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Protest against U.S. President Donald Trump in New York. Credit: Caitlin Ochs/Sputnik via AP

For me, and I imagine most Americans, the election of Donald Trump raised a host of disturbing questions. Now, six months into this new political era, all the questions but one have been answered: How are we going to rebuild ourpolitical system?

To say that I have been an outspoken Trump opponent would be an understatement. As a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, I came out against him early on. Still, immediately after the election I did say that I was willing to give him a chance.

By early February, however, any hope that Trump would become presidential had lapsed. Trump meant every word he said during the campaign. He is a protectionist, an isolationist and a nativist. He has the instincts of an authoritarian who would silence the mainstream media with new libel laws if he could.

I urged Republicans to directly oppose Trump, but to little avail. Today, there are two types of Republican politicians: enthusiastic Trump supporters, and those who submit through their silence. If you dare oppose Trump you are attackedand threatened with a primary opponent.

Republicans have abandoned traditional Reaganite policies such as free trade because their base voters agree with Trump. I have come to accept that I am now the one out of step with Republican voters. It truly is Trumps party now.

Even my hopes that Washington state Republicans could maintain their traditional moderate identity and work with Democrats to get big things done have largely been dashed.

To be sure, the gridlock and dysfunction in Olympia is not nearly as bad as it is in Washington, D.C. Significant bills were passed this year, including bills on paid family leave and greater protections for victims of sexual assault. But by Olympia standards, the 2017 session was a disaster. After three special sessions, the longest legislative meeting in state history, Olympia melted down in partisan rancor.

Republicans demanded that Democrats pass a bill on water rights in rural areas. When Democrats refused, Republicans retaliated by not passing the capital construction budget for the first time in state history. Republicans and Democrats had six months to make a deal on water rights. Because they failed, rural residents face the loss of their property values, and $4 billion in needed projects, including $1 billion in school construction projects, are now on hold.

And what about the agreement they reached on school funding in response to the McCleary case? The legislature did deal with one of the major issues by capping school levies, thus eliminating the inequity between rich school districts and poor school districts. But they failed to fund the salaries of thousands of school staff, and instead gave districts the authority to continue to use levy dollars to pay staff. This is a clear violation of the Supreme Courts 2012 order in this case.

Everywhere you look, our political system is breaking down. No major legislation has passed in Washington, D.C. The debt is still rising. Social Security and Medicare are still going broke. The government will run out of cash in October. Every year sees interminable special sessions in Olympia and vicious mudslinging campaigns.

A recent poll showed that only half of Americans have faith in American democracy. Horrifying as this is, its no great surprise: Why should anyone have faith in a system that is clearly failing to produce results?

But there are glimmers of hope. Not long ago I received an email from a respected, bipartisan national group thatis working to create an offshoot to focus on the brokenness of our political system one which will examine and elevate a discussion as to the causes of, and possible solutions to address, the deteriorating state of our politics.

And there are efforts afoot to reclaim the political center.For the past 160 years, the Republican and Democratic parties have monopolized political power because one was a center-right coalition, and the other was center-left. Third parties espoused fringe ideas and attracted little support. Today it is the major parties that are pushing fringe ideas, and that creates an opportunity.

In Washington, D.C., recently,a new group promoting the election of Centrist Independents met with the national media. The Centrist Projectaims to appeal to the voters Rs and Ds have left behind: fiscally conservative, but socially moderate.

Where does this all lead? Frankly, I dont know. Perhaps one or both parties will regain their sanity and move back toward the center, although that seems increasingly unlikely. Perhaps a centrist third party will form. Perhaps one of our two major parties will fade away as the Federalist and Whig parties did in the 1800s. Perhaps more and more candidates will choose to run as independents.

Whatever happens, I believe we are at one of those moments in American history when our political system is beginning to go through major realignment.

Like the shifting of tectonic plates, these changes happen gradually. It took elevenyears of British abuses before our founders finally agreed on independence. It took 14 years of agitation over slavery to finally cause the creation of the Republican Party. It took several elections for the South to go from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.

New political movements take time to mature, so dont expect the end of the current party system to happen overnight. But something is stirring. The last six months were just the beginning: 2018 and 2020 are going to be transformational.

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I'm not sure I'm a Republican anymore - Crosscut

Many Republicans on Capitol Hill are praying President Trump doesn't brashly fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions or special counsel Robert Mueller, who's heading up the Trump campaign-Russia investigation.

The House is set to leave Washington Friday for a month-long August recess, while the Senate is slated to take off two weeks later. There's fear that while the nation's lawmakers are away, the president will do more than mess around on Twitter: They're worried he may take advantage of their absence to reshuffle the decks at the Justice Department in an attempt to kill the Russia probe that has enveloped his presidency from day one.

The president's repeated interviews and continued, petty tweets lambasting the attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation have angered Democrats including many who despise Sessions but especially Sessions' former Republican Senate colleagues who say he did the right thing.

