deal he made with conservatives. On Friday, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a vulnerable incumbent facing reelection next year, announced that he could not vote for the Senate bill in its current form. Trump’s political action committee announced that it would mount an advertising assault on him, which began Tuesday. That kind of intraparty hardball could only make Heller weaker.

The health-care fight has left the president frustrated and at times looking helpless. He is torn between his desire for the ultimate victory and the many things he said about the subject during his campaign and even since, such as that he wants coverage for everyone. He has reduced all that to saying he wants something with heart. Does a bill that reduces coverage as significantly as the CBO says the GOP bills would do meet that definition?

The Republican Party’s health-care objectives haven’t changed, nor have the principles upon which Republicans want to create the new health-care system. It’s the details that they haven’t mastered. House leaders had one advantage over McConnell and the Senate: a larger margin for error. McConnell can’t afford to lose more than two Republicans. The road ahead will test him as perhaps never before.

If successful, Republican lawmakers will have a second test, which will be to sell their alternative to the public. The Affordable Care Act split the country, with supporters and opponents in hardened camps through most of the Obama administration. Today, Obamacare has become more popular, according to recent polls. In contrast, early measures of the Republicans’ plans show minimal support and sizable opposition.

What are the party’s options? Fail and be held accountable by a conservative base that for years has been promised that Obamacare would be gone once the GOP held power. Pass something that looks like either the House or Senate bills and be left with the potential political consequences of being accused of eliminating coverage for 20 million more Americans.

On a side note, when I called my senators' offices this week, I had my prepared points, but I added a thank you to the staff. I acknowledged this administration has made their jobs busier and more difficult. The staffer I spoke with at the one office sounded like she was going to cry, she thanked me and said it was much appreciated. I think the staffers are getting hammered. Senator Warner reported on twitter that just last week, his office received 1800+ calls and 4200+ letters opposing the Repug deathcare bill.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, boo-freaking-hoo, Chappass. I don't think anyone FORCED you to run for office. "Chaffetz: Members of Congress should get stipends to afford homes in D.C."

Spoiler

On his way out of Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz gave many District residents another reason to gripe Tuesday when he called for members of Congress to receive a housing stipend of up to $30,000 a year.

Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chaired the committee that has oversight of the nation’s capital, said federal lawmakers have trouble stretching their $174,000 salaries to cover housing in Washington, which he called “one of the most expensive places in the world,” and homes in their congressional districts.

“I really do believe Congress would be much better served if there was a housing allowance for members of Congress,” Chaffetz told The Hill, which first reported his stipend proposal. “In today’s climate, nobody’s going to suggest or vote for a pay raise. But you shouldn’t have to be among the wealthiest of Americans to serve properly in Congress.”

The idea lit up Twitter as people who think members of Congress are paid plenty, thank you very much, recalled Chaffetz’s comment earlier this year that low-income people could afford their own health care if they would scale back spending on things such as “that new iPhone they just love.”

...

“Chaffetz makes $175K/yr, wants extra $2500 for housing stipend. But others need to evaluate if they can afford the luxury of an iPhone? Ok!” tweeted Adam Best of Austin.

...

As chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Chaffetz, who is retiring this week, tried to reverse the District’s assisted-suicide law, opposed its legalization of marijuana, and suggested lopping off part of D.C. and folding it into Maryland. He also pushed to relocate federal agencies outside the District.

Some city leaders were irked by Chaffetz’s habit of sleeping on a cot in his Capitol Hill office while in Washington, saying that the choice left him few opportunities to get to know the city and the wishes of its citizens.

Chaffetz has plenty of evidence for his claim that D.C. housing is often unaffordable. Nearly 1 in 5 homes sold in the first 10 months of 2015 went for more than $1 million. A person needs to make $119,000 to rent a two-bedroom apartment in the city, according to a recent study, and entire neighborhoods have shifted from gritty to grand over the past two decades as gentrification has swept through.

A Roll Call reporter pointed out that months before he left Congress in 2014, Rep. James P. Moran, a Democrat who represented Northern Virginia for more than two decades, also called for housing subsidies for struggling lawmakers.

His proposal would have applied to any lawmaker living at least 50 miles from the nation’s capital and would have amounted to $25 per day that Congress is in session, or about $2,800 a year.

Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said Chaffetz’s suggestion is an important reminder that it is tough even for well-paid workers to live in Washington, let alone those who make a fraction of what a federal lawmaker earns.

“D.C. housing prices are not only unaffordable for very low-income people,” she said. “This is creeping up the income ladder, so middle-income people are also struggling to find housing they can afford in the city.”

It is expensive to live in the DC area. But I have little pity for lawmakers, who chose to run for office. Low and middle income people who live here often can't move elsewhere, and have to take second (or third) jobs and/or roommates to afford to live here.

[JMarie]

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/27/house-speaker-paul-ryan-defends-the-senate-republican-health-car/23005193/

Quote

House Speaker Paul Ryan sat down with Fox & Friends Tuesday to defend the Senate Republican health care plan.

The Speaker was responding to the Congressional Budget Office report that said 22 million people would be uninsured by 2026 if the Senate's replacement bill passed.

"What they're basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office is if you're not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you're not going to force people to buy something that they don't want, then they won't buy it. So, it's not that people are getting pushed off a plan, it's that people will choose not to buy something they don't like or want."

Does he seriously think that there are 22 million Americans who choose not to be insured?

How is it that the government can require Americans to have car insurance but not health insurance?

[candygirl200413]

@GreyhoundFan When I read that, I was like "hmm can we also add a full refund on the wasted tax payer dollars on that witch hunt about Beganzhi that turned out to be nothing?"

 

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, JMarie said:

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/27/house-speaker-paul-ryan-defends-the-senate-republican-health-car/23005193/

Does he seriously think that there are 22 million Americans who choose not to be insured?

How is it that the government can require Americans to have car insurance but not health insurance?

Sadly, it's not going to be 22 million uninsured. It will be 22 million more people uninsured in America, bringing the total up to 59 million.

I'm at a loss for words thinking about the fact that a so-called first world country doesn't have proper healthcare for so many of its citizens.  

[Cartmann99]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It is expensive to live in the DC area. But I have little pity for lawmakers, who chose to run for office. Low and middle income people who live here often can't move elsewhere, and have to take second (or third) jobs and/or roommates to afford to live here.

Exactly!

Here's Chaffetz's financial advice from earlier this year:

Quote

"Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want," Chaffetz said. "And you know what, Americans have choices, and they've got to make a choice. So maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love, and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own health care. They've got to make those decisions themselves."

http://time.com/4693313/jason-chaffetz-health-care-coverage-iphones/

Jason, maybe you should quit buying all those iPhones and start making better choices with your money? As your buddy Mulvaney said:

Quote

“When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no,” Mulvaney said Thursday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mick-mulvaney-trump-budget-priorities-236117

So, to recap, we can't afford to spend money so that Americans of modest means can have access to decent healthcare, PBS, Meals On Wheels, etc... but Jason thinks the taxpayers of America should pay our 100 senators and 435 House members a stipend of $30,000 per year to pay for housing in the DC area. For those playing along at home, that works out which to a grand total of $16,050,000 per year. 

Jason honey, you really are a tone deaf idiot, aren't you? There's been times when my husband has been tempted by an ad for a job in his field, but we've had to pass on it because of cost of living issues. That's just part of life for average folks, you sigh about what might have been, and you move on.

Most Americans have household incomes that are a fraction of yours, so don't be surprised if people are not sympathetic to the fact that you can't figure out how to live on your six figure salary. 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Most Americans have household incomes that are a fraction of yours, so don't be surprised if people are not sympathetic to the fact that you can't figure out how to live on your six figure salary. 

