Mediaboss Marketing

By BRIDGET BOWMAN and SIMONE PATH

Twenty Republicans bucked their party and voted against thehealth care overhaulon Thursday.

More than half of the members who voted no are part of the Tuesday Group, a collection ofmoderate House Republicans. Nine of the lawmakers represent districts that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton carriedin November. President Donald Trump carried the districts of 11 of the members voting no.. But all of the lawmakers outperformed Trump last fall.

Fourteen of theno votes are Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee targets. Five of the lawmakers are also part of the National Republican Campaign Committees Patriot Program, which assists members in tough races.

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs: The freshman lawmaker was the only member of the Freedom Caucusto oppose the bill. He hails from thesafely Republican 5th District where he overperformed Trump by nearly 7 points last fall. Biggs benefited from the Club for Growths support in a 2016 primary, but it remains to be seen how outside groups will treat the conservative holdout. The club announcedits support for the Meadows-MacArthur amendment last week and said Thursday it has no plans to oppose Biggs for his vote against the bill. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates his race Solid Republican.

Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman: Also a Tuesday Group member, Coffman was leaning toward voting yes on the original version of the bill in March. Hours before Thursdays vote, he announced he was concerned that some Americans with pre-existing conditions wouldnt be covered under the Meadows-MacArthur amendment and he wasnt willing to support a bill without seeing a CBO score. A perennial Democratic target, Coffman represents a suburban district outside Denver with a diverse population that voted for Clinton by 9 points. He overperformed Trump by nearly 10 points, but hes once again at the top of the DCCCs target list, and the NRCC added him to the Patriot Program earlier this week. Inside Elections rates his raceLeans Republican.

Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock: A member of the moderate Tuesday Group, Comstock would have had a hard time defending a vote for the bill in a suburban district outside Washington, D.C., thats a favorite Democratic target. The NRCC included her on its initial Patriot Program list for vulnerable members in February. Her survival likely depends on her ability to distance herself from her party and Trump when necessary. She did that well last cycle, overperforming Trump by 11 points in a district Clinton carried by 10 points. Inside Elections this raceLeans Republican.

Pennsylvania Rep. Ryan A. Costello: Another Tuesday Group member, Costello represents a district outside Philadelphia that narrowly voted for Clinton last fall. The sophomore, who chairs the NRCCs Patriot Program, easily overcame a Democratic challenge last year from an underwhelming candidate. He overperformed Trump by 10 points. But Democrats are once again targeting the seat, hoping they can knock him off with the right candidate. Inside Elections rates his raceLikely Republican.

Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent: A co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, Dent is the rare GOP moderate whos not vulnerable. He won his seventh term last fall by a comfortable 20-point margin, overperforming Trump by 7points. Trump still carried the district, which is rated Solid Republican.

New York Rep. Dan Donovan: Democrats didnt seriously contest this Staten Island-based district last year after Donovan won a special election in 2015. He went on to win his first full term by 26 points. Trump did well here, too, defeating Clinton by about 10 points in a district Obama narrowly carried in 2012. But this Tuesday Group member is now one of eight New York Republicans on the DCCCs initial target list. Inside Elections rates his raceSolid Republican.

Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick: ATuesday Group freshman, Fitzpatrick won theBucks County seat vacated by his brother by 9 points last fall. Hes a moderate in a district that Trump carried by less than half a point. Democrats are always trying to pick off Philadelphia suburban seats, and next year will be no exception. Fitzpatrick is both a DCCC target and a member of the NRCCs Patriot Program. His race is rated Lean Republican.

Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler:Another Tuesday Group member, shes one of three female Republicans who voted against the bill. Shes never been in much danger before, winning a fourth term last fall with62 percent of the vote. But Trump carriedher district withless than 50 percent, and shes a DCCC target in 2018. Her race is rated Solid Republican.

Texas Rep. Will Hurd: The second-term congressman is one of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents, and is among the DCCC targets and NRCC Patriots. Clinton carriedhis southwest Texas district, whileHurd overperformed Trump by roughly 2points. Inside Elections rates his race a Tossup.

