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Senate Republicans released their long-awaited bill Thursday to dismantle much of Barack Obama's health care law, proposing to cut Medicaid for low-income Americans and erase tax boosts that Obama imposed on high-earners and medical companies to finance his expansion of coverage.

The bill would provide less-generous tax credits to help people buy insurance and let states get waivers to ignore some coverage standards that "Obamacare" requires of insurers. And it would end the tax penalties under Obama's law on people who don't buy insurance the so-called individual mandate and on larger companies that don't offer coverage to their employees.

The measure represents the Senate GOP's effort to achieve a top tier priority for President Donald Trump and virtually all Republican members of Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hopes to push it through his chamber next week, but solid Democratic opposition and complaints from at least a half-dozen Republicans have left its fate unclear.

"We have to act," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "Because Obamacare is a direct attack on the middle class, and American families deserve better than its failing status quo."

But some Republican senators, as well as all the Senate's Democrats, have complained about McConnell's proposal, the secrecy with which he drafted it and the speed with which he'd like to whisk it to passage. McConnell has only a thin margin of error: The bill would fail if just three of the Senate's 52 GOP senators oppose it.

Democrats gathered on the Senate floor and defended Obama's 2010 overhaul. They said GOP characterizations of the law as failing are wrong and said the Republican plan would boot millions off coverage and leave others facing higher out-of-pocket costs.

"We live in the wealthiest country on earth. Surely we can do better than what the Republican health care bill promises," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Some conservative and moderate GOP senators have their doubts, too.

Senate Republican health care bill (PDF) Senate Republican health care bill (Text)

Senate Republican health care bill (PDF) Senate Republican health care bill (Text)

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., facing a tough re-election fight next year, said he had "serious concerns' about the bill's Medicaid reductions.

"If the bill is good for Nevada, I'll vote for it and if it's not, I won't," said Heller, whose state added 200,000 additional people under Obama's law.

The House approved its version of the bill last month. Though he lauded its passage in a Rose Garden ceremony, Trump last week privately called the House measure "mean" and called on senators to make their version more "generous."

At the White House on Thursday, Trump expressed hope for quick action.

"We'll hopefully get something done, and it will be something with heart and very meaningful," he said

The bill would phase out the extra money Obama's law provides to states that have expanded coverage under the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income people. The additional funds would continue through 2020, and be gradually reduced until they are entirely eliminated in 2024.

Ending Obama's expansion has been a major problem for some GOP senators. Some from states that have expanded the program have battled to prolong the phase-out, while conservative Republicans have sought to halt the funds quickly.

Beginning in 2020, the Senate measure would also limit the federal funds states get each year for Medicaid. The program currently gives states all the money needed to cover eligible recipients and procedures.

The Senate bill would also reduce subsidies now provided to help people without workplace coverage get private health insurance, said Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president of the health care consulting firm Avalare Health.

Unlike the House bill, which bases its subsidies for private insurance on age, the Senate bill uses age and income. That focuses financial assistance on people with lower incomes.

Pearson said those subsidies will be smaller than under current law. That's because they're keyed to the cost of a bare-bones plan, and because additional help now provided for deductibles and copayments would be discontinued.

Under Obama's law, "many of those people would have gotten much more generous plans," she said.

The bill would let states get waivers to ignore some coverage requirements under Obama's law, such as specific health services insurers must now cover. States could not get exemptions to Obama's prohibition against charging higher premiums for some people with pre-existing medical conditions, but the subsidies would be lower, Pearson said, making coverage less unaffordable.

Like the House bill, the Senate measure would block federal payments to Planned Parenthood. Many Republicans have long fought that organization because it provides abortions.

It would also bar the use of the bill's health care tax credits to buy coverage that includes abortions, a major demand for conservatives. That language could be forced out of the bill for procedural reasons, which would threaten support from conservatives, but Republicans would seek other ways to retain the restriction.

The Senate would provide $50 billion over the next four years that states could use in an effort to shore up insurance markets around the country.

For the next two years, it would also provide money that insurers use to help lower out-of-pocket costs for millions of lower income people. Trump has been threatening to discontinue those payments, and some insurance companies have cited uncertainty over those funds as reasons why they are abandoning some markets and boosting premiums.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the House bill would cause 23 million people to lose coverage by 2026. The budget office's analysis of the Senate measure is expected in the next few days.

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Senate Republicans unveil secretive health care bill to dismantle Obamacare - Chicago Tribune

CNN

Read the Senate Republican health care bill (full text) CNN Spicer unsure if Trump has seen health care bill. (CNN) The closely guarded Senate health care bill written entirely behind closed doors is finally public on Thursday in a do-or-die moment for the Republican Party's winding efforts to repeal Obamacare.

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Read the Senate Republican health care bill (full text) - CNN

I was going to interview the new female RNC chair, Ronna Romney McDaniel, and what greeted me was rows and rows of pictures of her predecessors. All but one were men.