I read somewhere (sorry, I can't remember where), that Chappass had a net worth around $6 million. Yeah, I'm going to weep for how hard he had it in congress. NOT.

Speaking of the departing tool: "Powerful chairman of federal workforce committee leaves Congress on Friday"

Spoiler

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will leave a legacy when he quits Congress at 10 a.m. Friday, but we might not have his mug to remind us.

If incoming Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) does as Chaffetz did, portraits of past chairmen will not decorate the committee’s hearing room. Chaffetz ended that long-standing practice, also followed by other committees, when he took over one of the most powerful panels in 2015, opting for photos of everyday Americans instead.

“Now that Trey Gowdy is the chairman, my guess is they’re going to put up a mirror,” Chaffetz said with a hearty laugh.

Chaffetz will leave the everyday Americans who are federal employees a legacy that includes a deliberate policy against bashing feds, as had been more common before he took the chair. Yet he promoted a punitive tax measure and other proposals that implicitly did just that. During an interview, he praised cooperation with the ranking Democrat on his committee, expressed frustration with his House Republican leadership and offered a conspiratorial concern about feds in the “deep state.” Chaffetz has mixed views on President Trump and was “pleasantly surprised that he is inquisitive and personally engaged” on topics including the federal workforce and U.S. Postal Service reforms.

I spoke with Chaffetz in his spacious Rayburn building office Monday as he prepared for his return to private life, which might be temporary. In addition to the boxes stacked along the wall, it’s noticeable what’s missing — a big wooden desk, a common Capitol Hill status symbol.

Instead, a circle of black leather chairs dominates the office, facilitating group discussions. A small table along the side is his workspace. He’s forged a strong working relationship with top committee Democrat Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), a passionate defender of the federal workforce, despite their heated differences on some employee issues.

For example, Cummings has fought Chaffetz’s repeated attempts to disqualify serious tax delinquents from federal employment, meaning some could be fired. While Chaffetz regularly praises employees, his legislation is a gratuitous swipe at a workforce that statistics show is more diligent at paying taxes than the general population.

Chaffetz, elected to a fifth term in November, recalled his accomplishments, disappointments and views on various topics during the interview.

Secret Service: One of his proudest accomplishments was his work to improve the Secret Service after a series of embarrassing lapses damaged the agency’s reputation.  “I really think it was probably one of the most effective things we did,” Chaffetz said. “I really think we made some major changes in the agency.”

Postal reform: After many years of trying, the committee under Chaffetz approved legislation to stabilize faltering Postal Service finances. The bipartisan bill was supported by postal management, unions and industry mailers. This major accomplishment, however, turned to frustration when the Republican leadership did not schedule the bill for a House vote.

That leaves him the “most frustrated and just flat-out disappointed … I’m fairly critical of my own leadership because I see no good reason not to move it. It saves money, it’s bipartisan and it’s desperately needed … I’m dumbfounded as to why it hasn’t been brought up.”

Asked why, the offices of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) had no comment.

Civil service reform: At a signing ceremony for a Department of Veterans Affairs employee accountability bill Friday, Trump said federal civil service protections are based on “outdated laws.” Chaffetz agrees.

“There needs to be a swifter way to get rid of the bad apples,” he said. “There are certain protections that need to be maintained. … Employees ought to have an opportunity to make their case. … When somebody’s doing something truly horrific, we got to get rid of them.”

Federal unions: “I’m frustrated the unions weren’t more willing participants in trying to find that balance to get rid of the truly bad apples. … I wish they had the same vision I have … I wish they could see that one bad apple would truly infect a thousand. I wish they were more concerned about protecting the mass of federal employees by getting rid of the one who is causing all the disruption. … They seem to protect every employee no matter what, and that hurts the whole.”

Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, strongly disagreed. “Our interest is in preserving due process so that good employees have the protections they need to do their jobs on behalf of the American people without fear of unfair or politically motivated reprisal,” he said. “Those protections are essential to the functioning of our democracy. Our union has no interest in rigging the system to insulate genuine problem employees from the possibility of removal. Nobody benefits from that. … It is safe to say that we do not share Representative Chaffetz’s vision for the federal workforce.”

Federal compensation: On Trump’s proposed cuts to federal employee retirement, Chaffetz said that “there needs to be a more comprehensive approach.” He favors a defined contribution system instead of the defined benefit that provides federal pensions. In practice, that would result in workers paying more out of pocket toward retirement.

Chaffetz would like to see higher pay for some feds in critical positions, such as information technology. The IT workforce shortage, he said, is “the biggest personnel challenge that we face.”

Deep state: Chaffetz blames a poorly defined “deep state” group mentality in the government — “no one specific individual” — with thwarting the work of Congress. “I don’t think it’s a mystery that by and large the federal workforce leans more to the left than they do to the conservative end of the political spectrum. I think there are a lot of things done to embarrass Donald Trump. There are a lot of things done to protect President Obama.”

Of course, Trump does a lot of things to embarrass himself and the nation.

Will Chaffetz again seek public office? “I’m a definite maybe.”

Okay, I snickered at the slam on Gowdy, that was good. I don't understand the Repug paranoia that leads to all the "deep state" hysteria. Of course, I don't understand Repugs on many topics. As to the final line, I hope he won't be running for federal office again.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Senate GOP’s health-care bill is a liberal’s caricature of conservatism"

Spoiler

Sen. Mitch McConnell has called off a vote this week on the Senate Republican health-care bill. That’s a good thing. Because if Republicans want to confirm every liberal caricature of conservatism in a single piece of legislation, they could do no better than vote on the GOP bill in its current form.

Here is the summary of the bill that Democrats will take to the American people in 2018: Republicans voted to cut $701 billion in taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and pay for it with $772 billion taken from Medicaid for the poor — all while pushing 22 million Americans off health care.

And Senate Republicans are writing the script for them. Have they lost their minds?

Let’s be clear: The investment tax and Medicare surcharge in Obamacare are a drag on economic growth. But if Republicans want to eliminate them, they should do so as part of broader tax reform and pay for it with other changes in the tax code — anything but Medicaid cuts for the poor. Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible.

It is also politically suicidal. If Republicans bring this bill to the floor, under reconciliation rules (which allow the GOP to pass the bill by a simple majority) there will up to 20 hours of debate and unlimited amendments. Senate Democrats will force Republicans to cast one vote after another designed to make them look like monsters come Election Day. They will make Republicans vote “no” on eliminating tax cuts for the rich and using that money for opioid treatment, services for the disabled, nursing home residents, children’s health — you name it.

Even better for Democrats, the bill will disproportionately impact states President Trump won which are the epicenter of the opioid crisis. According one Harvard University/New York University estimate, about 1 million people are receiving substance abuse and mental-health treatment under the Medicaid expansion — with more than 400,000 in just two states Trump won, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Other red states heavily impacted included Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Nevada, Tennessee and West Virginia. Nationally, spending on substance abuse treatment in the Medicaid expansion population is estimated to be $4.5 billion per year. The GOP bill includes a measly $2 billion for opioid treatment in 2018. That’s chump change.

Conservatives are right to reform Medicaid. There is nothing wrong with entitlement reform that moves to a per capita cap system, so long as the caps are designed to rise with the costs of medical inflation (which they don’t in the Senate bill). But the savings need to be used to help people get coverage on the private market — not used for tax cuts for the wealthy. Conservatives should not trap people in poverty because the only way they can get adequate health care — including appropriate help for substance abuse and mental health — is through Medicaid. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the increase in out-of-pocket costs in the Senate bill would contribute “significantly” to a reduction in the number of lower-income people who obtain coverage. Even if they are eligible for premium tax credits, as a result of the high deductibles few low-income people would purchase any plan. That is unacceptable.

