Mediaboss Marketing

An overflow crowd forced Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., to hold his first town hall in Ashville, N.Y., outside in a parking lot instead of inside the seniors center. Jessica Taylor/NPR hide caption

An overflow crowd forced Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., to hold his first town hall in Ashville, N.Y., outside in a parking lot instead of inside the seniors center.

New York GOP Rep. Tom Reed probably knew what kind of day he was in for when he arrived at the Ashville senior center for his first town hall on Saturday. The crowd was so large the gathering had been moved outside to a slushy parking lot.

"First and foremost, we are going to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act Obamacare," Reed said at the outset, using a loudspeaker propped up on a ladder to try to reach the sprawling crowd.

The response was loud and sustained boos.

The congressman is just the latest Republican to face boisterous constituents voicing concerns with the nascent Trump White House, and more confrontations are expected as members head home for recess this coming week.

The backlash is happening in prime Trump country. Reed's 23rd District, which encompasses the western tip of southern New York, borders Pennsylvania and includes the more liberal college town of Ithaca. It has more in common with the neighboring Keystone State which Trump carried than New York City. It's rural, working-class, and made a big swing for Trump at the ballot box. After narrowly voting for President Obama in 2008, then narrowly going for Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump won the district by almost 15 points, according to calculations by the Daily Kos.

But if Democrats want any hope of making the 2018 race for the House competitive, they've got to put districts like Reed's back on the board and the early anger in places like Western New York is giving them glimmers of hope.

Repeal and replace but with what?

Republicans' biggest Achilles heel is front and center as they meet with constituents: their lack of a consensus plan to replace former President Obama's signature health care law, despite making it the cornerstone of their campaign platform for several years.

On Saturday, Reed was repeatedly pressed about how Republicans would propose replacing the ACA. While he said he supported keeping some of the popular provisions in the current law such as guaranteeing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and allowing children up to age 26 to stay on their parents' plan on other issues he didn't have concrete answers, frustrating many in the crowd.

"We're not comfortable with this until you tell us what you're going to do, point by point, to replace our health care," yelled one woman at Reed's second town hall in Cherry Creek.

When one constituent in the earlier Ashville gathering asked for the number of the GOP replacement bill so she could look it up, Reed said he would have his staff get back to her. In fact, there isn't just one bill that's been proposed, but several. President Trump has said he will roll out his alternative next month.

Others in the crowd grew angry as Reed explained why he believed Medicare reform was necessary, with some seniors shouting back that they liked their Medicare the way it was and didn't want it to change. Chants of "Do not privatize!" rang out.

Many shared personal stories as to why the health care law was so critical for them. In Cherry Creek, Mark Jones of Jamestown held up a poster with a picture of his 30-year-old daughter, Lauren, who has cystic fibrosis. Eventually she'll need a double lung transplant. Lauren currently has health care through her employer, Jones said, but if she has to stop working and the rule protecting people with pre-existing conditions ends, that lung transplant may be in jeopardy.

Mark Jones and his wife attended Reed's town hall over concerns that their daughter Lauren, who has cystic fibrosis, could lose her health care if Obamacare is repealed. Jessica Taylor/NPR hide caption

"They had six years to reach across the aisle and fix what was wrong. They didn't do that," Jones said. "They need to come up with a plan, and they need to come up with a plan fast, and it needs to be good."

Tea Party passions reversed

The anger Republicans face as they try to replace Obamacare is almost the reverse of what Democrats saw eight years ago. Back then, Democrats' town halls became raucous as members of the growing Tea Party movement flooded events, angry about the president's health care proposal, stoking fears of not just rising costs but of mythical "death panels."

That feeling of deja vu isn't by accident. Progressive activists are borrowing some of the Tea Party tactics to try and raise awareness online, form action groups and alert locals about events with their representatives where they can raise their concerns.

Some have been using the "Indivisible" guide a reference for progressive activists who want to reach their representatives and make their voices heard, composed by former Democratic staffers who lived through the advent of the Tea Party town halls. The organization is reaching out to supporters this weekend to start mobilizing for a "week of action" while members of Congress are home.