"Under the guidelines, the attorney general really had no other choice" than to recuse, Republican Sen. Susan Collins recently told reporters. "His job as chief law enforcement officer of the country is to abide by the guidelines of the Department of Justice when it comes to cases where he may have a real or perceived conflict of interest, and that's what the attorney general did."

If the president did fire Sessions which would be legal, but would strongly suggest the president is trying to bury the investigation the Senate would have to confirm whoever the president picks to replace him. Democrats would cry bloody murder, fearing the president would only tap a loyalist who would try to end the Russia probe altogether.

Democrats opposed Sessions' nomination, citing his history of racism and how he lied under oath, and arguing that he's out of touch for trying to revive the tough-on-crime stance that has American's prisons bursting at the seams and his desire to crack down on marijuana business owners. But now some prominent Democrats are defending him against Trump's attacks.

"All Americans should be wondering: Why is the president publicly publicly demeaning and humiliating such a close friend and supporter, a member of his own cabinet? They should wonder if the president is trying to pry open the office of attorney general to appoint someone during the August recess who will fire special counsel Mueller and shut down the Russia investigation," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Senate floor speech this week. "Let me say, if such a situation arises, Democrats would use every tool in our toolbox to stymie such a recess appointment."

But even for most Republicans, there doesn't seem to be any appetite to approve a new attorney general. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, told rreporters he's got enough on his plate with the plethora of judicial nominations before his committee and that he has no plans to hold hearings this fall on a new AG. He said Sessions has his full support and that it's odd the president is tormenting one of his closest ideological allies in his cabinet.

"I've been very clear ... that Sessions is probably the one person in the cabinet who is doing more of the president's agenda than anyone else, and one of the big things that the president wants to accomplish is getting strict constructionists on the courts in the United States and I don't need to spend any more time doing nominations," a gruff Grassley said.

While the president tweets, Republicans on Capitol Hill usually send out gentle nudges to try to keep him in line with his own agenda. But they're becoming blunt as they recognize the immediate political consequences that would likely overwhelm this sporadic freshman president.

"Well it's the president's prerogative, but he is then going to jeopardize, potentially, his ability to get anything else done here," the Senate's number-two Republican, John Cornyn, told reporters. "I don't think that should be his desire or preference."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is going a step further than his colleagues. He said there will be "holy hell to pay" if Trump cans Sessions. He's preparing legislation that he plans to introduce next week to protect Mueller from being fired by the very president he's investigating, unless there's a judicial review that finds good cause.

"Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency, unless Mueller did something wrong," Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. "This is not draining the swamp. What he's interjecting is turning democracy upside down."

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Republicans Are Not Thrilled Trump's Toying With Firing Jeff Sessions - RollingStone.com

We are dealing with one-sixth of the economy, said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has worked on many budget blueprints. We are dealing with something that impacts the lives of millions of Americans. Its a totally inappropriate use of the budget reconciliation process.

On Tuesday night, the Republicans broadest plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was defeated after Democrats protested that the Congressional Budget Office had not formally assessed the measure; therefore consideration violated budget rules.

Key provisions on abortion and Planned Parenthood funding and efforts to persuade people to maintain insurance coverage could also slip away because they violate the rules that Republicans chose to operate under.

The expedited procedures were first used in 1980. Since then, Congress has completed action on 24 budget reconciliation bills. Twenty became law. Four were vetoed.

Reconciliation is probably the most potent budget enforcement tool available to Congress for a large portion of the budget, the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, has said.

Democrats used the reconciliation process to adopt a very small piece of Obamacare in a separate bill enacted one week after President Barack Obama signed the original 905-page measure in March 2010.

Reconciliation has never, ever been abused to the extent that it is today, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, then the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, said at the time. The goal of the fast-track procedure, he said then, was to control the government, not expand it.

To be sure, Democrats used procedural shortcuts to clean up the Affordable Care Act in 2010. But those changes are dwarfed by the repeal bill being debated in the Senate this week and by the one passed by the House in May.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says those bills would erase the gains in insurance coverage made in the seven years since the Affordable Care Act was adopted.

The Senate parliamentarian has challenged at least 11 provisions of the Republican health care bill, including one that would prevent consumers from using tax credits to help pay for insurance that includes coverage for abortions.

And so far, Republicans have not pushed back. Ms. MacDonough grew up in the Washington area and graduated from George Washington University. She knows the guts of the Senate firsthand. She served as a legislative reference assistant in the Senate Library and as an assistant executive clerk for the Senate, keeping track of treaties and nominations. She was also an assistant editor of the Congressional Record.

Seeking wider opportunities, she obtained a law degree from Vermont Law School in 1998.

She worked for the Justice Department, then took a job as an assistant Senate parliamentarian in 1999 and became the first woman to head the office in 2012.

J. Keith Kennedy, who worked for Republican senators for 28 years, said: Elizabeth diligently worked her way up through the ranks. Shes a very smart woman, has a wonderful sense of humor, enjoys life.

Being caught in the political crossfire between Republicans and Democrats is an occupational hazard that Ms. MacDonough has so far managed to avoid.