It’s also politically insane for the GOP to pass a bill that will reduce the number of Americans with health coverage by 22 million. Our goal should be to expand the number of Americans buying health coverage, not reduce it. And there are good, conservative ways to do so. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Jim Capretta and Hoover Institution fellow Lanhee Chen have designed a plan to automatically enroll Americans who don’t get health insurance from their employers in high-deductible catastrophic care policies whose premiums equal the value of the federal tax credits. This would not be a mandate — they could withdraw from the plans if they wanted to. In this way, we could get virtually every American — including the young and healthy — into the insurance market, which would reduce costs for older and sicker Americans. This way, instead of fending off Democratic criticism for driving millions of Americans off their health plans, Republicans could claim credit for bringing the country closer to universal health coverage. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have adopted this approach in their alternative plan.

But instead of expanding coverage, Republicans seem intent on painting themselves as reverse Robin Hoods, who steal from the poor to give to the rich. That is not what Trump promised when he talked of a bill with a “heart.”

I don't agree with all the assertions of the author, but he makes some good points.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another volley in the back and forth: "McConnell is trying to revise the Senate health-care bill by Friday"

Spoiler

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is aiming to send a revised version of his health-care bill to the Congressional Budget Office by as soon as Friday, according to Capitol Hill aides and lobbyists.

The effort reflects the tight timeline McConnell faces in his attempt to hold a vote before the August recess — and the pressure he is under to make changes that improve the CBO’s measure of the bill’s impact on coverage levels and federal spending.

McConnell is trying to move quickly to produce a new CBO score by the time lawmakers return to Washington in mid-July, giving the Senate about two weeks to fulfill the majority leader’s goal of voting before the August recess.

McConnell and his aides plan continue negotiations through the end of the week and will be in frequent communication with the CBO, according to McConnell spokesman David Popp.

It remains unclear exactly what parts of the Better Care Reconciliation Act are being revised — or whether McConnell is trying to move the measure to the right, with greater savings or regulatory adjustments, or to the left, with more coverage protections. McConnell needs to bring on board about nine senators who have said they wouldn’t vote for the bill in its current form. Moving to the right would appease conservatives in the Senate — but also in the House, where any Senate bill would also have to pass.

Aides both at the White House and on Capitol Hill are aware of the effort, several GOP aides said Wednesday on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. One aide described the situation as akin to the weeks leading up to the draft bill’s release, when McConnell presented chunks of the emerging legislation to CBO to expedite the scoring process. The aide expected GOP leaders to present tweaks to CBO for review as soon as this week.

Another aide said that after Tuesday’s meeting with President Trump at the White House, Republicans have a better sense now of what everyone wants. A draft is not yet ready, but the reworking process has begun.

Sigh. Just sigh.

[onekidanddone]

I'm shocked I tell you.  Shocked!

Chaffetz, leaving Congress this week, heading to Fox News

Quote

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican who is quitting Congress at the end of the week is heading to Fox News.

Fox News Channel announced on Wednesday that five-term Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah will be a contributor effective July 1, offering political analysis on various Fox programs.

Chaffetz said earlier this year that he would not seek another term, then announced he would leave the House on June 30. Chaffetz has served as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and doggedly investigated Hillary Clinton before the 2016 presidential election.

Chaffetz has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in Utah.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@onekidanddone -- that's yet another reason to not watch Faux News.

[onekidanddone]

2 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@onekidanddone -- that's yet another reason to not watch Faux News.

I don't have cable so I can't even if I wanted to.  Hell I don't even like to watch the local affiliate. 

[Audrey2]

After Chaffetz's iPhone remark about healthcare, his intelligence will fit right in with the rest of the Fox hosts and personnel.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo published a good opinion piece by Evan McMullin: "Republicans are risking becoming the party of Putin"

Spoiler

Whether its leaders and members realize it, the Republican Party is at risk of becoming the Vladi­mir Putin-aligned party in the United States. It can be convincingly argued that it’s already similar to Putin-supported parties in Europe, given Donald Trump’s presidency, the Republican base’s increasingly favorable views of Moscow and the House GOP leadership’s disinterest in investigating and preventing Russian interference.

Increasingly sophisticated Russian influence and cyberoperations threaten Americans’ ability to choose their own leaders. This isn’t hyperbole; in fact, it’s hard to overstate just how serious this issue is. Yet President Trump continues to sow doubt about whether Moscow even interfered in the 2016 presidential elections and to suggest the question’s insignificance by ignoring it all together.

Our commander in chief seems more interested in protecting Moscow than he does in deterring its future attacks. The Post reported that the administration is actually considering allowing the Russian government to reopen the two spy compounds that President Barack Obama closed in late December in response to Russia’s election attack. There are also reports that the White House plans to step up lobbying efforts against a new Russia sanctions bill that the Senate passed with overwhelming bipartisan support this month. The measure would add new financial sanctions and require congressional review before Trump could lift these or other retaliatory measures currently levied against Moscow, including the closing of the two compounds.

Worse, Trump appears to have some support in this from Republican leaders in the House. Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have delayed the bill, citing the constitutional requirement that such bills originate in the House.

This is little more than a red herring. Nothing prevents them from inserting the text of the Senate bill into a House measure, passing it and sending it back to the Senate for final approval, which it would likely grant under expedited procedures. Instead, Ryan and McCarthy appear to be more interested in delaying and weakening the bill.

Behind their neglect are changing Republican voter opinions, which are becoming alarmingly more pro-Russian. According to a Morning Consult-Politico poll conducted in May, 49 percent of Republican voters consider Russia to be either an ally or friendly. Only 12 percent consider it an enemy. In 2015, only 12 percent of Republicans held a favorable view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Gallup. As of February, that figure had jumped to 32 percent.

These dangerous trends impair the nation’s will to protect itself, and they are entirely the result of Republican leadership’s failure to oppose Trump from the beginning. Republican voters had long held a healthy distrust of Putin, but Trump’s persistent affinity for Moscow and other Republican leaders’ silence are changing Republican voters’ minds, now making it politically costly for GOP leaders to defend the nation from this foreign adversary.

Because they control both the executive and legislative branches, it is ultimately up to Republican leaders to prevent future Russian attacks on American democracy, even if such attacks may benefit the party electorally. Deterrence is an indispensable part of this equation. It cannot be accomplished without punishing Moscow for its violations of our sovereignty and threatening harsher responses for future trespasses.

In passing the Russia sanctions bill, Senate Republicans have shown they understand this. GOP leaders in the House must work with their Senate colleagues to pass a strong sanctions package that requires a congressional review of changes to Russia sanctions implementation desired by the president. He simply cannot be trusted to protect the integrity of America’s democracy on his own.

Republican leaders and the party are at a crossroads. They will either choose liberty in an independent America or to serve a distant, foreign master who seeks no more than to enrich and empower himself at the expense of free society everywhere. If Republican leaders choose the latter, the majority of Americans will have no choice but to hold them accountable as opponents to the cause of freedom.

McMullin is certainly far to the right of my beliefs, but he is so correct on this issue.

[Cartmann99]

 Slate weighs in on Chaffetz's idea for housing subsidies for our Senators and House members:

Quote

 But still, maybe he’s onto something; maybe members of Congress do need a housing solution for when the legislature is in session so they’re not sleeping on cots in their offices, as Chaffetz did. And maybe the answer is right in front of us: We should take inspiration from one of America’s greatest institutions, higher education, and make our representatives live in dorms.

