United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[GreyhoundFan]

This worries me. They are obviously hoping to pull in Murkowski: "Cassidy-Graham bill provision would exempt Alaska, Montana from a cap on Medicaid spending"

Spoiler

As GOP leaders continue to drum up support for the health-care proposal written by Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), a provision buried deep in the 140-page bill benefiting Alaska has begun to draw greater scrutiny.

Beginning on page 95, the bill has a provision that exempts low-density states whose block grants either decrease or stay flat between 2020 and 2026 from the Medicaid per capita cap. Under that scenario, Alaska and Montana would be exempted from the funding cap that applies to all other states during that period.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has been negotiating behind closed doors with Senate GOP leaders on the measure, and neither she nor the state’s junior senator, Dan Sullivan (R), have said how they would vote if the legislation came to the floor next week. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) joined nine other governors Tuesday in sending a letter to Senate leaders indicating opposition to Cassidy-Graham in its current form.

In an interview Thursday, Walker said he was still looking for the kind of assurances that would allow him to support the bill but had not yet received them.

“I’m concerned about protecting Alaskans, and my comfort level is just not there yet,” he said, adding that the bill has to be written “in such a way that Alaska does not get hurt in the process.”

Constraining federal health-care dollars through a fixed block grant, Walker said, poses particular problems because Alaska has so many remote communities and that, in turn, drives up the cost of health-care delivery.

“You can’t drive to 82 percent of our communities. That’s a concern,” he said. “When it comes to our health-care costs, they’re clearly the highest in the nation.”

ARGH.

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This worries me. They are obviously hoping to pull in Murkowski: "Cassidy-Graham bill provision would exempt Alaska, Montana from a cap on Medicaid spending"

  Reveal hidden contents

As GOP leaders continue to drum up support for the health-care proposal written by Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), a provision buried deep in the 140-page bill benefiting Alaska has begun to draw greater scrutiny.

Beginning on page 95, the bill has a provision that exempts low-density states whose block grants either decrease or stay flat between 2020 and 2026 from the Medicaid per capita cap. Under that scenario, Alaska and Montana would be exempted from the funding cap that applies to all other states during that period.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has been negotiating behind closed doors with Senate GOP leaders on the measure, and neither she nor the state’s junior senator, Dan Sullivan (R), have said how they would vote if the legislation came to the floor next week. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) joined nine other governors Tuesday in sending a letter to Senate leaders indicating opposition to Cassidy-Graham in its current form.

In an interview Thursday, Walker said he was still looking for the kind of assurances that would allow him to support the bill but had not yet received them.

“I’m concerned about protecting Alaskans, and my comfort level is just not there yet,” he said, adding that the bill has to be written “in such a way that Alaska does not get hurt in the process.”

Constraining federal health-care dollars through a fixed block grant, Walker said, poses particular problems because Alaska has so many remote communities and that, in turn, drives up the cost of health-care delivery.

“You can’t drive to 82 percent of our communities. That’s a concern,” he said. “When it comes to our health-care costs, they’re clearly the highest in the nation.”

ARGH.

This is just disgusting. They are obviously bribing Murkowski. How is this going to unite our country? These idiots don't understand that they're pandering to the minority. How is giving the state with the highest health care costs and the fewest people more money than other states fair? 

[GreyhoundFan]

@GrumpyGran -- I'm sure some of the Repugs are salivating at the idea of Cassidy-Graham screwing over California and New York.

[LeftCoastLurker]

@GrumpyGran said "How is giving the state with the highest health care costs and the fewest people more money than other states fair?"

As a resident of that state, it's simple.  We're BLUE! 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, Rufus, please let this be true: "McCain says he will vote ‘no’ on Cassidy-Graham bill, dealing potentially decisive blow to the health-care repeal effort'

Spoiler

In a lengthy written statement, Sen. John McCain said he "cannot in good conscience" vote for the proposal from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), which GOP leaders have been aiming to bring to the Senate floor next week.

"I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it," said McCain.

McCain was the deciding no vote on the last Senate health-care bill.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

http://abc7chicago.com/politics/sen-john-mccain-announces-opposition-to-health-care-bill-dashing-hopes-for-gop-leaders/2443492/

 

Quote

Republican Sen. John McCain announced his opposition to the Graham-Cassidy health care bill Friday, dashing hopes for GOP leaders who wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

McCain released a statement Friday:

"I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won't be available by the end of the month, we won't have reliable answers to any of those questions."

Hopefully McCain, Collins, and Paul are enough to torpedo this abomination. Again...

