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By Susan Cornwell | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON Deeply divided Republicans squeezed their U.S. healthcare overhaul, backed by President Donald Trump, through a key House of Representatives panel on Thursday despite defections by three conservatives who consider it too similar to the Obamacare law it is intended to replace.

Trump's first major legislative initiative still faces an uphill battle in the full House and later the Senate despite ongoing efforts by the White House and Republican leaders to satisfy conservative opponents.

The Budget Committee vote was 19 to 17, with Republican Representatives David Brat, Gary Palmer and Mark Sanford - all members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus - joining the panel's Democrats in voting against it. The committee brought provisions approved last week by two other panels into a single bill, helping pave the way for a later vote on the House floor.

Republicans, who control Congress and the White House, could not afford to lose more than three from their ranks on the committee for it to pass.

"I don't think we are anywhere near passage," Brat said after the vote, noting that Republican conservatives as well as moderates had problems with the bill.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act, the signature legislative achievement of former President Barack Obama, enabled about 20 million previously uninsured Americans to obtain medical coverage. About half of those were through the law's expansion of eligibility and increased funding for the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor.

The close vote illustrated the problems Republican leaders may encounter in corralling enough votes in their party to win passage on the House floor amid unified Democratic opposition. The measure now goes to the Rules Committee before reaching the House floor.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan congressional agency, forecast on Monday that the legislation would increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 24 million by 2026, while cutting $337 billion from federal budget deficits over the same period. The bill faces opposition from leading healthcare providers, including doctors and hospitals.

"We are on track and on schedule," House Speaker Paul Ryan, who unveiled the legislation last week and is its chief champion in the House, said after the committee's vote. He added that while the main parts of the bill "are going to stay exactly as they are," Republicans were making unspecified "improvements and refinements."

Ryan told a news conference that Trump was "deeply involved" and "helping bridge gaps" among Republican lawmakers to get a consensus plan.

'CONSTITUENCY OF ONE'

Conservatives were unmoved. "There's no natural constituency for this bill," said Republican Representative Raul Labrador, another Freedom Caucus member.

"The Left is really mad about it. The Right is really mad about it. The middle is really mad about it. And so far it just seems to be a constituency of one, which is Washington insiders, people that are just trying to get something passed so they can get to the next issue."

Trump administration officials and House Republican leaders have said they hope to get the bill to the House floor by the end of the month so it can go to the Senate before lawmakers' mid-April recess.

Conservatives want a quicker end to the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which the bill has set for 2020, and want to add work requirements for some Medicaid recipients. They also call the age-based tax credits to help people buy insurance on the open market an unwise new entitlement.

The White House said it was discussing changes with House Republican leaders. Trump told a Fox News interviewer on Wednesday that much of the bill would still be negotiated, especially as it moves from the House to the Senate.

Conservative advocacy groups praised the Republicans who voted "no." Club for Growth President David McIntosh said it makes no sense for Ryan and Budget Committee chair Diane Black to force Republicans "to walk the plank and vote for a bad bill that they've already admitted needs to be changed."

Black asked fellow Republicans who had doubts not to "cut off the discussion" by voting no.

After approving the legislation, the panel adopted four non-binding Republican recommendations for changes before it moves to the House floor, including one by the conservative Palmer on adding work requirements for able-bodied, childless Medicaid recipients.

The other recommendations called for no longer encouraging people to sign up for insurance through Medicaid, giving states more flexibility in designing Medicaid programs, and changing the bill's tax credits to help lower-income people more.

Democrats have called the Republicans' plan a blow to the elderly and the poor while giving tax cuts to the rich.

Representative John Yarmuth, the committee's top Democrat, said the legislation was "not a healthcare bill; it is an ideological document." He said the bill imagined a "fantasy land where young people don't get sick, and apparently they don't grow old either, because they don't have to worry about being priced out of the market."

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, David Morgan and Yasmeen Abutaleb; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Dan Grebler)

WASHINGTON The Republican head of a congressional panel investigating accusations of Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election said on Sunday a leak involving former Trump aide Michael Flynn was a crime and that the panel was probing whether other names were leaked.

BEIJING With warm words from Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ended his first trip to Asia since taking office with an agreement to work together with China on North Korea and putting aside trickier issues.

WASHINGTON U.S. House Republicans are working on changes to their healthcare overhaul bill that would implement a work requirement for the Medicaid program for the poor, as well as boost tax credits for older, lower income people, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Sunday.