[...]

But mostly, it would just be funny to subject these blowhards to dorm life. Let these politicians live with roommates and no air conditioning. Let them be sexiled. Let them try to hide illegal crockpots and drugs from the resident advisers, who would be chosen by internal elections. Let them live with curfews—no lobbyists on the floors after 10 p.m. Let them fight over control of the television in the lounge; let South Carolina’s elected representatives try to secede when Fox News is temporarity banned. Let them try to write laws with the very same people they’re mad at for clogging the toilets. (If you thought Al Franken was pissed when Ted Cruz helped shut down the government, wait’ll you see him after Cruz microwaves fish in the communal kitchen.) Let them get sick of the whole business after their third term and eschew re-election.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/28/don_t_give_congressmen_a_housing_subsidy_make_them_live_in_dorms.html

I needed a laugh tonight, thank you Slate.  

[Childless]

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Slate weighs in on Chaffetz's idea for housing subsidies for our Senators and House members:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/28/don_t_give_congressmen_a_housing_subsidy_make_them_live_in_dorms.html

I needed a laugh tonight, thank you Slate.  

OMG!  I think Slate just came up with an excellent idea!  We should totally do it.  No more lifers in Congress.  After a couple of terms, they'd happily let someone else try their hand at law making.

[fraurosena]

11 minutes ago, Childless said:

OMG!  I think Slate just came up with an excellent idea!  We should totally do it.  No more lifers in Congress.  After a couple of terms, they'd happily let someone else try their hand at law making.

Plus, I think it would deter idiots like McTurtle and Lyin' Ryan from ever contemplating becoming a member in the first place!

Speaking of Ryan...

Paul Ryan Explains Why 22 Million Will Be Uninsured, and He’s Got a Point

Quote

Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday defended the Republican health care plan that would mean over 22 million more people would be uninsured, arguing the uninsured would only be exercising their new freedom to do so.

“What they’re basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office is if you’re not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you’re not going to force people to buy something that they don’t want, then they won’t buy it,” Ryan said on Fox News of the CBO analysis that cited the 22 million uninsured. “So, it’s not that people are getting pushed off a plan, it’s that people will choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.”

Although on the face of it, this sounds like a reasonable statement, it is, of course, an example of inherently flawed thinking. People may indeed choose not to insure themselves anymore, he is right there. However, the reason people choose to do so is not because they don't want healthcare. It's because they can't afford it under the proposed atrocity of a bill he's trying to defend here.

Quote

The changes to health policy in the House and Senate bills would also affect people’s decision to drop insurance or stay uninsured — and which groups of Americans, in particular, would go without coverage. [...] The CBO reports on the House and Senate bills found the increase in uninsured would disproportionately come from relatively low-income customers between age 50 and 64, for example, who get less government assistance under the Republican plans and could be charged higher premiums than under current law. 

In the case of the House bill, CBO found that its changes would raise annual premiums for a 64-year-old making $26,500 in 2026 from just $1,700 under current law to $16,100. Technically, such a person could choose to go uninsured without a mandate, but they would also be choosing between spending over 60 percent of their income on premiums versus about 6 percent.

The average increase would be 115 percent for people ages 55 to 64 — more than double what they would pay under current law. By contrast, younger customers between 18 and 34 would see smaller average increases in their premiums of 17 percent.

Both the House and Senate CBO reports concluded that many people would go without insurance either because they were no longer covered by Medicaid, because they couldn’t find premiums they considered affordable, because their deductibles were too high to justify their premiums, or (in the case of the House bill) because a pre-existing condition made plans unaffordable.

Let's be honest, that isn't much of a choice now, is it?

 

[fraurosena]

How the push for a Senate health-care vote fell apart amid GOP tensions

Spoiler

Sen. Dean Heller was sitting two seats away from President Trump and facing his grim-faced colleagues this week when he decided to crack a pointed joke.

Heller — a square-jawed, ­sandy-haired moderate Republican — said the attack ads against him, paid for by a Trump-allied super PAC, should have used his own image instead of actor Matt Damon’s.

There were scattered laughs, including a chuckle from Trump. But many of the Republican lawmakers lining tables in the East Room stayed mute.

The senator from Nevada then reiterated that he had deep reservations about the party’s major rewrite of the nation’s health-care laws, despite the Trump network’s efforts to pressure him to back the legislation.

Trump nodded and said he under­stood Heller’s view. A ­couple of hours later, the super PAC pulled the ads off the air.

Nearly everyone there Tuesday had a different take on the meeting, reflecting the Republican divide amid the struggle to fulfill a signature party promise.

White House officials and Trump loyalists saw a president diving in to patch up strife and save legislation that had been curbed in the Senate. Some seasoned senators, however, saw a president unable to grasp policy details or the obstacles ahead, and talked with each other after the gathering about what they saw as a bizarre scene. That Republican disconnect has been a constant ever since the Senate health bill was unveiled.

This account of the Senate measure’s shaky rollout is based on interviews with more than a dozen senators, aides and other well-connected Republicans, many of whom requested anonymity to offer candid perspective.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who on Tuesday postponed a procedural vote on the health bill, continues to work with wary senators and the president’s team with the aim of moving an updated version to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring by the end of the week.

But the process so far has been messy and revealing of strains between Trump and the GOP Senate, as well as between McConnell and the senators he has long been known for managing with steely efficiency.

Instead of moving happily toward passage of the party’s rallying cry, Republicans are frozen and unsure of the political cost of passing the Senate bill — especially with swing voters who in many states have come to rely on aspects of Obamacare and its expansion of Medicaid.

“It’s sad, in a way,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a conservative critic of the bill, said in an interview Wednesday. “We control all three branches and yet we’re not interested or able to do what we’ve pledged. People are too focused on getting more federal subsidies and other things, not on the pledge itself.”

The GOP alarm on Capitol Hill over this week’s inaction was stoked further Tuesday when Trump told senators that he was eager for a vote but also hinted at the prospect of attempting to place the burden of problems with the current law on the Democrats in the coming months, should Republicans remain stalled.

“This will be great if we get it done. And if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like,” Trump told the room. “And that’s okay. I understand that very well.”

Trump’s aside prompted some senators to exchange concerned glances during the meeting, according to a person briefed on it. To a number of them, Trump’s remark had the same ring as his comment a week earlier about the House’s health bill being “mean.” His enthusiasm, to them, was debatable.

Heller is a case study of the GOP turmoil. Heller, who is expected to face a tough reelection fight next year, wounded the bill’s chances of passage last week with a highly critical statement that left little room for compromise. The move irked leadership and soon the Trump-allied super PAC swooped in.

By Saturday, it was evident that the aggressive response to Heller was not blessed by McConnell, who called the ad buy “stupid” in a phone call with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who has long ties to the former Trump advisers who lead the super PAC, America First Policies.

“This has been way more difficult than it needs to be,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has publicly opposed the bill from the right.

McConnell unveiled the 142-page bill last Thursday after crafting it in secret. It came under immediate attack from conservative and moderate Republican senators, and from much of the health-care establishment.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) joined forces with three other Republicans — Paul, Johnson, and Mike Lee of Utah — to issue a statement saying that although they could not support the bill as written, they were open to negotiating changes that could ultimately win their backing.

On the other end of the GOP spectrum, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) said she also had “concerns about some of the provisions.” She opposed blocking federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as the Senate bill would do, and said she was unsettled by changes to Medicaid that would result in long-term federal spending cuts to the program, echoing Heller’s objections.