[fraurosena]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This worries me. They are obviously hoping to pull in Murkowski: "Cassidy-Graham bill provision would exempt Alaska, Montana from a cap on Medicaid spending"

  Hide contents

As GOP leaders continue to drum up support for the health-care proposal written by Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), a provision buried deep in the 140-page bill benefiting Alaska has begun to draw greater scrutiny.

Beginning on page 95, the bill has a provision that exempts low-density states whose block grants either decrease or stay flat between 2020 and 2026 from the Medicaid per capita cap. Under that scenario, Alaska and Montana would be exempted from the funding cap that applies to all other states during that period.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has been negotiating behind closed doors with Senate GOP leaders on the measure, and neither she nor the state’s junior senator, Dan Sullivan (R), have said how they would vote if the legislation came to the floor next week. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) joined nine other governors Tuesday in sending a letter to Senate leaders indicating opposition to Cassidy-Graham in its current form.

In an interview Thursday, Walker said he was still looking for the kind of assurances that would allow him to support the bill but had not yet received them.

“I’m concerned about protecting Alaskans, and my comfort level is just not there yet,” he said, adding that the bill has to be written “in such a way that Alaska does not get hurt in the process.”

Constraining federal health-care dollars through a fixed block grant, Walker said, poses particular problems because Alaska has so many remote communities and that, in turn, drives up the cost of health-care delivery.

“You can’t drive to 82 percent of our communities. That’s a concern,” he said. “When it comes to our health-care costs, they’re clearly the highest in the nation.”

ARGH.

While the last iteration was being promoted, she stated that she would only vote for a healthcare bill that would lead to better healthcare for all states, not only for Alaska. I hope she keeps her word.

As it seems John McCain is sticking to his NO vote, from the above posts and from the tweet below, and if Collins and Murkowski join him again, it looks like the bill is dead in the water already. But wouldn't it be great if even more repugs voted against?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sanscrotum is on CNN, shouting over Brooke Baldwin that the Repugs know much more about affordable care than the ACA. I had to change the channel before I started throwing things at his smarmy face.

[fraurosena]

8 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

the Repugs know much more about affordable care than the ACA

 Well, ok. As long as we're clear on that then... 

 

Oh, and of course Lindsey Graham is in full on denial.

Good grief, this is going above and beyond showing that you're masochistic. Those donor's really must have him by the balls...

[GreyhoundFan]

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Those donor's really must have him by the balls...

Nah, they'd be too small to find. They have him by the short hairs.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Nah, they'd be too small to find. They have him by the short hairs.

Welll... those donors are rich enough to own a pair of tweezers. Or one of those tick-removers.

 

They might do nicely, in a pinch.  

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- they can also afford microscopes!

[candygirl200413]

I read that Arizona would have lost 1.2-1.3 BILLION dollars in aid for healthcare so I'm wondering if that woke up McCain. I guess I'm also surprised that Graham didn't put something in the bill like he did with Murowski(? or whoever is the one the senator in Alaska).

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

As it seems John McCain is sticking to his NO vote, from the above posts and from the tweet below, and if Collins and Murkowski join him again, it looks like the bill is dead in the water already. But wouldn't it be great if even more repugs voted against?

Maybe Trump shouldn't have mocked McCain's time as a POW. Watching the Vietnam documentary last night I learned that McCain's capture was a big big deal at the time.  His father was an Admiral, and the North Vietnamese used footage of McCain as a taunt to the US.  Then pathetic little coward Trump comes along and bullies the Senator for being shot down.

I'm not saying all people who didn't fight in the war were cowards, far from it. But, Trump, Ted Nugent and Limbaugh made up fake "medical" reasons not to go. They have never done a single kind act in their lives.  

Yes I hate them.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, onekidanddone said:

Maybe Trump shouldn't have mocked McCain's time as a POW. Watching the Vietnam documentary last night I learned that McCain's capture was a big big deal at time.  His father was an Admiral and the North Vietnamese. used footage of McCain as a taunt to the US.  Then pathetic little coward Trump comes along and bullies the Senator for being shot down.

Oh noes, @onekidanddone, don't say that! If the presidunce hadn't mocked McCain, then you'd have that horrible zombie bill instead of healthcare. So let's take a moment and be thankful that the mandarin menace was a mocking moron to McCain.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

So let's take a moment and be thankful that the mandarin menace was a mocking moron to McCain.