National Republicans have tried to dismiss the Indivisible groups, claiming they're just providing fake grass-roots support and could include paid protesters. But even many Democrats now acknowledge they made the same arguments eight years ago to try and diminish the rise of the Tea Party at their peril which led to a disastrous 2010 midterm election for their party.

Stephen Keefe is one of the leaders of the local Indivisible groups that's sprung up over the past few weeks. He's a former local Democratic councilor and mayor who heard about the group online and decided to get in touch and start a chapter in Western New York.

Reed's meetings on Saturday were in mostly conservative areas of the district, and not by accident, Keefe said. The number of protesters shows how much anger there is toward Reed and GOP policies, he added.

"I think that he is willing to meet with the people and listen to their concerns," Keefe said. "I don't think he's willing to act on them."

Most of the constituents at Reed's two morning town halls were middle-aged or senior citizens, and some carried signs with their ZIP codes saying they certainly weren't being paid. Judy Einach of nearby Westfield bristled at that idea. She and her friends had camped out early on at the Ashville town hall and had secured a prime spot near the front of the huge crowd.

"I don't think we're paid," Einach joked. "We got up early in the morning. We're lucky if we got coffee, and we've been waiting her for a very long time for him."

An anti-Trump backlash?

In addition to health care, many in Reed's crowd repeatedly pressed him over the new president, whom Reed supported early on.

Many people wanted to know why he had voted against a bill in the Ways and Means Committee that would have required Trump to release his income taxes. Reed tried to explain that he had concerns with that bill because of privacy rights, arguing that such an action was "a tremendous amount of power, for the government to come after one individual."

The crowd, not agreeing, drowned him out with chants of "What are you covering up?" and "He's not a private citizen!" At other times, attendees shouted, "Russia! Russia!" demanding Reed address the president's alleged ties to the country and intelligence findings that Russia had tried to meddle in the U.S. elections to help Trump.

At his Cherry Creek town hall, Reed had a tense exchange with one woman after he said he didn't support further investigation into the Russia issues. Reed said he hadn't seen enough evidence to warrant a probe, but the woman argued other Republicans had called for such action and that it should be a bipartisan issue of national security.

At one point, a friendly face seemed to emerge when a pre-teen girl made her way to the front of the Ashville town hall to ask a question. It wasn't to be: The young girl named Madison asked the congressman why he wanted to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency and received massive applause for her question. Reed said he didn't want to eliminate it, just roll back burdensome regulations.

Reed stays in the fray

Several in the crowd noted that, to his credit, Reed hasn't shied away from doing town halls, despite the anticipated blowback. In fact, he crisscrossed his expansive district to do a total of four gatherings on Saturday. Neighboring Rep. Chris Collins has refused to hold any town halls, and other GOP members have turned to tele-town halls to try and tamp down on protesters.

Not everyone was there to protest, though. In Ashville, a woman carrying a Trump/Pence sign and a man wearing an Infowars cap from the conspiracy theory-laden site that backs Trump stood stoically near Reed.

Mel McGinnis, who donned one of Trump's signature "Make America Great Again" red hats was another Tea Party faithful in the crowd, frustrated with the progressive activists and their interruptions.

"I thought this was going to be a town hall, but it was a mob hall," he said, calling the scene "mob-ocracy."

Despite repeated outbursts throughout the morning and angry chants against him, Reed was not fazed. He kept a smile on his face and almost seemed to relish the exchanges, no matter how hostile they became. Earlier in the week, he even met with some constituents who had engaged in a sit-in at his Ithaca office.

"What I have heard is passion, what I have heard is democracy, and what I have heard is, hopefully, a willingness by many, of each and every one of you to find solutions," he told the crowd in Ashville at the end of the event.

That conciliatory tone, however, was met with chants of "vote Reed out" by the unsatisfied crowd.

Here is the original post:
New York Republican Rep. Tom Reed Faces Angry Crowds, Deep In Trump Country - NPR

Uncertainty surrounds health care these days.