North Carolina Rep. Walter B. Jones: The 12-term Liberty Caucus member does his own thing and isnt afraid to buck leadership. He represents a solidly red district on North Carolinas coast, which he won by 7 points more than Trump last fall. Any electoral danger Jones would face for his vote would come in a primary. He secured the GOP nod by less than 6 points in 2014. But two years later, he easily dispatched two primary challengers. Plus, the Jones names goes far in this district; his father represented the same area for 26 years. Inside Elections rates his raceSolid Republican.

Ohio Rep. David Joyce: The Ohio Republican is not a DCCC target. Trump carried Joyces GOP-leaning district in 2016 but the Tuesday Group memberoutperformed himby 9 points. Inside Elections rates his race Solid Republican.

New York Rep. John Katko: The second-term congressman is a DCCC target and also part of the NRCCs Patriot Program. Clinton carriedhis upstate New York district, but Katko overperformed Trump by 15 points. Katko has raised concerns about the bills effect on coverage costs. Inside Election rates his raceLikely Republican.

New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance:The fifth-term congressman represents a district that Clinton won in 2016, making him a DCCC target next year. He outperformed Trump by roughly 5 points last November. Like other House Republicans, Lance has faced questions about the GOPs health care plans at a recent town hall meetingsin his district. The Tuesday Group member touted his position that lawmakers should repair the 2010 health care law, which differs from the GOP mantra to repeal and replace. His race is rated Likely Republican.

New Jersey Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo:The Tuesday Group member, first elected in 1994, is one of the Democrats targets in 2018. Hes an original opponent of the bill, saying last week that no one in his district liked it. Trump won his district in 2016, though voters chose Obama in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, LoBiondo outperformed Trump by nearly 7 points. His race is rated Solid Republican.

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie:He is one of the few conservatives who was not swayed to support the bill by an amendment allowing states to waive some insurance coverage requirements. Massie is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but votes with the most conservative House members. For Massie, the GOP bill did not fully repeal the 2010 law. Massie overperformed Trump by 6 points. Inside Elections rates his raceSolid Republican.

Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Meehan: A member of the Tuesday Group, Meehan is a DCCC target in 2018 since Clinton won his southeastern Pennsylvania district. But the fourth-term congressman outperformed Trump by roughly 12 points in November. His race is rated Likely Republican.

Washington Rep. Dave Reichert: The seven-term member, another Tuesday Group moderate, was supportive of the original GOP bill in March. He came out against the latest version shortly before Thursdays vote, saying it did not provide the essential protections he needed to support it. Reichert easily won re-election last year, but Clinton narrowly carried his district, making him a DCCC target in 2018. Inside Elections rates his raceSolid Republican.

Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: The veteran congresswoman recently announced she will retire after this Congress, increasing Democrats chances of flipping her district, which Clinton won in 2016 by nearly 20 points. Ros-Lehtinen, in her 14th full term, said the amendments to the GOP bill were fig leaves, adding, I feel bad for all the vulnerable members. Ros-Lehtinen outperformed Trump by nearly 16 points last fall. Inside Elections rates her raceLean Democratic following her retirement announcement.

New Jersey Rep. Christopher H. Smith: The veteran congressman wasnt on the DCCCs initial target list and is currently in his 19th term in the House. Trump carriedSmiths district but Smith outperformed Trump by nearly 8 points. His race is rated Solid Republican.

Ohio Rep. Michael R. Turner: The eight-term lawmaker wasnt on the original whip lists as a no, but he said in a statement immediately after the vote that he couldnt support a bill that would leave our most vulnerable citizens with inadequate health coverage and that he had repeatedly voiced those concerns to leadership. He represents a safeRepublican seat that Trump carried by 7 points. His race is rated Solid Republican.

Correction 4:20 p.m. | An earlier version of the story incorrectly identified Rep. Christopher H. Smith as a member of the Tuesday Group.

Lindsey McPherson, Erin Mershon and Andrew Siddons contributed to this report.

Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android.

View original post here:
Meet the Republicans Who Voted 'No' on the Health Care Bill - Roll Call

WASHINGTON Time was running short for President Donald Trump to attract enough votes to pass a new bill to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system this week as Republican party moderates held out, fearing a backlash from voters worried about losing insurance benefits.

A senior House of Representatives Republican aide said on Tuesday night no decision had been made on bringing legislation to the floor this week before the House is due to start a week-long break late on Thursday.

A bill would need to be filed by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning to hold the vote before the break.

Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who heads the conservative House Freedom Caucus faction that helped block Trump's first attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, said earlier on Tuesday Republicans were still "a handful of votes away."

The lack of movement among Republicans puts Trump in danger of his second major legislative setback, raising questions about his ability to secure passage of other parts of his agenda, including a major tax reform plan.

Most House Freedom Caucus Republicans have gotten on board with the new proposal, but Democrats are vowing to oppose any attempt to unravel Democratic former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul.

The latest Republican plan would allow states to opt out of Obamacare provisions that force insurers to charge sick and healthy people the same rates. That is seen as a concession to conservatives to attract their votes.

Trump insisted in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday that the protections for those with pre-existing conditions would remain.

"I think it's time now" for a healthcare vote, the Republican president said at the White House on Tuesday.

Even if a plan passes the House, it is expected to face a tough fight in the Senate, where Republicans have a narrower majority.

OPPOSITION

Republicans contend that Obama's signature 2010 healthcare law, which allowed some 20 million Americans to gain medical insurance, is too intrusive and expensive.

The White House sent Vice President Mike Pence to the Capitol on Tuesday to meet Republican holdouts on the party's latest effort to pass a healthcare overhaul.

Republicans remain divided over key aspects of the healthcare bill, with some lawmakers worrying about a potential spike in the number of people without coverage, or sharp increases in insurance premiums.

Representative Daniel Webster, whose central Florida district is home to many retirees, said Pence told him he would try to work out problems caused by proposed Medicaid spending caps that would limit nursing-home beds.

"I just think its going to cost us a lot in Florida, Webster said.

Another Florida Republican, Thomas Rooney, said confusion over the potential loss of coverage for pre-existing conditions had his constituents scared that "they're going to die because of a vote that we might be taking."

Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action started to increase pressure on moderate Republicans who were resisting the bill, such as Representative Billy Long of Missouri.

"Billy is using liberal talking points to distort the truth," Club for Growth President David McIntosh said, adding that Long "may want to keep Obamacare."

Left-leaning groups, including the Center for American Progress (CAP), were pushing their members to call lawmakers to urge them to oppose the healthcare bill, including via 7,000 medicine bottles delivered to congressional districts. Emily Tisch Sussman, a CAP organizer, said those efforts had generated "tens of thousands" of phone calls.

Patient advocacy groups, including the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, also oppose the reworked bill, while the American Medical Association and others have expressed concerns.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan, Steve Holland, Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert, Ginger Gibson; Writing by David Lawder and Paul Simao; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Peter Cooney and Paul Tait)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Russia succeeded in its goals of sowing discord in U.S. politics by meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which will likely inspire similar future efforts, two top former U.S. voices on intelligence said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON Donald Trumps national security adviser described his bosss foreign policy approach as "disruptive" on the eve of the U.S. presidents first White House meeting with the Palestinian leader, saying his unconventional ways could create an opportunity to ultimately help stabilize the Middle East.

View original post here:
Trump struggles to win over moderate Republicans on healthcare overhaul - Reuters

Fox News

GOP Scrambles as a Crucial Voice Shuns the Latest Health Bill New York Times Republican leaders were ready to move on from health care after the embarrassing collapse of their measure in March, but President Trump pressed Mr. Ryan hard to deliver on a major campaign promise and personally pressured House members to fall into ... Influential GOP lawmaker latest to say no to revised Republican health care billFox News Inside Republicans' Uphill Battle to Pass Health CareNBCNews.com House Republicans Weigh Another Health Care AmendmentHuffington Post Washington Post -The Atlantic -The Boston Globe -CBS News all 655 news articles »

Go here to read the rest:
GOP Scrambles as a Crucial Voice Shuns the Latest Health Bill - New York Times

House Republicans took up Tuesday a bill to allow companies to offer employees compensatory time rather than time-and-a-half pay, an overhaul of New Deal-era employment law that supporters say would enhance workers scheduling options but opponents warn would erode protections.

"This bill would ensure workers have less time, less flexibility, and less money," Maryland Democratic Representative Anthony Brown said in a floor speech opposing the proposal.

Republicans control of the White House and both chambers of Congress gives the comp time proposal -- which passed the House in 1996, 1997 and 2013, only to fail to get through the Senate -- its best chance in years of actually becoming law. It was approvedApril 26 by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on a party-line vote.