Yes, true. TT has mocked many other Senators and yet they still roll over and show their jugular. I'm thinking maybe Rand Paul can't be bought.  I can't stand his politics, but he seems to me as if he totally out of gives a fuck.  I'm thinking Snow is going to vote no as well.  As for Murkowski,  seems they are trying to buy her off in such a disgusting transparent fashion. If she caves I hope she rots.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because it's all about the donors, not the constituents: "Behind New Obamacare Repeal Vote: ‘Furious’ G.O.P. Donors"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — As more than 40 subdued Republican senators lunched on Chick-fil-A at a closed-door session last week, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado painted a dire picture for his colleagues. Campaign fund-raising was drying up, he said, because of widespread disappointment among donors over the inability of the Republican Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act or do much of anything else.

Mr. Gardner is in charge of his party’s midterm re-election push, and he warned that donors of all stripes were refusing to contribute another penny until the struggling majority produced some concrete results.

“Donors are furious,” one person knowledgeable about the private meeting quoted Mr. Gardner as saying. “We haven’t kept our promise.”

The backlash from big donors as well as the grass roots panicked Senate Republicans and was part of the motivation behind the sudden zeal to take one last crack at repealing the health care law before the end of the month. That effort faltered Friday with new opposition from Senator John McCain of Arizona, the perennial maverick who had scuttled the Senate’s first repeal effort. Now Republicans must confront the possibility that they will once again let down their backers with no big win in sight.

The latest unsightly pileup over health care was exactly what some Republicans had wanted to avoid by abandoning the repeal effort and skipping straight to tax cuts after the previous embarrassing health care collapse about eight weeks ago. Instead, Senate Republicans got caught up in a rushed, last-ditch repeal attempt that not only seems unlikely to prevail, but will only serve to remind disillusioned donors about the party’s governing difficulties.

This was not what Republicans had envisioned. Preparing for the 2018 midterm elections, they had thought they were in a strong position to maintain or expand their majority. Democrats must defend 25 seats — including 10 in states won last year by President Trump — while just eight Republican-held seats will be on the ballot. But their governing struggles — and attacks on congressional leaders by Mr. Trump — have soured their base, leaving the Senate majority feeling desperate.

Addressing his anxious colleagues at their weekly meeting on Sept. 12, Mr. Gardner had a simple message: If we don’t have something to run on, we are going to squander this opportunity.

Republican senators strive to keep discussions at their weekly luncheons secret to allow for candid discussions. This meeting was held off the Capitol grounds, at the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to enable a broad discussion of politics. Neither lawmakers nor staff would go on the record to discuss it, but the session was described by multiple people knowledgeable about what occurred.

They said Mr. Gardner did not specifically urge approval of the so-called Graham-Cassidy health proposal that Republicans were considering bringing to the Senate floor next week. He was seen as speaking more generally and mainly looking forward to the coming debate over tax cuts.

But the fund-raising drought has become a growing worry and lawmakers have not been reticent about noting that their political fate could be tied to the outcome on health care and how Senate Republicans handle other issues ahead.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who has been deeply involved in health policy for years, told reporters back home that he could count 10 reasons the new health proposal should not reach the floor, but that Republicans needed to press ahead regardless in order to fulfill their longstanding promise to replace and repeal President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“Republicans campaigned on this so often that we have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign,” Grassley said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. “That’s pretty much as much of a reason as the substance of the bill.”

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, was even more blunt in a conversation with Vox. “If we do nothing, it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections, and whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel,” he said.

Republicans say the fund-raising drop-off has been steep and across the board, from big donations to the small ones the party solicits online from the grass roots. They say the hostile views of both large and small donors are in unusual alignment and that the negative sentiment is crystallized in the fund-raising decline.

One party official noted that Senate Republicans had a lucrative March, raising $7 million — an off-year record for the organization. But in the aftermath of the failed health repeal effort before the August recess and other setbacks, the take dropped to $2 million in July and August — a poor showing for a majority party with a decided advantage on the midterm map.

The totals have left Republicans increasingly worried about having the funds they need next year. Mr. Gardner told his colleagues that a major Colorado contributor who played a role in his own campaign says party donors are reluctant to give any more money until congressional Republicans demonstrate results.

Party operatives say it is hard to assess the full impact of Mr. Trump’s summer attacks on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, as well as the president’s frustration at the inability of the Republican-led Congress to repeal the health care law. But they assume his criticism has been a factor in driving down support.

Senate Republicans are entering a pivotal week. They have been scrambling to find the votes for the contentious new repeal effort before the Sept. 30 expiration of special budget authority, which would allow the bill to pass with a simple majority and not 60 votes. But Mr. McCain’s decision to join at least two other Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — in finding fault with the measure put its fate in real peril.