Conversations among McConnell’s staffers concentrated on Cruz and others who said they were open to voting for it if changes were made. Things could have been far worse, one McConnell confidant reasoned. If it was a rebellion, it seemed small in scale.

But the bill’s curtailing of Medicaid spending — including a $772 billion cut over the next decade — caused a lingering sense of heartburn for center-right Republicans.

Even before Senate GOP leaders debuted the bill, Republican governors from Medicaid expansion states had been issuing warnings. While some of these governors hailed from swing states, such as Ohio and Nevada, conservatives such as Arizona’s Doug Ducey (R) said that the proposed changes could prove too damaging for their states to handle.

McConnell’s advisers turned to the White House on Friday to assist with the cause but did not ask for a full-fledged push. Unlike when the House bill tottered and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called on Trump to rally members, McConnell wanted to keep the negotiations inside the Senate.

“In the early stages, candidly, it’s been kind of a waste of his time,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, explaining Trump’s more hands-off approach in the health-care discussions. “We needed to get this far enough down the path.”

Trump, who spoke with Cruz on Thursday, stayed in touch with the Texan, and aides planned calls by Trump to Paul and Lee. Paul, in particular, was seen as someone Trump could entice; they have a rapport from past rounds of golf, and Paul hails from a state that went heavily for Trump. A meeting was eventually arranged for Tuesday at the White House.

Vice President Pence, meanwhile, also set a series of meetings and made calls.

But Trump and his team ran into internal Senate GOP dramas that had little do with them, such as friction between McConnell and Johnson, who told reporters this week that he had never been contacted by the majority leader.

Senate GOP aides still worked through the weekend in hopes of teeing up a vote this week. But Heller’s discomfort and the subsequent threat from the Trump-aligned super PAC weighed on Republican minds. When McConnell associates and Trump’s legislative staffers reached out, conversations inevitably drifted to Heller and the confusion many senators felt about the White House’s role.

“My phone was blowing up!” one former Republican official said of the Heller fallout.

In Colorado, as hundreds of donors met for a three-day seminar organized by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, leaders from the constellation of organizations that support his agenda also outlined concerns.

“In all candor, we’ve been disappointed that movement is not more dramatic toward a full repeal or rollback,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. “We still think this can get done, but the Senate bill needs to get better.”

As Senate leaders feared, the bill’s fate took a turn for the worse Monday, when the CBO released an analysis concluding that the Senate bill would cause an estimated 22 million more Americans to be uninsured in the coming decade — just 1 million fewer than similar legislation passed by the House in early May.

A lobbyist close to Senate Republicans said the score was a devastating blow to McConnell. Senators felt they had been “sold a bill of goods,” the lobbyist said, and had expected the Senate bill to have greater distance from the House bill.

“It knocked the wind out of all the sails,” said a GOP aide.

Senators began to shift into two camps: those who wanted to attack the CBO’s methodology, and those who realized it would not matter once people back in their states heard the numbers.

Angst was apparent Monday afternoon and evening. In the hallway between McConnell’s office suite and the Senate chamber, reporters questioned grumbling Republican senators about what they planned to do next.

Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the chamber’s No. 2-ranking Republican, preemptively faulted Democrats for refusing to cooperate.

Around the corner, Cruz refused to directly answer a question about whether he would even vote to bring the bill to the floor and simply repeated his oft-stated goal of lowering premiums as the door to the elevator he was riding slowly closed.

“There were so many moving parts,” Paul said this week. “It’s not that it was impossible, but there wasn’t enough time.”

By Tuesday morning, Republicans were eager to avoid the topic as they headed to their usual Senate lunch, running from reporters who swarmed the elevators shouting questions.

McConnell’s final announcement of retreat at the Tuesday lunch was typically understated. He led off by saying that plans for a vote would be shelved until after the July 4 holiday but that deliberations would continue — and that the president would like to see everyone later that day.

Then it was time to vent. Some members ticked off their concerns about the CBO when four representatives from the nonpartisan agency joined the lunch. But, mostly, senators were caught off guard — rattled by the delay and by the knotty policy disagreements.

McConnell had led them to expect a vote this week, amid all the waffling. They had found it hard in recent days to determine the scope of the objections and sensed that Republican leaders, somehow, would announce a package of fixes that could get skeptics on board.

When asked when he realized the vote was off, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said, “Not until the leaders said we weren’t going to vote this week.”

The signs had been there, though, all along. So had the discontent about the entire endeavor: Heller and the super PAC barrage, the wrangling over Medicaid, the conservative outcry and the CBO. All of those issues hovered as Heller awkwardly tried to break the ice with Trump at the White House.

Heller knew the vote was off, but he was irritated by the pro-Trump super PAC and contended that he was only doing what some other senators were doing: listening to GOP governors who did not want to disrupt their states’ Medicaid funding.

One person close to Heller described his thinking as “doing what’s best for his state and Heller,” since he did not believe he could not count on Trump or the GOP to save his seat. Like most Republicans, he had long been for ACA repeal, but the mounting complications that came with passing the bill were just too much.

“Actually, let’s face it,” Cassidy said Tuesday. “When you saw four people publicly coming out and saying they wouldn’t vote for the motion to proceed — and you knew there were others that had concerns that weren’t voicing them — you knew it probably won’t happen.”

And so it didn’t, at least for now.

If one good thing is coming from this proposed atrocity of a bill, it's that it's revealing the internal tensions and disparities within the Repugliklan party and between the Repugliklan's and the presidunce. 

With this much contrariety, it's only a matter of time before the party that likes to call itself grand will simply tear itself apart. 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena, they haven't been grand since at least 1994, when Newt took over.

 

"Want to know whether Senate Republicans’ health-care bill can come back from the dead? Follow this Nevada senator."

Spoiler

When Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) came out in opposition to the health-care legislation last week, it was a surprise that, in hindsight, shouldn't have been a surprise.

Heller is an extreme version of the five to six senators who just politically can't vote for the bill, mostly because they fear it will yank away health care for hundreds of thousands in their respective states.

His opposition more or less killed this version of the bill, which was written in secret by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). And you should keep following what Heller says about it, because his support could almost single-handedly bring it back to life.

There are two main reasons there is just no way Heller could have voted for this bill as is. Consider:

1) Heller is the most vulnerable GOP senator up for reelection 2018:

He is the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state Hillary Clinton, not President Trump, won.

His elections have always been tight; he first won his Senate seat in 2012 by a margin of just 12,000 votes out of almost 900,000 cast.

A new poll shows the Senate's version of the health-care bill is definitely not popular among the independents that Heller needs to win his 2018 race.

...

(So far he has one challenger: Freshman Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).)

2) His state has tangibly benefited from Obamacare:

Nevada's GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval took Obama up on expanding Medicaid, which helped cut its uninsurance rate in half. (The Senate's bill would slash the federal government's funding for the health-care program for the poor by $722 billion over the next decade.)

Nevada is struggling with opioid addiction. Heller revealed Friday that his own mother became addicted to opioids after back surgery. (The Senate's bill has a fraction of the $45 billion that GOP senators want the federal government to give for addiction treatment services.)

Like every other Republican, Heller still maintains that Obamacare needs to be fixed. But there's nothing he can sell about a bill that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will cause 22 million more people to become uninsured and spike elder, low-income people's insurance premiums by 280 percent more over the next decade.

Given all that, it makes sense that Heller was the first moderate GOP senator to announce that he would vote “no.”

