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WASHINGTON Steve Beshear, the former Kentucky governor who will deliver the Democratic Partys official response to President Donald Trumps first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, is not a fresh face, rising star, or future presidential candidate. Hes taken positions that buck Democratic ideology. And at 72 years old, his electoral career is over.

But atypical a choice as he may seem, the speech isnt meant to set up Beshear as the next star of the Democratic Party. Rather, his selection is a sign that Democrats now sense they have renewed political momentum in the key policy battle currently taking place in Washington: the fight to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

And for that role, there may be no better pick.

Beshears Kentucky emerged as Obamacares signature success story soon after the health care law passed, and it has continued to serve as a lens into the laws past and potential future since Beshear left office.

As Republican repeal efforts continue in Washington, Kentucky is already engaged in its own miniature repeal-and-replace battle. Making Beshear the new face of Obamacare could help Democrats frame this fight around concrete results rather than partisan politics.

Of the states President Barack Obama lost twice, Kentucky was one of just two (along with Arkansas) that expanded Medicaid and set up its own health exchange. The Medicaid expansion gave government health insurance to more than 400,000 low-income Kentuckians; the exchange helped nearly 100,000 more access health coverage from private companies.

In a state just shy of 4.5 million people, an estimated 500,000 1 in 9 Kentuckians enrolled in health coverage through Obamacare. No state has seen a bigger drop in its uninsured rate since the law passed, and studies have shown that poor Kentuckians are healthier now than people in states that did not expand Medicaid. Kentucky also saw declines in the rates of people skipping needed care, visiting emergency rooms for care, and struggling to pay medical bills in the years after the law was implemented, according to a survey conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Beshear has always positioned his embrace of Obamacare as an opportunity to address major problems in one of Americas poorest and least healthy states a chance to improve the future of our state and the lives of our families, as he told a Senate committee this month rather than an act of toeing the party line.

The 20 million Americans who gained health care coverage through the law are Republicans, Democrats, independents, and folks that arent registered to vote at all, Beshear told The Huffington Post last week. But they deserve a better quality of life, and becoming healthier will give them a better quality of life.

Now Beshear is warning Trump and Republicans that rescinding the gains made under the law could be devastating.

Theyre faced with 22 million Americans who now have health care most of whom never had it before who dont want to give it up, Beshear said. Thats a lot of votes.

Beshear is already a veteran of the sort of fight taking place in Washington. Despite its successes, the Affordable Care Act remained unpopular among Kentucky voters throughout Beshears second and final term. A year before Trump won, Kentucky voters replaced Beshear with Republican Matt Bevin, a Louisville businessman who won the election while advocating a full dismantling of the law.

Bevin scrapped Kynect Kentuckys broadly popular insurance exchange during the opening year of his governorship. Rolling back the Medicaid expansion, however, proved more difficult: The month after Bevins election, nearly three-quarters of Kentuckians opposed changes to Medicaid, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Last August, Bevin decided instead to apply for a waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services that, while limiting or eliminating coverage for some Kentuckians, wouldnt end the expansion entirely.

Bevin still favors repealing and replacing Obamacare, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week. But to Beshear, Bevins difficulties in Kentucky foreshadow the problems Republicans are now facing in Congress.

Nationally, I think the president and the Republican Congress are like the dog that caught the car, Beshear said. I dont think that the Congress ever thought theyd ever actually be in this position to have to follow through with all the repeal promises they made.

Theyre finding it to be a lot more difficult issue than they ever thought it would be, he added. Folks that are advocating repeal didnt realize how successful it would end up being, and how many people would end up being [covered].

Providing specifics on their repeal and replace efforts has proven a source of consternation for congressional Republicans, especially as the Trump administration has promised that no one will lose coverage under the reforms.

GOP leadership has struggled to craft a replacement plan that wouldnt result in countless Americans losing health coverage. Members of the partys rank-and-file haveprivately worried about the political and policy implications of repealing the law without an adequate replacement. Polls have shifted against them, and GOP lawmakers faced raucous opposition to their repeal efforts at town halls in their districts during February recess.