If the bill is short of votes, Mr. McConnell could choose not to bring it to the floor at all to prevent a second embarrassing defeat on health care and spare Republicans a difficult vote.

Mr. McConnell faces other immediate challenges as well. A primary on Tuesday in Alabama pits his candidate, Senator Luther Strange, against Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court challenging him as an outsider. The defeat of Mr. Strange would further rattle his colleagues and be seen as a major rebuke to Mr. McConnell and the Republican establishment in Washington for their failure to deliver on health care repeal and other issues.

Republicans are also set to roll out their income tax overhaul plan next week in an effort to build support for it and find something the party can deliver to the president’s desk. They see the tax plan as their best opportunity to win back the allegiance of donors.

With health care repeal teetering yet again, the one thing they know for sure is that they need to show some accomplishments, and they need to do so fast.

I hope they can't "accomplish" screwing over the American public on either healthcare or tax cuts for the wealthy.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent op-ed from the NYT: "Cruelty, Incompetence and Lies"

Spoiler

Graham-Cassidy, the health bill the Senate may vote on next week, is stunningly cruel. It’s also incompetently drafted: The bill’s sponsors clearly had no idea what they were doing when they put it together. Furthermore, their efforts to sell the bill involve obvious, blatant lies.

Nonetheless, the bill could pass. And that says a lot about today’s Republican Party, none of it good.

The Affordable Care Act, which has reduced the percentage of Americans without health insurance to a record low, created a three-legged stool: regulations that prevent insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, a requirement that individuals have adequate insurance (and thus pay into the system while healthy) and subsidies to make that insurance affordable. For the lowest-income families, insurance is provided directly by Medicaid.

Graham-Cassidy saws off all three legs of that stool. Like other Republican plans, it eliminates the individual mandate. It replaces direct aid to individuals with block grants to states, under a formula that sharply reduces funding relative to current law, and especially penalizes states that have done a good job of reducing the number of uninsured. And it effectively eliminates protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

Did Graham-Cassidy’s sponsors know what they were doing when putting this bill together? Almost surely not, or they wouldn’t have produced something that everyone, and I mean everyone, who knows anything about health care warns would cause chaos.

It’s not just progressives: The American Medical Association, the insurance industry and Blue Cross/Blue Shield have all warned that markets would be destabilized and millions would lose coverage.

How many people would lose insurance? Republicans are trying to ram the bill through before the Congressional Budget Office has time to analyze it — an attempt that is in itself a violation of all previous norms, and amounts to an admission that the bill can’t bear scrutiny. But C.B.O. has analyzed other bills containing some of Graham-Cassidy’s provisions, and these previous analyses suggest that it would add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the uninsured.

Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, and the bill’s other sponsors have responded to these critiques the old-fashioned way — with lies.

Both Cassidy and Graham insist that their bill would continue to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions — a claim that will come as news to the A.M.A., Blue Cross and everyone else who has read the bill’s text.

Cassidy has also circulated a spreadsheet that purports to show most states actually getting increased funding under his bill. But the spreadsheet doesn’t compare funding with current law, which is the relevant question. Instead, it shows changes over time in dollar amounts.

That’s actually a well-known dodge, one that Republicans have been using since Newt Gingrich tried to gut Medicare in the 1990s. As everyone in Congress — even Cassidy — surely knows, such comparisons drastically understate the real size of cuts, since under current law spending is expected to rise with inflation and population growth.

Independent analyses find that most states would, in fact, experience serious cuts in federal aid — and everyone would face huge cuts after 2027.

So we’re looking at an incompetently drafted bill that would hurt millions of people, whose sponsors are trying to sell it with transparently false claims. How is it that this bill might nonetheless pass the Senate?

One answer is that Republicans are desperate to destroy President Barack Obama’s legacy in any way possible, no matter how many American lives they ruin in the process.

Another answer is that most Republican legislators neither know nor care about policy substance. This is especially true on health care, where they never tried to understand why Obamacare looks the way it does, or how to devise a nonvicious alternative. Vox asked a number of G.O.P. senators to explain what Graham-Cassidy does; the answers ranged from incoherence to belligerence to belligerent incoherence.

I’d add that the evasions and lies we’re seeing on this bill have been standard G.O.P. operating procedure for years. The trick of converting federal programs into block grants, then pretending that this wouldn’t mean savage cuts, was central to every one of Paul Ryan’s much-hyped budgets. The trick of comparing dollar numbers over time to conceal huge benefit cuts has, as I already noted, been around since the 1990s.