Here's how much he hates this legislation: The normally press-adverse senator held a news conference in Las Vegas on Friday, Nevada's Republican governor by his side, and knowing all of Washington was watching him, said: “I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes away insurance from tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.”

Heller held a telephone town hall Tuesday night that raised even more eyebrows. The normally declaration-adverse/controversy-adverse politician unloaded on the bill and Trump.

Nevada Independent journalist Jon Ralston was listening in:

...

We've spent all this time talking about one senator who opposes the legislation. Republican leaders have two “no” votes to divvy up and pass a version of this bill. They could theoretically give one to the symbolic leaders of the GOP's two separate “no” camps — Heller on the moderate side and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on the conservative side.

But if Heller can't get on board, there's little reason to think the half-dozen moderate senators who also hate this bill will. Heller's “no” has given cover to some of them to do the same. Even a nasty ad campaign by a pro-Trump group linking Heller to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hasn't deterred them.

Here's Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) talking to reporters outside the Capitol on Tuesday, a couple days after Heller's news conference: “I have so many fundamental problems with the bill that have been confirmed by the CBO report that it's difficult for me to see how any tinkering is going to satisfy my fundamental and deep concerns about the impact of the bill.”

“Tinkering will not do it,” declared Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a Wednesday morning CNN interview. “If we scale back Medicaid, which is good, we need to make it so that somebody goes off Medicaid for private insurance.”

And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told CNN that she can't vote for a bill that will undercut the 184,000 people in her state who are now insured via Medicaid because of Obamacare: “I've said repeatedly, I'm not going to drop you off a cliff, and in my view, the Senate bill was too much of a cliff.”

None of the above Medicaid senators are up for reelection in 2018 (though Collins could run for governor in Maine that year). Heller is. And his politically perilous situation, combined with the fact that his state represents an amalgamation of problems the Senate's health-care bill doesn't address, makes him the bellwether for his camp of opposition.

If Heller can get to “yes,” it's likely that the rest of the moderate senators can, too. And that would go a long way in helping revive Senate Republicans' health-care bill from the dead.

So, our hopes are with keeping Heller on the "no" side.

[GreyhoundFan]

"As GOP buckles down on health care, conservative media loses interest"

Spoiler

On Tuesday, the fate of the Republicans’ attempt to undo the Affordable Care Act dominated news out of Washington. Phones rattled with alerts about the decision to delay a vote until mid-July. Camera crews jostled for shots of senators meeting with President Trump, then boarding a bus that took them past jeering protesters.

A viewer tuning into Fox News that night hardly saw any of it.

The network’s prime-time shows, ratings kings of cable news, ignored the health-care story. Fox’s 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. shows began with stories about a sting video that caught a CNN producer dismissing his network’s coverage of Russia and the 2016 election. “The Five,” Fox’s 9 p.m. show, began with the “bombshell” news that President Barack Obama had said — in October 2016 — that it would be “impossible” to rig the election. Nine minutes were spent on the Senate bill before a segue way into the CNN story.

The lack of “Obamacare repeal” coverage, unthinkable just six months ago, reflected a general decline of conservative interest in what had united Republicans for seven years. Conservative grass-roots groups have either ignored the latest health-care details, like Americans for Prosperity, or lobbied against the bill, like the Club for Growth.

Meanwhile, the White House and a symbiotic conservative media have largely moved on to other topics of media bias and cultural warfare. Fox’s multiple segments on the CNN sting came after White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters to watch it. Rush Limbaugh, whose dominant talk show was live during the Senate news, barely mentioned it at all.

“It’s not that surprising,” said Charlie Sykes, a former talk radio host from Wisconsin who has condemned what he sees as a move toward tribalism on the right. “You look at the trajectory of conservative media and it’s not been policy-oriented for a long time. It’s about whether you get the win or not. There’s nothing for Rush Limbaugh to sex up about a bill that’s neither repeal nor reform.”

It was not always like that — not when it came to “Obamacare.” Coverage of the bill’s passage, at the height of the tea party movement, was generally robust, if focused on details that irritated Democrats. (Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi’s infamous promise that people would “know what’s in the bill” after it was passed was about “the fog of controversy” churned up by conservatives.)

As a grass-roots movement, the tea party has largely disappeared or shifted its focus to states, where it has won real victories against the ACA. Since the start of the year, it has been outnumbered by “resistance” activists who continue to crowd town hall meetings and rally outside of congressional offices. Despite the struggles of the repeal bill, pro-repeal protesters have been rare.

“It’s pretty quiet,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), one of the few Republican members of Congress who has held and advertised open town hall meetings — which have been swarmed by Democrats. “There’s some hope that we will be able to change this on a wholesale level; other folks are saying no, the handwriting’s on the wall. It’s a fairly one-sided political equation in my district and in the districts I’m familiar with.”

Coverage on Fox News has captured the shift in real time. On the network, the only one that has scored presidential interviews this month, the repeal fight is covered as a priority of President Trump that his allies in Congress are doing a poor job of managing. In a friendly weekend interview, Fox contributor Pete Hegseth framed the health-care fight as a battle between unhinged Democrats and a careful president. He asked just one question about the bill itself: “Are Republican senators doing enough to have your back to get that health-care bill through?”

On Wednesday morning, “Fox and Friends” devoted just a few segments to the bill, all of them framed around a process that was unfair to the president.

“They had one job — repeal Obamacare!” said conservative columnist Michelle Malkin in the day’s first segment on the Senate news. “That’s it! And it’s fairly clear to most Americans what repeal means.”

The network’s stable of reporters and pundits lit into Republicans for failing the president. “How many stories have we heard in the last week about how Mitch McConnell’s going to get this done, how he’s a master technician?” asked “Fox and Friends” anchor Steve Doocy. “When push came to shove, and we got closer and closer, he had so many members of his caucus say they didn’t even want to vote on having a vote!”

“I could not believe that Susan Collins went out of the way to diss the president,” added co-anchor Brian Kilmeade.

Griff Jenkins, a color reporter for the network, appeared in a later segment to warn that Republicans might face consequences for their delay. “They’re going home to parades and barbecues where they’re going to get an earful of ‘why can’t you just get it done?’” he insisted.

There’s little evidence for that risk. Since the House first introduced its “repeal” bill, voters have recoiled from it. A new Quinnipiac Poll, released Wednesday, found just 37 percent of Republicans approving of the repeal effort, by far the biggest source of support in any voter group, and still underwater.

There was more conservative energy behind the stories Fox did cover on Tuesday night. The CNN story, sparked by a retracted report on Russia and Trump and inflamed by the sting video, sprawled across multiple segments; Sean Hannity, the 10 p.m. host, reported it as a “news alert.” Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. show featured the first interview with Charles Murray, the conservative intellectual, since he was shouted out of a speech at Middlebury College. “The Five” spent as much time on health care as it did in a later segment about the job effects of Seattle hiking its minimum wage to $15 per hour.

When the show’s hosts discussed health care, it was largely a contest of who could roll their eyes the fastest at criticism of the bill.

“They really think that these Republicans want to kill, what, 100,000 people — everybody’s going to die, it’s murder and mayhem, just to give the top one percent richest people a bit of a tax break?” said “The Five” co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle. “That just makes absolutely no sense.”

Coverage of whether Republicans can “win” on health care, Sykes noted, had long ago surpassed coverage of what was in the bill itself.

“Maybe we’ve reached peak hypocrisy,” Sykes said. “Having spent years attacking Obamacare, it may be a bridge too far for conservative talkers to urge Republicans to do it faster and with less transparency. How do you do a talk show saying: Hey, it’s great that they did in secret! It’s great — no hearings.”