"Yes, they are all guys. I'm very happy to add a feminine touch to this wall," Romney McDaniel later said to me with a grin as we stood next to that photo wall of men.

Romney McDaniel is only the second woman to chair the RNC in history and the first in a generation. She was picked by the Republican President she helped elect: Donald Trump.

As chair of the Michigan GOP, Romney McDaniel worked to deliver the key state for Trump -- the first time a Republican presidential candidate has won Michigan in almost 30 years.

"I went to his very first rally in March, I think, right after he'd announced his candidacy, and there were 3,000 people there. I've never seen that for a candidate during a primary. And obviously, my uncle ran for president," she said.

That uncle is Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who lost Michigan to Barack Obama that year by nearly 10 points.

During the 2016 campaign, Romney repeatedly slammed Trump in the harshest of terms -- calling him "a phony" and "a fraud," not to mention a threat to the economic and national security of America.

"It was just a difference of opinion as to where the country needed to go," Romney McDaniel said, "but it didn't affect my relationship with my Uncle Mitt."

Politics runs so deep in the Romney blood that 2016 was likely not the first familial difference of opinion about a candidate.

After all, Mitt's father and Ronna's grandfather, George Romney, was also a governor who ran unsuccessfully for president.

"And my mom ran for Senate, and my dad had run for attorney general. And I thought, 'I've gotta go get into party politics so I can figure out how to win and get some of my family members across the finish line,'" she laughed.

Many women in politics say they had very few, if any, female role models. Romney McDaniel not only has her mother as a role model but also her grandmother, who ran for Senate in Michigan in 1970.

"For a period of time, my grandmother, Lenore Romney, and my mother, Ronna Romney, were the only two women in the Republican Party to ever secure the nomination for Senate. And they were leaders. They were pioneers in our party," she said proudly.

But that early exposure to politics initially turned her off.

"I'd seen the negative side of it at a young age. I was 19 when my mom ran for Senate, and it was a pretty tough race. And you walk away and you think, 'I don't know if I want to be part of that world,'" she remembered.

Despite her famous name and political pedigree, Romney McDaniel, 44, ended up in politics the way a lot of women around the country do. Something happens at a local level that they get passionate about, and they get involved. Her pivotal moment came when her kids lost their favorite teacher.

"Part of the reason I got involved was I saw a teacher get laid off at our school. And we were in a budget crisis in our state, and they couldn't decide if they could bring her back on because we hadn't passed a budget. And I thought, 'This is just ridiculous,'" she said.

Romney McDaniel told me one of her main goals as RNC chair is to attract more women to the GOP. She hopes having a woman in charge will help.

"I think it signals that the Republican Party is a party for women. For a long time, we've been put kind of to the side, as if we're single-issue voters or we're just a special interest group," Romney McDaniel said. "We need to do a better job reaching out to women."

In presidential elections, Republican candidates have fallen behind with women nationally -- Mitt Romney lost women by 11 points to Barack Obama and John McCain lost women to Obama by 13 points. During the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Trump's treatment of women became a hot-button issue after vulgar comments surfaced on an old Access Hollywood tape. The President went on to lose among women nationally by 13 points to Hillary Clinton.

Romney McDaniel says that the need to bring more women in extends to all parts of the political process -- especially fundraising.

"I hate generalizing. But what I've seen, from what I've observed, fundraising's an issue for women candidates," she said, noting she sees female candidates struggle to ask for money and to find female donors.

"A lot of the major donors, and I don't know if it's on the Democrat side, are men. So we need to cultivate more women givers. Women are very comfortable giving to charities or things they believe in, but not as much political givers."

She says recruiting women for run for office is also harder than it should be.

It's a phenomenon that does not appear to be Republican or Democratic but, rather, female. Democratic women tell me they face the same challenges when talking to prospective female candidates for office. Many are reluctant to dive in, insisting they lack experience or fear losing.

"One candidate I was just talking with, she said to me, 'I've never run for something -- I didn't know I was gonna win.' And there is a risk component, especially as you get further up in running for Senate or governor. And you're giving years of your life to something, and you don't know if you're gonna come out with a victory," Romney McDaniel said.

Much like her Democratic counterparts, she is trying to change that dynamic.

"We need more women to realize they are 100% qualified for that position and that they should run. You know, if you're a mom of young kids, sometimes you're not gonna feel like that's the right time in your life to run for office. But I think they have a really valuable voice to add to the discussion," she said.

Romney McDaniel knows firsthand the challenges of balancing politics and parenting. She was elected RNC chair in January, which was the middle of the school year for her two children: Abigail, 14, and Nash, 12. Romney McDaniel and her husband, Pat, decided that it was best for their kids not to be disrupted, so she headed to Washington, DC, alone.

"It is tough. Well, first of all, I have the best husband in the world. It is a team sport for us. But he recognizes, my kids recognize that this is an opportunity to support our President," she said.

"I think [for] any working woman, it's not unique to me, balance is tough. It's hard to balance giving everything you need to your kids and then being successful at work. And we're always juggling, and we have two full-time jobs."