She is performing a very important institutional duty, is under enormous pressure and is handling it very well, Mr. Kennedy said.

Muftiah M. McCartin, who worked in the office of the House parliamentarian from 1976 to 2005, said Ms. MacDonough is stellar, 100 percent professional.

Under the procedure that Republicans are using to speed passage of their health care bill, senators can object to a provision if its budgetary effects are merely incidental to some policy goal.

There was talk in recent days that Republicans could try to overturn key decisions of the parliamentarian, through a strong-armed majority vote the same way Senate Democrats ended the filibuster for most judges and presidential appointees, and Republicans then ended it for Supreme Court justices.

But at least for now, Ms. MacDonoughs judgments have not been overturned or overruled.

The merely incidental test is inherently subjective, Ms. McCartin said. But Elizabeth has fidelity to Senate precedents and to advice given over the years by the Senate parliamentarians office. Thats what shes striving for: consistency.

A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Republican Gamble on Fast-Track Rules for Health Care Hits Wall.

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Republican Gamble on Fast-Track Rules for Health Care Hits Wall - New York Times

WASHINGTON Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., vented his frustration Wednesday as a handful of his Republican colleagues lined up against the same kind of health care repeal language that they supported less than two years ago.

How can you possibly explain that to people with any intellectual integrity? Sasse said in an interview with The World-Herald.

As Senate Republicans struggle this week to unify behind a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Sasse highlighted Wednesdays vote to repeal significant parts of former President Barack Obamas health care law with a two-year delay. GOP senators had approved such a plan in 2015 only to see it vetoed by Obama.

Since President Donald Trump would presumably sign the repeal legislation, Sasse said, voting against it now when it counts amounts to a breathtaking flip.

All four GOP senators from Nebraska and Iowa voted for the repeal proposal Wednesday, but it attracted only 45 votes, with 55 against, including seven Republicans. Six of those Republicans had voted for the similar plan under Obama.

There was a lot of show voting going on here 15 months ago, Sasse said.

Nebraska Democrats blasted senators support for the proposal, saying it would leave people without coverage.

Sasse made repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act a centerpiece of his 2014 campaign, although he has avoided the public spotlight for much of the recent Senate health care discussion. In the interview, Sasse said that he has been working for months behind closed doors to build support for repeal-and-replace, with a particular emphasis on promoting insurance portability.

The main GOP proposal to simultaneously repeal and replace was rejected earlier this week, despite the support of all four Midlands senators.

While Sasse said that bill had its shortcomings, he also praised language from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that would have opened the door for insurers to again sell skimpier catastrophic plans.

Sasse said theres no interest group that makes money off those plans or lobbies for them, but many Americans would like to have that option.

Nobodys ever going to come and do a demonstration sit-in, screaming in your office: I want a catastrophic plan, Sasse said. But thats actually what you hear lots and lots in Nebraska.

It remains to be seen how the rest of this weeks health care debate will play out. Sasse has repeatedly pushed the idea of first repealing the Affordable Care Act and then keeping Congress in town as long as necessary to agree on a replacement.

He said that approach, which Trump has supported at times, would bring Democrats to the table.

Sasse often invokes the need for portability in a replacement health care law, drawing parallels to the shift from defined-benefit pensions to 401(k) retirement plans that workers can carry over from job to job and state to state. Allowing people to keep their health care benefits as they move or change jobs would address some of the problems with the current health care system.

We used to have the same problem with pensions and we fixed it, Sasse said.

Republicans dont have a well-developed theory of what is necessary to address problems in the health care system today, Sasse said, and they should keep working on it until they do.

I know what I believe should happen in health care, Sasse said. But so far, he said, there isnt a majority in Congress in support of his approach.

It cant compel a majority vote, he said. So, we should be debating harder and longer about replace.

joe.morton@owh.com, twitter.com/MortonOWH

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Sen. Ben Sasse rebukes Republican colleagues who voted against health care repeal legislation - Omaha World-Herald

Sen. Bernie Sanders will not support a "sham" amendment to the Republican healthcare bill dismantling Obamacare that would implement a single-payer healthcare insurance program.

On Wednesday, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who does not support single-payer, proposed the amendment as a way of cornering vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election to go on record for the progressive platform.

Not all Democrats have voiced support for it, but progressives like Sanders, I-Vt., have long called for a single-payer, government-run system. However, Sanders' office said he will not play Daines' game.

"The Democratic caucus will not participate in the Republicans' sham process. No amendment will get a vote until we see the final legislation and know what bill we are amending," Josh Miller-Lewis, a spokesperson for Sanders, said in a text sent to Vox.

Miller-Lewis added, "Once Republicans show us their final bill, Sen. Sanders looks forward to getting a vote on his amendment that makes clear the Senate believes that the United States must join every major country and guarantee health care as a right, not a privilege."

Daines' single-payer amendment is a rip of legislation offered in the House by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., which has the support of more than 100 Democratic co-sponsors, calling for a "Medicare for All" program.

Link:
Bernie Sanders refuses to support 'sham' Republican single-payer amendment - Washington Examiner