In other words, Graham-Cassidy isn’t an aberration; it’s more like the distilled essence of everything wrong with modern Republicans.

Will this awful bill become law? I have no idea. But even if the handful of Republican senators who retain some conscience block it — we’re looking at you, John McCain — the underlying sickness of the G.O.P. will remain.

It’s sort of a pre-existing condition, and it’s poisoning America.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with the author. Evasions, lies, and incompetence are the three legs of the Repug stool.

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Excellent op-ed from the NYT: "Cruelty, Incompetence and Lies"

  Reveal hidden contents

Graham-Cassidy, the health bill the Senate may vote on next week, is stunningly cruel. It’s also incompetently drafted: The bill’s sponsors clearly had no idea what they were doing when they put it together. Furthermore, their efforts to sell the bill involve obvious, blatant lies.

Nonetheless, the bill could pass. And that says a lot about today’s Republican Party, none of it good.

The Affordable Care Act, which has reduced the percentage of Americans without health insurance to a record low, created a three-legged stool: regulations that prevent insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, a requirement that individuals have adequate insurance (and thus pay into the system while healthy) and subsidies to make that insurance affordable. For the lowest-income families, insurance is provided directly by Medicaid.

Graham-Cassidy saws off all three legs of that stool. Like other Republican plans, it eliminates the individual mandate. It replaces direct aid to individuals with block grants to states, under a formula that sharply reduces funding relative to current law, and especially penalizes states that have done a good job of reducing the number of uninsured. And it effectively eliminates protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

Did Graham-Cassidy’s sponsors know what they were doing when putting this bill together? Almost surely not, or they wouldn’t have produced something that everyone, and I mean everyone, who knows anything about health care warns would cause chaos.

It’s not just progressives: The American Medical Association, the insurance industry and Blue Cross/Blue Shield have all warned that markets would be destabilized and millions would lose coverage.

How many people would lose insurance? Republicans are trying to ram the bill through before the Congressional Budget Office has time to analyze it — an attempt that is in itself a violation of all previous norms, and amounts to an admission that the bill can’t bear scrutiny. But C.B.O. has analyzed other bills containing some of Graham-Cassidy’s provisions, and these previous analyses suggest that it would add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the uninsured.

Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, and the bill’s other sponsors have responded to these critiques the old-fashioned way — with lies.

Both Cassidy and Graham insist that their bill would continue to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions — a claim that will come as news to the A.M.A., Blue Cross and everyone else who has read the bill’s text.

Cassidy has also circulated a spreadsheet that purports to show most states actually getting increased funding under his bill. But the spreadsheet doesn’t compare funding with current law, which is the relevant question. Instead, it shows changes over time in dollar amounts.

That’s actually a well-known dodge, one that Republicans have been using since Newt Gingrich tried to gut Medicare in the 1990s. As everyone in Congress — even Cassidy — surely knows, such comparisons drastically understate the real size of cuts, since under current law spending is expected to rise with inflation and population growth.

Independent analyses find that most states would, in fact, experience serious cuts in federal aid — and everyone would face huge cuts after 2027.

So we’re looking at an incompetently drafted bill that would hurt millions of people, whose sponsors are trying to sell it with transparently false claims. How is it that this bill might nonetheless pass the Senate?

One answer is that Republicans are desperate to destroy President Barack Obama’s legacy in any way possible, no matter how many American lives they ruin in the process.

Another answer is that most Republican legislators neither know nor care about policy substance. This is especially true on health care, where they never tried to understand why Obamacare looks the way it does, or how to devise a nonvicious alternative. Vox asked a number of G.O.P. senators to explain what Graham-Cassidy does; the answers ranged from incoherence to belligerence to belligerent incoherence.

I’d add that the evasions and lies we’re seeing on this bill have been standard G.O.P. operating procedure for years. The trick of converting federal programs into block grants, then pretending that this wouldn’t mean savage cuts, was central to every one of Paul Ryan’s much-hyped budgets. The trick of comparing dollar numbers over time to conceal huge benefit cuts has, as I already noted, been around since the 1990s.

In other words, Graham-Cassidy isn’t an aberration; it’s more like the distilled essence of everything wrong with modern Republicans.

Will this awful bill become law? I have no idea. But even if the handful of Republican senators who retain some conscience block it — we’re looking at you, John McCain — the underlying sickness of the G.O.P. will remain.