Like many women working in politics who have young children, Romney McDaniel relies heavily on her husband to take on responsibilities at home, which he sees no shame in -- just the opposite.

"It's given me a great opportunity to spend more time with the kids, and we're just -- we're thrilled for Ronna and the opportunity that she has, and she really is a role model for not just our kids but for others," said Pat McDaniel, who runs the Detroit office for the insurance company Hylant.

A big part of the RNC chair job is traveling around the country, largely to raise money. For Romney McDaniel, that means trying to figure out how to parent from afar.

Some of it is doing mom logistics -- like ordering groceries on Amazon Prime from her hotel room.

"I was at home this weekend and I'm like, 'We're low on paper towels and dish washing soap.' My husband was laughing. He's like, 'I got home last night and I saw these packages on the door and I thought, oh, thank you. Thank you, Ronna, that you realized we needed these things.'"

She also tries to do homework with her kids remotely.

"My son's reading Mr. Lemoncello's Library, so I'm reading it along with him out here so that we call and I can make sure he's actually doing his reading," she said.

I got to meet Abigail and Nash when they visited D.C. during their spring break, and it was clear they are remarkably understanding about their mother's long-distance job.

"Yeah it's difficult and we miss her, but she's doing something that's really extraordinary, so I mean, I understand," Abigail told me.

And -- who knows? -- 14-year-old Abigail could end up as the fourth generation of women in her family to get into politics. She is clearly soaking it in.

"You get to do these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that are just, not a lot of other kids get to do, and that's really amazing, and I'm really proud of her for all she's doing," Abigail told me.

Romney McDaniel joked that like most parents of teenagers, she is just trying stay cool for her kids.

"You're swag, Mom," Nash told her, which Romney McDaniel joked made her so happy she was going to embroider it on a pillow.

The toll of being away from her kids was on display earlier this month at a CNN event to launch this series, Badass Women of Washington. I asked each of the five women who attended whether they thought women really could have it all.

Romney McDaniel happened to have one of those extremely tough working mother days. One of her children had pink eye, and she felt guilty not being there.

"I don't know if you can have it all," she answered honestly, as she began to cry.

"I don't want to cry. It's hard to have it all," she continued, wiping away tears. "But we have to do it because it's women like us who have young kids who don't step up. If we don't take these leadership roles, our voices won't be heard."

Every mother on that panel and in the audience could relate. We have all been there.

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Ronna Romney McDaniel: One woman's rise to the top of ... - CNN International

WASHINGTON The top Republican on tax policy in the House of Representatives rejected the possibility of cutting taxes without fundamental changes to the U.S. tax code on Thursday, as the main actors in the tax reform debate prepared to meet for a fourth time.

With the window for tax reform narrowing, lobbyists and analysts say Congress could abandon comprehensive tax reform for simple tax cuts to reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, well above the 15 percent advocated by President Donald Trump.

But House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, one of six principals involved in closed-door efforts to agree on legislation, told CNBC that such a measure would not meet the Republican goals of bolstering economic growth and enhancing U.S. business competitiveness overseas.

"It's not acceptable to me. I don't think it's acceptable to the House or anyone else, for that matter. Look, that won't make us competitive," Brady said. "Just doing low rates is a little like putting supercharged fuel in an old clunker of a tax car. There's no question it'll go faster. It can't keep up with the newer models on the road," he added. "We've got to go after a competitive design."

Brady spoke as principals prepared to meet later on Thursday. Members of the group have vowed to make good this year on a top Republican campaign pledge to overhaul the U.S. tax system. But while the principals have met three times, the discussions have major issues to resolve.

"How low we can get these rates; how do we stop businesses from continuing to leave the U.S.; and more importantly, how do we bring those supply chains back; how we deal with issues like full and unlimited expensing those are still parts of this discussion, Brady said.

Brady and House Speaker Paul Ryan are pushing for changes outlined in the "A Better Way" agenda released a year ago, including a border adjustment tax that would tax imports but exempt export revenues from federal tax.

The measure could raise more than $1 trillion in revenue to help pay for tax cuts and effectively resolve the problem of corporations shifting profits overseas. But it is opposed by some industries and unpopular with Republicans in the House and Senate who fear it would raise consumer prices.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

More than 80 percent of Americans want to limit firearms access for people with mental illness and require background checks at gun shows and in private sales, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Thursday.

Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, known for pursuing a series of cases targeting public corruption and crime on Wall Street before President Donald Trump fired him in March, has struck a book deal.

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Leading US House Republican rejects tax cuts without reform - Reuters

Slate Magazine (blog)

Live Blog: The Senate Republican Health Care Bill Is Revealed Slate Magazine (blog) Senate Republicans have finally revealed their draft health care bill. We'll be live-blogging events throughout the day as voices on the Hill and elsewhere take stock of the legislation. Loading... Are Slate's comments not loading even after a few seconds?

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Live Blog: The Senate Republican Health Care Bill Is Revealed - Slate Magazine (blog)