No surprise that Faux is short on substance, we all know that.

[fraurosena]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"As GOP buckles down on health care, conservative media loses interest"

  Reveal hidden contents

On Tuesday, the fate of the Republicans’ attempt to undo the Affordable Care Act dominated news out of Washington. Phones rattled with alerts about the decision to delay a vote until mid-July. Camera crews jostled for shots of senators meeting with President Trump, then boarding a bus that took them past jeering protesters.

A viewer tuning into Fox News that night hardly saw any of it.

The network’s prime-time shows, ratings kings of cable news, ignored the health-care story. Fox’s 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. shows began with stories about a sting video that caught a CNN producer dismissing his network’s coverage of Russia and the 2016 election. “The Five,” Fox’s 9 p.m. show, began with the “bombshell” news that President Barack Obama had said — in October 2016 — that it would be “impossible” to rig the election. Nine minutes were spent on the Senate bill before a segue way into the CNN story.

The lack of “Obamacare repeal” coverage, unthinkable just six months ago, reflected a general decline of conservative interest in what had united Republicans for seven years. Conservative grass-roots groups have either ignored the latest health-care details, like Americans for Prosperity, or lobbied against the bill, like the Club for Growth.

Meanwhile, the White House and a symbiotic conservative media have largely moved on to other topics of media bias and cultural warfare. Fox’s multiple segments on the CNN sting came after White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters to watch it. Rush Limbaugh, whose dominant talk show was live during the Senate news, barely mentioned it at all.

“It’s not that surprising,” said Charlie Sykes, a former talk radio host from Wisconsin who has condemned what he sees as a move toward tribalism on the right. “You look at the trajectory of conservative media and it’s not been policy-oriented for a long time. It’s about whether you get the win or not. There’s nothing for Rush Limbaugh to sex up about a bill that’s neither repeal nor reform.”

It was not always like that — not when it came to “Obamacare.” Coverage of the bill’s passage, at the height of the tea party movement, was generally robust, if focused on details that irritated Democrats. (Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi’s infamous promise that people would “know what’s in the bill” after it was passed was about “the fog of controversy” churned up by conservatives.)

As a grass-roots movement, the tea party has largely disappeared or shifted its focus to states, where it has won real victories against the ACA. Since the start of the year, it has been outnumbered by “resistance” activists who continue to crowd town hall meetings and rally outside of congressional offices. Despite the struggles of the repeal bill, pro-repeal protesters have been rare.

“It’s pretty quiet,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), one of the few Republican members of Congress who has held and advertised open town hall meetings — which have been swarmed by Democrats. “There’s some hope that we will be able to change this on a wholesale level; other folks are saying no, the handwriting’s on the wall. It’s a fairly one-sided political equation in my district and in the districts I’m familiar with.”

Coverage on Fox News has captured the shift in real time. On the network, the only one that has scored presidential interviews this month, the repeal fight is covered as a priority of President Trump that his allies in Congress are doing a poor job of managing. In a friendly weekend interview, Fox contributor Pete Hegseth framed the health-care fight as a battle between unhinged Democrats and a careful president. He asked just one question about the bill itself: “Are Republican senators doing enough to have your back to get that health-care bill through?”

On Wednesday morning, “Fox and Friends” devoted just a few segments to the bill, all of them framed around a process that was unfair to the president.

“They had one job — repeal Obamacare!” said conservative columnist Michelle Malkin in the day’s first segment on the Senate news. “That’s it! And it’s fairly clear to most Americans what repeal means.”

The network’s stable of reporters and pundits lit into Republicans for failing the president. “How many stories have we heard in the last week about how Mitch McConnell’s going to get this done, how he’s a master technician?” asked “Fox and Friends” anchor Steve Doocy. “When push came to shove, and we got closer and closer, he had so many members of his caucus say they didn’t even want to vote on having a vote!”

“I could not believe that Susan Collins went out of the way to diss the president,” added co-anchor Brian Kilmeade.

Griff Jenkins, a color reporter for the network, appeared in a later segment to warn that Republicans might face consequences for their delay. “They’re going home to parades and barbecues where they’re going to get an earful of ‘why can’t you just get it done?’” he insisted.

There’s little evidence for that risk. Since the House first introduced its “repeal” bill, voters have recoiled from it. A new Quinnipiac Poll, released Wednesday, found just 37 percent of Republicans approving of the repeal effort, by far the biggest source of support in any voter group, and still underwater.

There was more conservative energy behind the stories Fox did cover on Tuesday night. The CNN story, sparked by a retracted report on Russia and Trump and inflamed by the sting video, sprawled across multiple segments; Sean Hannity, the 10 p.m. host, reported it as a “news alert.” Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. show featured the first interview with Charles Murray, the conservative intellectual, since he was shouted out of a speech at Middlebury College. “The Five” spent as much time on health care as it did in a later segment about the job effects of Seattle hiking its minimum wage to $15 per hour.

When the show’s hosts discussed health care, it was largely a contest of who could roll their eyes the fastest at criticism of the bill.

“They really think that these Republicans want to kill, what, 100,000 people — everybody’s going to die, it’s murder and mayhem, just to give the top one percent richest people a bit of a tax break?” said “The Five” co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle. “That just makes absolutely no sense.”

Coverage of whether Republicans can “win” on health care, Sykes noted, had long ago surpassed coverage of what was in the bill itself.

“Maybe we’ve reached peak hypocrisy,” Sykes said. “Having spent years attacking Obamacare, it may be a bridge too far for conservative talkers to urge Republicans to do it faster and with less transparency. How do you do a talk show saying: Hey, it’s great that they did in secret! It’s great — no hearings.”

No surprise that Faux is short on substance, we all know that.

Despite its name, Faux News is most definitely not a news network. It is a DOH-propaganda machine. No more, no less. 
As the presidunce sidelines the MSM more and more, you will notice that he will propagate Faux as the only reliable source of 'news' aside from his personal twitter tirades, so he can brainwash the public with his preferred propaganda. Classic authoritarian move. And scary to see happening before our very eyes.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a bit depressing: "The Daily 202: Even sweeping the suburbs would not be enough for Democrats to win the House majority"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: To win the House majority in the midterms, Democrats will need to make big gains with suburban voters, defend incumbents in rural districts where President Trump remains popular, topple a handful of Republicans in the Sun Belt and probably win a handful of seats that still aren’t on anyone’s radar.

The opposition party needs to win 24 seats to take control of the House in 2018. Understandably, operatives and handicappers have focused on the 23 districts that Republicans hold, which voted for Hillary Clinton last year. But some of the incumbents are very popular, with brands that are distinct from Trump’s, and they are unlikely to lose no matter how bad the headwinds become.

In other words, it’s inconceivable that Democrats run the table in those 23 districts. Even if they did, they’d still be one short. And Democrats must defend 12 seats in districts that Trump carried in 2016.

Third Way did a deep dive to try to understand what the 2018 playing field will look like. The center-left think tank focused on 65 “Majority Makers,” the battlegrounds where a majority would most likely be won. Using 48 Census data points, two experts from the moderate group looked at variables such as how many people moved into a district over the past year, what percentage of residents have access to broadband Internet and how many houses are vacant.

They divided the swing districts into four categories: Thriving Suburban Communities, Left Behind Areas, Diverse/Fast-Growing Regions, and Non-Conformist Districts. Their report, shared first with The Daily 202, includes a rich data set (in a downloadable Excel file) so you can play around with the metrics for yourself.

...