That should force Republicans to consider amending the law to address its shortcomings instead of shooting for an all-out repeal,Beshear argues.

There are certainly issues with the Affordable Care Act that ought to be fixed, Beshear said. Thats really where Congress and the president ought to be spending their time, is trying to figure out how to make this better. I am sensing that some of the more thoughtful Republicans in Congress understand that.

Democrats might feel cautious optimism that a law they once presumed dead may now survive. Still, Beshear and Kentucky offer a warning to them, as well. Even if the law remains on the books, he cautions, Republicans can tinker with it in a way that limits its effectiveness without drawing such high-profile resistance.

Bevins Medicaid waiver, for instance, was crafted with the help of Seema Verma, a health policy consultant Trump picked to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. If it is approved, it could force thousands of Kentuckians to pay small premiums while also adding work requirements and other changes that could limit the states poorest residents access to health care.

Dismantling Kynect, meanwhile, shifted more than 74,000 Kentuckians onto the federal insurance exchange, where a comparably difficult process of obtaining insurance awaited them. And at CPAC, Bevin said he could support block granting Medicaid or sending a set amount of money to states each year to administer the program as they see fit a GOP hobbyhorse that Democrats and health policy experts have argued would have disastrous results.

Everything we do that makes it harder for these people to access health care will result in some people finally just giving up because they cant figure it out, Beshear said. Honestly, I think that is the goal of the administration in Kentucky, and it will be the goal of folks on the national level. In some way or another, they hope to be able to reduce the number of people who are involved in the program. Those of us who feel that every American [should be] involved in health care, thats our challenge.

Beshear is still hesitant to predict the fate of the law on the national level. But his speech on Tuesday will represent the next step in his and his partys fight to save the Affordable Care Act. That theyve chosen to focus their first response to Trump almost singularly on this issue is a sign they think they can do it.

Kentucky is, I think, a prototypical story of what happens if you look at health care through a bipartisan lens, said Andy Slavitt, who ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the final two years of Obamas presidency. When you add it all up, its a relatively modestly sized state that has a lot to lose, and [Beshear] can tell that story so well because he took the partisanship out of it and did what was best for the state.

Tapping Beshear is a move that excites Democrats familiar with his approach to the law. The former governor is a perfect person to offer a reality-based, factual response to President Trumps address on Tuesday, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said in an email.

Its one that might also annoy Republicans who still insist their repeal efforts are on track, as Bevin argued at CPAC last week.

Its discouraging for me that hes still in the arena throwing stones at people, Bevin said in response to Beshears characterization of his and the GOPs struggles to repeal Obamacare. I would think retirement would serve him well.

More:
The Democrat Responding To Trump's Big Speech Has A Warning For The President - Huffington Post

The big issue: The hardliners don't like the tax credits to help people in the individual market buy coverage, although it's only one of many problems they have with a leaked draft of the plan. While moderate Republicans say people need help affording their premiums and might even say the size of the credit in the leaked plan isn't big enough conservatives are calling it another entitlement program. "Rolling out a massive new entitlement program is not the right approach to go," Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters.

Compare that to Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander. When asked whether a tax credit will end up in the bill, he said, "It could very well. A tax credit which would help lower-income Americans buy insurance has been one of the provisions in almost every one of the Republican proposals that have been made over the last several years."

OK, but: There may be some room for compromise. Yes, some conservatives will not like individual market assistance no matter what it looks like. But other ideas, like only giving tax credits to those who financially need them, could win over some hesitant members. "Means testing might be one of the options" for compromise, Meadows said.

But there are still other problems: A big one is the House GOP's proposed cap on the tax break given to those with employer-sponsored insurance, which is the only major source of revenue in the plan. Another is the overall cost of the plan, which is tied to the fact that the tax credits would be given to everyone on the individual market.

And then some members just want a straight repeal. "I think the repeal should just be repeal. That stuff can be in a replacement bill," said Rep. Jim Jordan, referring to various pieces of a replacement plan.

Why this matters: Former Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, summed this up well for me: "It's going to be most difficult to try and get the 218 votes" needed to pass a bill in the House, "knowing that everybody's got a certain standing where they are."