It’s sort of a pre-existing condition, and it’s poisoning America.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with the author. Evasions, lies, and incompetence are the three legs of the Repug stool.

I think this comes down to one simple thing-donors. Very rich donors. And McCain no longer has to worry about that. It's a long shot that he'll ever run for office again and I think he's also hedging his bets about the afterlife now. While he was a POW, he has also done some shitty things in his life so he may want to make sure he goes out on a high note.

The most telling thing is the Repubs continued excuse of "But we promised" Uh, yeah and at least half of the people you made this promise to have wised up and no longer want this. So this isn't about a promise to their constituents, it's about a promise to their filthy-rich donors.

Rand Paul has said no, hasn't he?

[onekidanddone]

13 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Rand Paul has said no, hasn't he?

Yup, but for different reasons I think.  I believe the cuts don't go far enough for him. Collins, I hope is still a heavy tilt towards no. Murkowski? Trump included her in a tweet storm and I don't think she likes being bullied. Added to that, she is also not up for reelection in the 2018 cycle.   Not having to run for office next year means TT won't be out t here stumping for anybody running against her. 

[fraurosena]

@GrumpyGran, yes, Rand Paul said no. Here's why.

Sen. Rand Paul says he won't vote for latest affordable care act replacement bill

And as to those donors? Well, the Mercers are the shadiest of shady donors you could ever imagine. With ties left, right, and center to the current administration. Here's an article about them that I've posted before (way back in Februari) in the Russia thread (I think). As it's a repost, I won't quote here.

Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

It's time America woke up to the fact that they are not a democracy. Policy is being bought and paid for by billionaires with their own personal agenda's. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Everything is on the line for McConnell in Tuesday’s Alabama Senate election"

Spoiler

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was already facing a perilous week ahead: another attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a critical special election in Alabama and a first glimpse of the framework for a massive tax cut.

By Friday night, the repeal effort was hanging by the barest of threads, and President Trump wasn’t happy about it — venting at a high-profile campaign stop about the apparent impending failure.

All of it leaves McConnell, who a few days ago was poised to score his best in the Trump era, desperately trying to mitigate his losses.

Defections from the GOP’s own ranks, most notably (again) Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), probably ended for at least another year the bid to repeal the health law. Republicans may go through the motions of holding a vote in the days ahead, but it seems destined to fail unless Trump or McConnell can change several senators’ minds in the coming days.

The news arrived at a terrible time for the establishment wing of the GOP, just days before Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), appointed after Jeff Sessions became attorney general, faces a conservative challenge in a Republican primary runoff to fill the seat permanently. McConnell’s Washington operation fully backed Strange, and Trump was convinced to support him as well, even flying to Huntsville, Ala., on Friday to appear onstage with the senator ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Losses on both the policy agenda and the political arena in a single week would be brutal for McConnell — and could lead to another round of recriminations inside a Republican Party that is beset by division.

Such an outcome would also make it even more critical — yet all the harder — for White House officials and congressional Republicans to come together on their plan to dramatically cut taxes for businesses and individuals. That issue had been the long-planned focus for next week’s agenda until the latest repeal effort crowded out everything else.

So far, Republicans have shown some progress on the tax plan, trying to learn from their ACA mistakes by preemptively agreeing on the fiscal targets. But senior advisers have privately suggested that this is a project that is probably months away from fruition. And that’s if all goes as planned.

Politically, this legislative quagmire probably inspires more conservatives to follow the path of Roy Moore. The controversial former state judge is challenging Strange by labeling him a McConnell crony — a member of an establishment that continues to flounder in Washington.

In the 2014 and 2016 election seasons, McConnell shepherded every single Republican incumbent who sought reelection through their primary challenges, believing that every victory by the establishment further suffocated the energy for insurgents in other states.

That may not happen this time. Moore could pull off the win with the backing of Stephen K. Bannon, the ousted White House strategist who has returned to run the Breitbart media group with promises to launch as many primary challengers as possible to McConnell’s GOP incumbents. Bannon would take a victory by Moore as a selling point to some of the billionaire financiers of Trump’s 2016 campaign who remain upset with McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). The ultimate goal? More funding for more primary challengers ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

All of this would come as Republicans grapple with a critical decision to prop up the ACA’s private insurance markets. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), leaders of the Senate’s health committee, had already been working on a bipartisan plan to make these fixes. That work got set aside as McConnell agreed to allow Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) make a final push on their plan to fully repeal Obamacare.