As Gov. Chris Sununu delivered his budget address last week, he offered few clues on the future of the states insurance exchanges and expanded Medicaid program. Thats largely because New Hampshire lawmakers and health officials are waiting to see what happens at the federal level.

President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have made clear they would like to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act but have not yet outlined how exactly they would do so.

National reports illustrate deep internal divisions among Congressional Republicans over how to proceed the partys conservative wing is in favor of quick repeal, while more moderate Republicans are urging caution.

A straight repeal would suddenly leave 22 million Americans without insurance.

Heres a breakdown of some of the plans currently being floated in Washington.

This plan is seen as a more moderate replacement option. The plan requires insurance carriers to cover all patients, no matter how sick they are. But it contains a requirement making patients maintain continuous coverage and allows insurers to charge people more if they dont.

Better Way would allow insurers to choose which benefits they want to cover and drop ones they dont. This is widely seen as more advantageous for healthier people who want cheaper insurance that doesnt cover everything, but its a disadvantage for sick people who can currently buy plans that cover more conditions under the Affordable Care Act.

Better Way also allows insurers to charge young people lower rates, and would allow them to charge their oldest enrollees five times as much as young ones.

To put this in dollar amounts, the nonpartisan RAND Corp. estimated premiums for a 24-year-old would decrease from $2,800 to $2,100 annually, while premiums for a 64-year-old would rise from $8,500 to $10,600.

The plan would put $25 billion toward so-called high-risk insurance pools over the next decade. These pools are designed to cover the sickest and costliest patients, taking them out of the overall health insurance pool and thereby lowering costs for healthier people.

When it comes to Medicaid Expansion, the plan proposes giving more control to states by providing block grants or per capita allotments and allowing states to decide how to spend it.

More conservative Republicans think Ryans replacement plan looks too much like the ACA.

One of the main features of this plan is fixed tax credits, which people can use to buy insurance on private markets. Each person would receive a $1,200 tax credit per year, no matter a persons income bracket. However, that amount rises as people age; for instance, people 51 and older get $3,000 per year.

The plan also favors expanding high-deductible health savings accounts, nontaxable accounts that people can put money in for health care costs.

There are a lot of similarities between Ryans plan and the one proposed by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price a few years ago, including letting insurers drop patients if they dont maintain continuous coverage, and making insurance cheaper for young and healthy people and more costly for older and sicker people.

There are also significant ways they differ. For instance, Prices plan would do away with expanded Medicaid without a replacement option, which could end insurance coverage for more than 15 million Americans enrolled in the program.

While it would create a high-risk pool for sick patients, it would invest much less money into the pool than Ryans plan $3 billion versus $25 billion over 10 years.

Under Prices plan, insurance carriers could charge older customers as much as they want.

This legislation, recently proposed by Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, would allow states to keep the Affordable Care Act as an option.

The Patient Freedom Act would repeal the Affordable Care Acts mandates including the individual mandate, employer mandate and benefit mandates to allow consumers to choose plans that cover fewer conditions and cost less.

It keeps prohibitions on annual and lifetime limits, bars insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions and keeps a popular provision of the law that allows young adults to stay on their parents insurance until age 26.

The bill gives states a lot of freedom to decide how they want to proceed with setting up their health care programs. States can either re-implement the Affordable Care Act or choose a new market-based exchange where they would still receive federal dollars and tax credits that would go directly to patients health savings accounts.

The third option the bill outlines is for states is to design and regulate a new insurance exchange without any assistance from the federal government.

(Ella Nilsen can be reached at 369-3322, enilsen@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @ella_nilsen.)

Read the original post:
Three Republican plans that could replace the Affordable Care Act - Concord Monitor

Russian servicemen equip an Iskander tactical missile system at the Army-2015 international military-technical forum in Kubinka, outside Moscow, Russia, June 17, 2015. Russia on Tuesday was accused of violating a nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. for deploying a ground-based missile system similar to the Iskander. Photo By Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Republicans on Thursday introduced bills that would take steps to hold Russia in compliance with a nuclear arms treaty formed with the U.S. in 1987.