The numbers underscore how different even the 23 GOP-held Clinton districts are demographically. Many are suburban and overwhelmingly white. Others are rural and heavily Latino. Within the broad categories, there are stark differences on income, educational attainment and employment rates. More than half of adults in New Jersey’s 7th District, for example, graduated from college. Only 17 percent in California’s 10th District did.

“The most important takeaway is that there is no one kind of voter or district that can deliver the House for Democrats in 2018,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, the vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way. “There’s been a lot of focus on suburban districts. There’s no doubt that those are important, but there are not enough of them to win the House.”

Hatalsky, who co-authored the report with Ryan Pougiales, emphasized that Democrats still would not win the House even if they could get every single 2016 Clinton voter who backed a Republican House candidate to turn out again in 2018 and cross over.

“You can’t get to a House majority without winning over Trump voters,” she said. “There are some people who definitely want to believe that they can because they still don’t know how to deal with Trump voters and are intimidated by the idea of appealing to them.”

Third Way’s new study is an interesting contribution to the debate that’s now raging among elite Democrats about what the party’s theory of the case should be going into 2018. It may seem early to some, but this is prime candidate recruitment season. Decisions that will be made in the coming weeks about who the Democratic establishment coalesces behind could make the difference 16 months from now between whether Nancy Pelosi retires, stays on as House minority leader or becomes speaker again.

National Democrats have lurched to the left in recent years. Clinton felt she needed to become more liberal during the 2016 primaries to fend off an unexpectedly robust challenge from Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian socialist from Vermont, and reactivate the unenthusiastic coalition that powered Barack Obama’s two victories. Even Bill Clinton found himself on the defensive over his third-way roots.

Hardcore progressives have been the loudest voices in the debate over the party’s future since November. The tea-party-like “resistance” movement that has erupted in response to Trump has put growing pressure on elected Democrats to call for a new era of big government by embracing proposals like single-payer health care, a $15 national minimum wage and tuition-free college.

There is palpable concern among moderate Democrats that the party will squander precious pick-up opportunities in the midterms, and even allow Trump to get reelected in 2020, by nominating unelectable liberals. One episode that gives credence to their fears: When House Democrats went to their February retreat in Baltimore, several progressive groups protested that a Third Way executive was even invited to speak about how the party could find its way out of the wilderness.

Third Way believes Democrats must embrace ideological diversity to take back legislative seats that were lost during the Obama era at the federal and state level. “There are a lot of different kinds of candidates and policies we’re going to have to welcome into the coalition to win,” Hatalsky said. “There’s no single kind of candidate that would resonate in all these places. The idea of purification – that we just need one kind of person who is going to bring us the majority – is not borne out by how different these places look. … The upshot from our perspective is that we need an all-of-the-above strategy. We need to take a wider look at the kinds of candidates you need and the sort of agenda to address.”

When I spoke by phone yesterday afternoon with Hatalsky, she was between interviews with voters in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. It’s part of a national tour that she has embarked on to better understand the dynamics in GOP-held Clinton districts and Democratic-held Trump districts. Little Havana is in the heart of a Florida district that has been represented by retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen since 1989. Clinton won there by more than 20 points.

“Both in thriving suburban communities and fast growing diverse regions, these folks are mostly not in poverty,” Hatalsky said. “They’re in the growing middle class. They see their fortunes rising. They have different perspectives about how the economy impacts their life. They’re not looking for more safety nets. They’re looking for more opportunities.”

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why is it so hard for Republicans to pass a health-care bill?"

Spoiler

Almost every Republican in Congress can agree with what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said earlier this week: It's really, really important they pass a health-care bill as soon as possible.

“I think it's probably the most, it's the biggest signature issue we have,” Ryan told “Fox & Friends.” “And it's the biggest promise we've ever made in the modern era. We said if we get elected, we will repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Which raises the question: Why can't they do it? “It’s sad, in a way,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told my colleagues at The Washington Post. “We control all three branches and yet we’re not interested or able to do what we’ve pledged.”

I've been following this closely and speaking with nonpartisan health-care policy experts and political observers throughout the tumultuous process. I've come up with a few, not mutually exclusive theories as to why it's really, really hard for Republicans to actually pass a health-care bill even though they all want to.

1) They underestimated how hard stopping a social program in its tracks would be

Saying: “I'm going to repeal and replace Obamacare” takes about 3.5 seconds. (I timed it.)

But apparently it takes more than seven years to actually do it. Republicans have been universally promising the above for seven years and, when they finally got control of Washington in January, they didn't have a plan on how to do it.

Maybe they thought it was going to be easy once they controlled all levers of power. More likely, they weren't sure how to roll back a major social program that 20 million people now rely on to keep in check the most personal of all things, their health.

Republicans needed a well thought-out plan. You can't repeal something without immediately having something to replace it with, Gary Claxton, an analyst at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, told me in January when this whole process was getting started.

“The longer the period between repeal and replace is, the more the market unravels,” Claxton said. “And you've blown up the bridge behind you, and you're heading into battle, you can't go backward. You've gotta figure it out, or else things get really bad.”

Instead, largely behind closed doors, they slapped something together.

2) They underestimated how ideologically varied their party has become

Republican leaders have been grappling for years with a growing bloc of principled conservatives who are politically rewarded in their conservative districts for not compromising.

But it feels like they were caught off guard by an equally influential, somewhat larger and just as intransigent faction of moderates.

These moderates campaigned on repealing Obamacare, but when it came time to pull the lever that would take away health care for hundreds of thousands of their constituents, they just can't politically do it. (The Senate bill could leave the equivalent of 16 states' population uninsured over the next decade, compared to Obamacare.)

...

Now, this group sounds like they'd rather work within the existing structures of Obamacare rather than take its benefits away.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told CNN that she can't vote for a bill that will undercut the 184,000 people in her state who are now insured via Medicaid because of Obamacare: “I've said repeatedly, I'm not going to drop you off a cliff.”

3) They're trying to do it without Democrats

Yes, Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010 without any Republican votes either. (Though Democrats say they tried: “We spent months — at the detriment of the process — trying to get Republicans on board, only to give up,” said Jim Manley, an aide to Senate Democratic leadership at the time.)

Forging ahead on major legislation solo is a problem for the party doing the forging for three reasons:

• When you try to pass something with just one party, you have to rely on fewer votes. In 2010, Senate Democrats barely passed Obamacare and they had 60 members. This time, Republicans have 52. “There is just not a majority of Republicans around any one approach to this problem,” said Alice Rivlin, a senior health-care policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
• To avoid a Democratic filibuster, Republicans have to abide by a budgetary rule that limits how much of the health-insurance market they can actually change, which limits their ability to make substantial changes to Obamacare.
• Whatever happens with people's health care after this, Republicans will own it. That's why the prospect of an estimated 22 million fewer insured over the next decade is a hard vote for a sizable chunk of the party to take.

...

4) They don't have a president they can rely on

President Trump has been largely invisible in this process, and when he has been visible, he's arguably mucked it up.

When the House was trying to drag its bill across the finish line, Trump seemed uninterested. Until it failed, at which point he attacked various Republicans in the process. Then it passed, and Trump held a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony with House Republicans.

Now it's in the Senate, and Republicans say Trump has given little guidance about what he wants or what he'll sign. Other than to say that the bill he cheered on in the Rose Garden was “mean” and he wants something “with more heart.”

The president of the United States has enormous leverage to be a closer. But most of the time, Trump appears to be ignoring the process or directly undercutting it. Which isn't helping Republicans complete the nearly impossible task of passing health-care reform.

Short answer: because they are stupid and don't care about people.