In the wake of McCain’s announcement, some Republicans began saying there was no point in even holding the vote on the Cassidy-Graham plan. “I’ll be honest, it seems unlikely that we’ll be voting on this,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said at a town hall Friday in Iowa City, adding that she believed a bipartisan route was needed.

“I hope that Lamar and Patty can come back again together, hopefully next week,” said Ernst.

But that plan has already been panned by many conservatives as a bailout for the insurance industry, akin to the Wall Street bailout following the 2008 collapse of the economy. Opposition to that Wall Street bill was one of the main engines that launched the tea party movement and shifted the Republican Party ideologically to the right.

Taking over McConnell’s weekly news conference Tuesday, Graham declared that Trump and Ryan had already declared their opposition to the bipartisan health-care effort and that it was left for dead.

“Here’s what the speaker of the House told me: I will not bring up a bill or a vote in the House that props up Obamacare, because that is not why I came here,” Graham told reporters.

Conservatives will be disappointed to see the ACA remain the law of the land — and could continue to oppose efforts to fix it. But GOP strategists fear that voters could blame Republicans for unstable insurance markets and soaring premiums now that they hold the White House and Congress.

When senators cast their last votes Tuesday, an abbreviated week because of the Jewish holidays, McConnell’s team saw an outside chance at a double-barreled victory in the coming week.

Before he headed to Alabama, Trump’s main selling points had been Strange’s loyalty to his agenda, and in the final days of this heated campaign, Moore made clear he opposed the latest effort to repeal the ACA because it was not conservative enough.

The stage seemed set for Trump, as well as Vice President Pence, who is scheduled to arrive in Alabama on Monday, to sell Strange to the state’s conservatives answer to repealing what they call Obamacare. Instead, Trump doubted his decision to back the sitting senator.

“I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake,” Trump told the crowd in Huntsville at one point during his more than 30 minutes of remarks meant to bolster Strange’s chances.

It was exactly the kind of encouragement that conservatives might be looking for to vote for Moore — and to challenge even more establishment figures next year.

It’s a toxic recipe that could leave McConnell more wounded than ever by Friday.

Since I despise Bitch McTurtle, I wouldn't be sorry to see him deposed. My fear, however, is that he gets forced out by teabaggers, who are even worse.

[fraurosena]

This is how real Repugliklans debate.

Have your soothing eye-masks ready, because your eyes are going to roll hard.

[GreyhoundFan]

I swear, Bitch or Graham or some other Repug will find some loophole to continue trying to screw us over on healthcare past the September 30th deadline. "Graham is ‘pressing on’ with the health-care bill. Other GOP senators signal they’re moving on."

Spoiler

IOWA CITY — Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) looked out at hundreds of Democrats crowded into a tense town hall meeting Friday afternoon and told them that they’d won. Just an hour earlier, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had come out against the GOP’s latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act on partisan terms.

“I hope that Lamar and Patty can come back again together, hopefully next week,” said Ernst, referring to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had been working on a bipartisan bill to stabilize the ACA. “We can pick back up and try again.”

But Republican leaders have not yet declared defeat on their repeal effort. On Saturday, President Trump applied a new round of pressure on Republican senators to back the bill authored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). And Graham’s spokesman said he was “pressing on.”

Republican Senate aides have hinted in recent days at the possibility that new language in the bill might be released at some point. On Saturday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said in an interview on Fox News that Republicans were “refining” the legislation. Still, there are no clear resolutions to the problems facing Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): Time and diminishing support.

Senate leaders only have until the end of the month to take advantage of a procedural rule that allows them to pass their bill without Democratic support. And if one more Republican senator comes out against their plan, it will lack the votes to succeed.

Compounding their challenge: Even senators who intended to vote for the bill, such as Ernst, sound ready for another option.

Democrats on Saturday encouraged their supporters not to let up their resistance to the repeal and brace for a final GOP push when Senate Republicans gather for a pivotal weekly policy lunch at the Capitol on Tuesday.

“Healthcare bill has 2 no votes. We need 3. With 4 or more we might be done for a while. Tues GOP meet, decide. We have momentum. Let’s win,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter.

The White House is asking for one more try. In a series of tweets Saturday, Trump wrote that McCain had “let Arizona down” and that other skeptical senators needed to give the GOP, and their constituents, some kind of win. He later tweeted that Democrats are laughing that McCain had a “moment of courage.”

“I know Rand Paul and I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party,” Trump wrote about the senator from Kentucky, who has also come out against the bill. A Paul spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday on his latest position. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has also said that she is leaning toward voting “no.”