Read more from the original source:
Democrat Joe Manchin gets in with Breitbart - Axios

President Trump will not receive a handshake from at least one senior House Democrat, the lawmaker announced hours before Trump's first speech before a joint session of Congress.

"The president needs to work with all people and therefore I will listen to what he has to say today, but I will not greet him and shake his hand," New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a brief speech on the House floor.

Engel, like several other lawmakers, has a long history of taking a seat on the aisle during State of the Union addresses; the positioning ensures that they are seen on television greeting the president as he enters and exits the joint session. But Engel intends the snub as a a rebuke of Trump's attacks on the media, lack of support for investigating the Russia-linked cyberattacks against the Democratic party during the 2016 elections, and other policy disagreements, he said.

"I have deep respect for the presidency and I will attend the joint session, but that respect between branches must be mutual," Engel said. "This goes beyond ideological and political differences."

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It's a partisan moment for Engel, whose post at the Foreign Affairs Committee has produced regular instances of House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Engel saluting each other for their bipartisan collaboration. "I could take his speech and read it he could take mine and read it and we'd all agree with it," Engel said of Royce at a recent event on Iranian threats.

Engel's announcement comes as congressional Democrats are mulling how they should treat Trump during his speech. "I don't anticipate organized protests, that I'm aware of. I think that each member needs to be mindful of their own actions, that they are representatives of the House of Representatives and representatives of their constituency," New York Rep. Joe Crowley, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, told the Washington Examiner.

"As much as we have nothing in common with the president, we do respect the office of the presidency. I respect the office of the presidency itself, and keeping that in mind we will be polite, but we'll show very little, if any enthusiasm at all for what I anticipate his speech will be about," he said.

Read the rest here:
House Democrat says he will refuse to shake Trump's hand at joint session - Washington Examiner

Today concludes Black History Month. But for Democrats, February, once again, has been Black Amnesia Month. Members of the party that claims to be the best friend of the black man do their very best to entomb their misdeeds, injustices, and crimes against blacks in an Orwellian memory hole. Here are just a few of the ugly things that Democrats have done to blacks, and hope no one will remember:

The Democratic party supported slavery from its inception in the 1830s until it split over the issue in 1860. In January 1865, 100 percent of House Republicans supported the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Among those who voted, 78 percent of House Democrats opposed abolition.

Democrats Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair ran for president and vice president in 1868 on this general-election campaign slogan: This is a white mans country: Let white men rule.

Democratic President Woodrow Wilson segregated the previously integrated facility beside the White House, now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Source: The Chicago Defender, October 15, 1932

Beginning Wednesday, Aug. 9, 1916, the toilets in the state, war, and navy department buildings will be allotted for use as toilets...For Women...For White Men...[and] For Colored Men, read the actual segregation order. It was signed by none other than the assistant secretary of the Navy, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Democrats sank U.S. Representative Leonidas Dyers (R., Mo.) Anti-Lynching Bill. This measure which would have made lynching a federal crime and shielded blacks from being hanged in trees passed the Republican-controlled House in January 1922. Outrageously, Senate Democrats filibustered it that November. And the lynchings roared on.

Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt nominated former Klansman Hugo Black to the Supreme Court in 1937. After letting his supporters claim that he never associated with the KKK, Justice Black eventually confessed that he had joined the Klan and earned a gold passport or life membership.

Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder for decades with the late U.S. senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.). As the Washington Post explained, Byrd recruited 150 Klansmen for the Crab Orchard, W.Va., KKK. His local chapter unanimously elected him Exalted Cyclops. Byrd wrote the KKKs Imperial Wizard in 1946: The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.

Democrats ignored all of this and embraced Byrd as their Senate leader as recently as 1989. Hillary Clinton called Byrd my friend and mentor. At Byrds July 2010 funeral, President Obama eulogized this hatemonger: It seems to me that his life bent toward justice.

Compare Democrats half century of solidarity with Byrd, an actual Ku Klux Klan leader, with their unbridled, race-fueled vitriol against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a non-KKK alumnus man who helped steer Klansman Henry Francis Hays into Alabamas electric chair.