The billscame two days after The New York Times disclosed that Russia had violated the treaty by deploying a ground-based missile with nuclear capabilities.

U.S. intelligence officials knew of the missile, which was classified and not made public until the Times reported the story on Tuesday. The weapon was identified as a ground-based cruise missile, a type banned under the Intermediate Range Nuclear (INF) Forces Treaty of 1987.

In response to this weeks findings, Republicans on Thursday introduced legislative actions in the House and Senate to push back against the violations. Language in the Senate bill points to Russias non-compliantactions on the INF Treaty dating back to 2008. If enacted in its current form, the bill would allow Congress to declare Russia in material breach of the treatyand lay the legislative grounds for the United States to eventually develop its own ground-launched intermediate cruise missiles capability.

The INF treaty required the U.S. and the Soviet Union to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, according to the Arms Control Association. Former President Barack Obamas administration also accused Russia of testing a similar-style weapon in 2014. An intelligence report cited by the Times indicated the missile identified may have been an SSC-8.

The treaty marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals, eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons, and utilize extensive on-site inspections for verification, according to the Arms Control Association. It also led to both countries destroying more than 2,000 other nuclear weapons over a four-year period.

Both the House and Senate bills, called the Intermediate-Range Forces Treaty (INF) Preservation Act, were introduced on Thursday with the purpose of bringing Russia into compliance with the 1987 treaty. The bills also raise the possibility of increasing the number of nuclear arms in Europe following significant reductions in the U.S. arsenal that began decades ago.

The Senate bill was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations for review, though it remained unclear whether the legislative actions would receive broad support in the Republican-controlled Congress.

If Russia is going to test and deploy intermediate range cruise missiles, then logic dictates that we respond, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) who co-sponsored the bill with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), said in a statement. Pleading with the Russian regime to uphold its treaty obligations wont bring it into compliance, but strengthening our nuclear forces in Europe very well might. Were offering this legislation so we can finally put clear, firm boundaries on Russias unchecked aggression.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan, right, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty at the White House, on December 8, 1987. Photo via Reuters

The report of the missile deployment comes after several tumultuous years of relations between the two countries and as President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals over his administrations intentions toward Russia, which has made several incendiary moves in recent years including the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine.

Russian and U.S. officials met in Geneva in November to discuss accusations about Russian compliance with the INF treaty.

Few additional details are known about the missile loosely identified this week as a SSC-8, according to interviews conducted by the PBS NewsHour with nuclear arms experts, political scientists and think tanks.

But Michael Kofman, a research scientist and former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said a ground-based cruise missile would be launched out of a truck-like transporter erector launcher. The missile identified this week was thought to be located among two battalions in Russia.

A standard missile brigade fields 12 launchers and about 51 vehicles total, Kofman said in an email. The range of this missile by definition would have to be over 500 kilometers to be in violation of the INF, but given known cruise missile designs it is likely not more than a few thousand kilometers in range.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said unlike ballistic missiles, which reach high altitudes, cruise missile are powered, guided and maneuverable missiles that follow a lower flight path.

Thomas Karako, a senior fellow with the International Security Program and the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the bills introduced on Thursday may have been a way for Republicans to convey that they want to get Russia back in compliance so here are the kind of things that we propose doing.

Congress is taking this very seriously and should be taking this very seriously, he said.

Harvard University professor Matthew Bunn, a former adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a nuclear expert, said the Pentagon has a range of options for responding.

I continue to believe that the U.S. will be working with NATO allies, he said. So that we can sustain the treaty.

More:
Republican bills counter Russia's apparent violation of nuclear arms treaty - PBS NewsHour

Upstate NY Republican confronts jeers at town hall meetings News & Observer Republican Rep. Thomas Reed was greeted by scores of boisterous protesters at town hall meetings in western New York. The crowd at a senior center in North Harmony was so large that Reed's meeting was moved outside on a sunny Saturday morning. and more »

Read the original post:
Upstate NY Republican confronts jeers at town hall meetings - News & Observer

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Almost all congressional Republicans are scared of facing voters in town hall meetings over the long Presidents Day weekend. Only 19 representatives and senatorsa tiny numberwill hold town meetings during the first recess of the current session of Congress, reports the Town Hall Project. But the groups listing of these democratic mainstays barely tells the story.