The legislation is likely to again face hurdles in the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican whose office declined to comment, hasnt indicated whether he plans to take up the measure.

If he does, its likely to face opposition from Democrats. Republicans, who hold 52 Senate seats, would need the support of eight Democrats to overcome a filibuster if all Republicans support the measure. Otherwise, the bill would stall once again in the Senate.

Senator Alexander hopes to see the bill taken up by the Senate when time allows,Taylor Haulsee, a spokesman for Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in an email Thursday.

Under current law, eligible private-sector employees must be paid time-and-a-half for any hours beyond 40 that they work in a week. Under the Republican proposal, companies and individual employees could agree that their overtime work would instead be rewarded with comp time.

In lieu of getting paid any wages right away for their extra hours in a week, employees would instead accrue an hour and a half in a comp time bank for each extra hour they worked, which they could then request to use at a future date as paid time off. The House bill has a sunset provision that would make it expire five years after enactment unless a future law extended it.

Supporters say the proposal would help workers take care of children or aging parents without forfeiting their pay.

"If you asked any working parent, theyd tell you how valuable their time is," said the bills sponsor, Representative Martha Roby, an Alabama Republican. "Congress, of course, cannot legislate another hour in the day. But we can give men and women more choice and flexibility in how they choose to use their time.

Republicans say the bill has plenty of worker protections, like a ban on coercing employees into choosing comp time; a guarantee that they be paid for any unused comp time within thirteen months after accruing it; and a requirement that workers who asked to utilize their comp time get to do so within a reasonable period after making the request if the use of the compensatory time does not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.

As Trump Talks Up the Working Class, U.S. Unions Fade: QuickTake

That doesnt satisfy opponents, who see the bill as a Trojan horse that undermines existing protections for workers without creating any actual new ones.

Its a complete and total fraud, said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute.

Get the latest on global politics in your inbox, every day.

Get our newsletter daily.

Nothing under current law prevents companies from just offering paid sick days or family leave to their workers, opponents of the proposal say -- or short of that, from granting requests for unpaid leave. Because workers right now could take paid overtime and then use the money to make up for unpaid leave taken later, they argue, theres no benefit to them in letting them instead work unpaid overtime and then make up for it by taking paid leave.

It forces the employee to give the employer a loan -- unsecured, interest-free -- of the overtime pay, in order to have the hope -- not a guarantee, but the hope -- of having some time off later on, said Eisenbrey. Either way, he said, employers still get to decide whether to actually grant their workers requests for time off.

The difference, Democrats say, is that if Republicans get their way, companies will get away with not paying overtime by pressuring workers to choose comp time or by only giving excess hours to those staff whove done so.

Given the prevalence of wage-and-hour violations and Trumps proposal to slash the Department of Labors budget, workers who are illegally coerced out of time-and-a-half would be unlikely to get made whole, said Ellen Bravo, founder of the coalition Family Values at Work.

It plays into the hands of bad actors who are already engaging in wage theft it gives them another tool," Bravo said.

Such fears are unfounded, said Representative Bradley Byrne, anAlabama Republican who chairs the Workplace Protections subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

"Its a very bad business decision to go out there and try to intimidate or coerce an employee in this environment," he said.

Byrne said the GOP bill offers a better solution to work-life balance issues than Democratic proposals to force companies to provide paid time off.

"Any time youre doing something thats voluntary, its going to work better for everybody involved," he said.

The White House, which didnt respond to inquiries about the bill, would probably approve the bill if it does make it out of the Senate, said economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who served on Trumps labor transition team.

Excerpt from:
Republicans Try Again to Let Bosses Offer Comp for Overtime - Bloomberg

MSNBC

Republican accidentally tells the truth about GOP health policy MSNBC As the Republicans' health care crusade continues, we've grown accustomed to hearing GOP lawmakers present their regressive ideas in the most politically palatable ways they can think of. Occasionally, however, a GOP official will slip and say what he ... Republican: Sick People Don't Deserve Affordable CareNew York Magazine Republican Says Obamacare Repeal Will Help People Who Have ...Huffington Post Republican Congressman Says Sick People Are to Blame for Their ...Jezebel The Independent all 36 news articles »

Visit link:
Republican accidentally tells the truth about GOP health policy - MSNBC