Democrat Theophilus Eugene Bull Connor the ber-racist commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Ala. arrayed snarling police dogs and high-pressure firehoses against peaceful civil-rights protesters. When he wasnt busy oppressing blacks, Connor served as one of Alabamas two representatives on the Democratic National Committee.

Democrats filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Senator Robert KKK Byrd decried this measure on the Senate floor for 14 hours, as did other Southern Democrats. Senator Everett Dirksen (R., Ill.) finally mustered enough votes to break the Democrats filibuster, but Byrd and 22 other Southern Democrats still spurned Americas cornerstone civil-rights legislation. Nonetheless, the bill passed, and Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed it into law.

Democrats furnished ten of the eleven votes against Thurgood Marshall as Americas first black Supreme Court justice. These ten were joined in August 1967 by Senator Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.), a former segregationist Democrat who turned GOP. Despite recent liberal claims that Dixiecrats morphed into Republicans, Thurmond is the only prominent one who did. Notorious segregationists such as Governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama and Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee died as Democrats.

Democrats today frequently deliver this humiliating insult: Blacks are too feeble and benighted to present ID cards at the polls (although its apparently okay to demand ID of blacks at airports, banks, federal buildings, and even to buy anti-cold remedies).

Democrats claim that blacks are less likely than whites to carry ID cards. If so, why havent Democrats led the charge to secure every undocumented black American an ID card, to facilitate full participation in modern life? Instead, Democrats do next to nothing to empower the ultimate little guys blacks who lack ID. Rather, they deploy this vulnerable population as human shields against Republican ballot-integrity efforts. Meanwhile, Democrats routinely belittle blacks as too collectively pathetic to possess photo ID cards.

Senate Democrats unanimously opposed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. As an advocate and donor for school choice and educational excellence, DeVos has done far more than the average Senate Democrat to boost the life prospects of low-income black kids. However, these lawmakers masters in the teachers unions hate DeVos and her reformist ideas. So, on February 7, Senate Democrats all rejected her confirmation educationally abandoned black children be damned.

Democrats rarely admit to any of the above, and their bodyguards in the Old Guard media rarely bother them with any of these inconvenient truths. What a shame.

Henceforth, Black History Month and the rest of the year should include a much more sustained focus on the countless ways that Democrats have held down black Americans for centuries and still do.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.

Go here to see the original:
In February, Democrats Wrap Up Black Amnesia Month - National Review

U.S. House candidate Brianna Wu, a Massachusetts Democrat, is worried that people will drop rocks from the moon that will hit the earth and kill people.

Wu, who gained notoriety after getting involved in the GamerGate controversy of 2014 and is now challenging sitting Rep. Stephen Lynch, tweeted that she isnt happy about SpaceXs plan to ferry private citizens to the moon by 2018, for reasons that will make your head explode.

She also made it abundantly clear that she has no idea how gravity works.

Wu has since doubled down on her earlier assertions that the moon is dangerous because you can fire a large rock from it and hit the earth.

For the sake of fairness, lets play along with Wus theory for a hot second. Lets say that the moon, which is an estimated 238,900 miles away from earth, could potentially become a tactical base from which asteroids or missiles could be launched towards our planet.

Oooh, scary.

But if someone did intend to destroy our home planet from space, they wouldnt need to send people to the moon to mine large rocks and build a really big slingshot aimed towards earth. It would be significantly cheaper and easier for someone to launch an orbital weapon into space that could rain missiles down on our planet at a closer range. Lucky for us earthlings, this kind of space weaponry has been banned for decades, thanks to a series of treaties dating back to the Cold War. Long story short, Wus concerns are very far-fetched and practically improbable, if not entirely impossible.

Wu isnt the only Democrat whos made an eyebrow-raising statement about physical reality. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) once said he was afraid the island of Guam would tip over and fall into the ocean if too many people were on it at once.

My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize, Johnson said.

That clip will never get old.

Hey Democrats, yall should probably rethink the whole we love science more than you schtick until you can figure out what gravity is and how islands are formed.

More:
Party Of Science: Democrat Congressional Candidate Brianna Wu Doesn't Know How Gravity Works - The Federalist