In a tweet aimed at Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key swing voter who remained uncommitted on Saturday, Trump shared a misleading statistic about premium increases — the largely rural state has tamed them with subsidies — and insisted: “deductibles high, people angry!”

On Saturday, Price rejected the notion that the health bill was doomed.

“The reason it’s not dead is because it’s not finished,” Price said on Fox News. “The bill hasn’t been completed. We continue to work with the authors on it through this weekend, and the bill will be likely rolled out early next week.”

Holdout senators are concerned that the latest repeal bill won’t solve the problem of high premiums that had made the ACA politically toxic.

It is clear that the bill, which would cap Medicaid spending and send it to states as block grants, is unpopular. In a new Washington Post/ABC poll, just 33 percent of voters said they supported the Cassidy-Graham plan.

“We need to be clear to them that they’re courting electoral disaster if they support this bill,” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn, which has organized scores of rallies ahead of the Sept. 30 repeal deadline. “There will be a 30-ring circus of protests if they go and do this again.”

For most Republicans, the political costs are theoretical. In the Senate, the Democrats’ battle to save the ACA has focused on a half-dozen Republicans who might switch their votes. Forty-three Republicans, however, voted for every repeal version, and 49 seemed ready to pass any bill that could be routed back to the House.

The ACA battle, ending and restarting every few weeks with a dizzy rhythm, has created a network of protesters and citizen lobbyists who have pressured Ernst and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) — and before that, the state’s three Republican congressmen — with phone calls, sit-ins and bracing town halls.

In Iowa, where Trump’s 2016 coattails swept Democrats out of power, Republicans had partially privatized Medicaid and rallied behind repeal. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who took office in May after her predecessor became the U.S. ambassador to China, was one of just 16 Republican governors to endorse the Cassidy-Graham repeal bill. In Iowa City, and at a Thursday town hall in more conservative Charles City, Ernst pushed back at some Democratic protesters by pointing out that their candidates had lost the last elections.

“The president ran on repeal, and he won Iowa by nine points,” Ernst said in Iowa City, keeping a steely demeanor as the audience — more than 750 people in the most liberal part of the state — erupted with boos.

Elected in 2014, Ernst was one of nine Republicans who won control of formerly Democratic seats during the backlash over the ACA’s implementation. Nearly three years later, with a Republican administration managing the law and deciding whether to grant waivers to states, it was harder to make a black-and-white case for repeal.

Grassley had discovered that days before McCain’s decision. “I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered,” Grassley told Iowa reporters Wednesday. “But Republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.”

Grassley’s quote resonated with the protesters who flooded Ernst’s three town halls. In Charles City, two different constituents asked Ernst if she agreed with Grassley; the senior senator, Ernst said, had to speak for himself.

In Charles City on Thursday, nearly two dozen protesters, organized by the Indivisible group, dominated the hour-long Q&A. Ellen Doll, 70, arrived with a large photo of her 44-year-old son, whose full-time care at a rural hospital had been cut back since 2016, and asked Ernst to explain why Medicaid caps and privatization would not put him on the street.

“The money, the dollars, will still increase,” Ernst said. “You won’t see cuts from the current year.”

“It’s a slower rate!” Doll said.

“Well, I’d have to see the numbers,” Ernst said.

In Iowa City, there were more boisterous questions. Ernst ignored or talked over hecklers, and noted it when they seemed to be screaming over the answers.

“Really, if I said anything — if I said the sky was blue with regard to this health-care bill — you would disagree,” she said.

When the talk turned away from Cassidy-Graham, however, Ernst found a receptive audience. On Thursday, she had accused Democrats of walking away from the bipartisan talks, emphasizing that she had been part of them. On Friday, with the repeal push fading, she repeatedly said that she wanted the talks to succeed.

“We have to work together to figure out a solution,” she said. “Right now, Iowa’s health insurance system is imploding. We’ve got families that can’t afford insurance. I can’t give up on this.”

At a news conference after the town hall, Ernst described her goals for health care.

“Making sure that Medicaid remains available,” she said. “Making sure that we are protecting, in whatever manner, those who have preexisting conditions.”

But her pitch sounded more like what Republicans ran on in 2014 — and not what had been packed into the latest GOP plan.

 

[BecauseScience]

I was talking to my co-worker yesterday about the health care bill, particularly the block grant bit.  She looked straight at me and said, "State right, huh?  State rights haven't been good for people who look like me." (She's African-American.) And then we contemplated the fact that the bill would but health care money in the hands of Gilead, I mean the Texas government.

Please call your senators for us.