An eye-opening Washington Post accountrevealed that Republican officeholders have been canceling planned town halls because they dont want to face critics upset that they may soon lose their health insurance or see an increase in costs as the GOP plans to undermine Obamacare. Even worse, they dont want organized progressive groups to show up with posters, video cameras, and a determination to challenge them in public while posting the confrontations on YouTube:

According to the Town Hall Project, which collates information about public town halls, there are no availabilities in Utahwhere every federal officeholder is a Republicanover the coming week. Thats not a fluke. Just 19 Republican members of Congress have scheduled traditional town halls over the weeklong recess. Several more, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY.), have listed ticketed events or office hours; a few more have announced tele-town halls, which allow constituents to lob questions without risking a YouTube moment.

This cowardly response is nothing new from immoderate Republicans; its in line with their partisan ethic that anything goes to win, except playing fair. They cannot win in many states without gerrymandering federal and state districts, which allowed them to seize power after the 2010 Census. They cannot win widely in high turnout elections, hence their efforts to limit participation by creating barriers like new voter ID laws or restricting voting options favored by critics, like early voting on weekends.

Their partisan cowardice goes further by not wanting to reveal who is funding negative attack ads, thus they encourage super PACs to throw mud because they do not disclose donors. In contrast, they never stand up and say all sides should put forth their best ideas and allow citizens to decide, live with that verdict and fight another day. And in 2017, a new twist has emerged: the party that would stamp on others is hiding from voters.

Indeed, Republicans dont like it when the tables are turned on themthat is, when their town hall meetings are not filled with angry Tea Partiers but with aggrieved citizens from their districts and organized progressives.

Since Republicans took control of the House six years ago, helped by angry, viral town halls that embarrassed incumbent Democrats, big public meetings have become rarer and workarounds like the tele-town hall more common, reported the Post. But in the past week, as Indivisible, Organizing for America, and other progressive groups have become more open about demanding town halls, some Republicans have become bolder about shutting them down.

A few are even admitting this is exactly whats going on.

In a letter to constituents first shared by the Knoxville News Sentinel, Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-TN) said that he valued being accessible but would not indulge protesters by holding a public event, noted the Post article. I am not going to hold town hall meetings in this atmosphere, because they would very quickly turn into shouting opportunities for extremists, kooks and radicals, Duncan said. Also, I do not intend to give more publicity to those on the far left who have somuch hatred, anger and frustration in them.I have never seen somany more sore losers asthere are today.

Needless to say, these Republicans are fine when their own propagandists are doing the yelling, namely those in right-wing media and related GOP groups, who conveniently ignore that progressives and others are doing what Tea Partiers have been doing for many years.

The National Republican Congressional Committee denounced a top-down effort to manufacture controversy, according to the Washington Post. Fox and Friends, a cable news morning show that President Trump watches regularly (and praised in Thursdays news conference), has frequently highlighted violent protests and hyped reports that some protesters are being paid.

Such shamelessness is nothing new in Republican circles. It may even be part of their twisted political DNAthe attitude that everything they do is magically patriotic, all-American and justified. The truth is congressional Republicans are running away from the voters in their districts who have ample reasons to be angered at the GOPs uncritical embrace of Trump and the far rights extremist economic and cultural agenda.

Whats the word for elected officeholders not standing by their beliefs in public and facing voters in their districts? Cowardice, plain and simple, and thats just the start.

IMAGE: Angry protesters outside Republican Rep. Tom Reeds town hall in upstate North Harmony, N.Y. on Saturday morning, February 18, 2017, one of only 19 held by Republican House or Senate members over Presidents Day weekend /New York Times video

Read the rest here:
Cowardly Republican Legislators Canceling Weekend Town Hall Meetings - The National Memo (blog)