Originally posted here:
Republicans split, conservatives angry as healthcare overhaul inches ahead - Reuters

March 18, 2017 10:00 PM By PatLoeb

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Last weeks report from the Congressional Budget Office on the Republican health insurance plan set off alarm bells for health care advocates, because it said 24 million Americans would lose their coverage.

An analysis of the report shows what the impact would be locally.

Marc Stier of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center says the CBO report confirms his earlier estimate that more than one million Pennsylvanians will lose insurance under the republican plan, but theres a slight shift in who loses.

He says more people may be able to stay on Medicaid, but more workers may lose job benefits.

It looks like in Pennsylvania we may lose 280,000 to 300,000 people who get insurance through their employer because of different incentives the law creates, Stier said.

There are other winners and losers. Young people may see lower premiums, but people over 40 will pay more.

Stier says a 60-year-old in Philadelphia will pay about $7,000 more, for a worse plan.

Rather than covering 70% or 80% of the cost of health care, theyll cover 50-60%, Stier explained.

Stier sees little good news for the region.

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Excerpt from:
Local Impact Of Republican Healthcare Plan - CBS Philly

Arch conservatives have come to define the House Republican brand this decade, pushing the Treasury to the edge of default in 2011, shutting down the government in 2013 and supporting the most right-wing contenders in last years presidential primary.

Now, however, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) is dealing with a different rebellious flank within the House Republican Conference as he pushes a massive health-care bill toward the floor next week. Larger in number but softer in tone than their conservative counterparts, moderate Republicans are shaping up to be at least as big a hurdle to achieving the long-held goal of repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a more market-oriented series of policies.

These Republicans are getting their share of meetings with Ryan and his leadership team, voicing their concerns about the impact specific pieces of the bill would have in their districts. They are making clear that any negative fallout from these policy moves would place their seats in jeopardy in next years midterm elections, a fate that Ryan understands would open the door to losing the House majority.

And, of course, these moderates are making their case in a much quieter fashion than members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly 30 conservatives who have used their high-profile media appearances to gain several audiences with President Trump to question Ryans direction in the health-care fight.

We have our own way of evaluating things and making our points heard, and its not necessarily through the press, the way that they do it, Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), a second-term lawmaker from the Philadelphias western suburbs, said Thursday.

This is new math for Ryan. In his first year on the job, he mostly faced the same battles that his predecessor, John A. Boehner, had in his five years as speaker: The right wing always caused the most trouble.

Eventually those rabble-rousers from the Freedom Caucus helped push Boehner (R-Ohio) out the door by threatening to oppose his hold on the speakers gavel, and they had enough votes to likely block him.

[GOP health-care plan: Key House panel calls for work requirements, additional cuts in Medicaid]

For sure, conservatives far outnumber moderates in the increasingly right-tilting caucus that Ryan oversees. But the vast majority of those conservatives are amenable to Ryans policy provisions, leaving 30 or so members of the Freedom Caucus as the biggest troublemakers.

Meanwhile, according to an analysis by the FiveThirtyEight blog, there are roughly 60 Republicans who are either members of the mainstream Tuesday Group or sit in districts that leaned toward Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

The speaker can afford just 21 defections from his ranks and still pass the bill by the slimmest of margins, so Ryan convened a meeting Thursday with three representatives each from the ideological caucuses, including the Freedom Caucus, the more traditionally conservative Republican Study Group and the moderates in the Tuesday Group.

In the fight over Ryans health bill, the American Health Care Act, Republican strategists suggest the members of the far-right corner of the conference do not have enough votes to sink the legislation on their own.

Theres also a particularly strong belief among House GOP leaders that if Trump puts his full force behind the legislation, these Freedom Caucus members will buckle.

Take Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the caucus chairman, who is currently leaning against the legislation. Trump won Meadowss district in western North Carolina by nearly 30 percentage points, a much bigger margin than Republican Mitt Romney won there in 2012.

Thats not the case with almost three dozen Republicans who come from districts that Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 4 percentage points.

These Republicans saw the Congressional Budget Office estimate of 24million more uninsured from Ryans legislation and gasped. They know their constituents might be frustrated with Obamacare, but they tend to be more diverse and from the suburban professional ranks, unwilling to throw people off insurance with no substitute.

We just need to make sure that we are helping the people who are most in need, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said.

Curbelo won a second term from his South Florida district in a rout even though Trump lost there by 16 percentage points.

But 2018 will be a very different race. Like the vast majority of Republicans in tough districts, Curbelo has never run with a Republican holding the presidency.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a longtime reliable ally of leadership, also wont commit to supporting the health legislation despite a meeting Wednesday with Ryan. He barely survived his 2016 election after his suburban Southern California district swung sharply to Clinton.

Many of these wavering Republicans come from states that adopted the expanded Medicaid rolls the ACA allowed, a provision that would be phased out under the current Ryan proposal.

Thats one of the great concerns for Rep. Daniel Donovan (R-N.Y.), whose district in Staten Island and Brooklyn actually supported Trump by a wide margin. His meetings with local health industry officials have been brutal.

Theyre all against the current form of the bill, theyre all concerned, Donovan said.

He wants to prevent his Freedom Caucus counterparts from speeding up the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion.

Our health-care system is broken, it needs to be repaired, but I think we have to help those people that were harmed by the Affordable Care Act without harming the people that were helped by it, Donovan said Thursday.

The underlying theme of the Tuesday Group Republicans is to make their voices heard quietly, in the speakers office or on the House floor, to try keep the bill from going too far to the right. You sort of want to keep your powder dry until youre able to look at everything and sift through it, Costello said.

Ultimately, however, the test for these Republicans will be how they respond if Ryan and Trump appease the conservatives.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), chairman of the Tuesday Group, delivered a warning that his moderates might be willing to topple the entire legislation if it means a bad deal for their districts.

He wouldnt commit to how many were in those ranks, but for the first time these moderates have leverage, if they choose to use it.

Enough to make a difference, Dent said.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Link:
The sleeping giants of the Obamacare debate: Republican moderates in the House - Washington Post

President Trumps America First budget released Thursday that calls for steep cuts to the State Department and Environmental Protection Agency in order to increase defense spending was called by some Republicans as a pie-in-the-sky wish list that will never pass Congress in tact.

It is not uncommon for a presidents initial skinny budget to face an uphill fight with congressmen who control the governments purse strings. But the early resistance is notable since Republicans control both the House and Senate. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared to hedge his optimism on the plan that he called a blueprint.

For better or worse, Trumps budget appears to make good on some of his key campaign promises. He calls for an increase in defense spending by $54 billion, which The Associated Press points out is the largest increase since President Reagans military buildup of the 1980s. The defense increase will be paid for by cuts to the EPA, State Department and federal funding for the arts.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who often finds himself at odds with Trump, said plainly, It is clear that this budget proposed today cannot pass the Senate.

Trump said in a statement that to keep Americans safe, we have made the tough choices that have been put off for too long.

Republicans leaders spread out across the country have found items in the budget that would likely not still well with their voters.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, spoke out against the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., called out the budget cut on the Appalachian Regional commission, which assists communities in his region. He called Trumps budget cuts draconian, careless and counterproductive.

I just want to make sure that rural America, who was very supportive to Trump, doesnt have to take a disproportionately high cut, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., told the AP.

Republicans praised the president for beefing up the Pentagon, but they were far less enthusiastic about accepting Trump's recipe for doing so without adding to the nation's $20 trillion debt.

"While we support more funding for our military and defense, we must maintain support for our farmers and ranchers," said North Dakota Republican John Hoeven, blasting a 21 percent cut to the Agriculture Department's budget.

KRAUTHAMMER: TRUMP'S BUDGET PROPOSAL IS 'DEAD ON ARRIVAL'

Democrats have spoken out against the budget they say would devastate the work done by agencies like the EPA. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted, Democrats in Congress will emphatically oppose these cuts & urge our Republican colleagues to reject them as well.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said this is not a take-it-or-leave-it budget. He told The Washington Post that the message were sending to the Hill is, we want more money for the things the president talked about, defense being the top one, national security. And we dont want to add to the budget deficit. If Congress has another way to do that, were happy to talk to them about it.

Edmund DeMarche is a news editor for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @EDeMarche.

See the original post:
Trump's first budget faces early Republican resistance - Fox News

Be careful what you wish for. We're less than a month into total Republican control of the presidency and both House and Senate, and certain, totally predictable things are evident.

Where money is involved, Republicans are doing exactly what Republicans do: catering to the wealthy, banks, Wall Street and preparing to make budget cuts that take away from those who are already mired in poverty. Cut Medicare? Who cares. Recipients aren't donors anyway.

The middle class has been hanging on by a thread, and Republican policy will completely destroy it. Admittedly, Obamacare is failing and Republicans have a golden opportunity to create a better plan. What has been proposed so far would massively increase the number of uninsured people, and the poorest of those would lose their doctor and resume going to the ER instead, placing enormous strain on hospitals and increasing overall costs to those who are insured.

Yes, Republicans won the election, but victory is getting what you want. Now we must face the reality: Do we want what we got?

George Warfield St. Charles

See more here:
Republican policy takes aim at the middle class - STLtoday.com