Mediaboss Marketing

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and senior Democrats on several key House committees will hold a news conference to announce the strategy. | Getty

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other senior Democrats on Friday will announce a new, coordinated strategy to force Republicans to cast votes on issues related to President Donald Trump's and his campaign aides alleged ties to Russia.

Pelosi and senior Democrats on several key House committees will hold a news conference to announce the strategy, which is to introduce a series of so-called resolutions of inquiry, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

Story Continued Below

Resolutions of inquiry are a rarely used tactic for forcing House votes. The resolutions are introduced in the House and request information from the executive branch.

The resolutions are referred to committees, and if the committees do not take up the resolutions within 14 legislative days, any member can request a vote on the House floor.

Democrats used the technique earlier this year to force committee votes requesting Trump's tax returns. One such measure was defeated by Republicans in a February vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

New resolutions of inquiry are set to be introduced in six House committees: Transportation and Infrastructure, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, Judiciary, Financial Services, and Ways and Means. The Foreign Affairs resolution will deal with Russia sanctions, the aide said, while the Financial Services one will deal with Trump's and his familys finances.

A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

The plan is designed to draw attention to Democrats frustration with House Republican leaders, who Democrats say are not doing enough to investigate Trumps connections to Moscow.

The Democratic leadership aide said Republican committee chairmen have refused to sign onto letters seeking information from the Trump administration and pointed to a White House policy, reported by POLITICO last month, to ignore requests for information signed only by Democrats.

The aide said more than 300 requests for information from Democrats have gone unanswered.

Instead of defending the integrity of American democracy, instead of holding the Trump White House accountable for its complicity, instead of showing Russia that there will be consequences, the House Republican majority does nothing, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning in your inbox.

Follow this link:
House Dems plot to force Republicans to cast Russia votes - Politico

News flash: In the era of Trump, institutionsand especially those that are perceived as liberalare unpopular, and opinions divide sharply along party lines, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

Alright, maybe that isnt surprising. But there is one startling result in the survey: a sharp decline in conservative impressions of universities.

Most of the results are about what one would expect. Churches and religious organizations are popular, though more popular with Republicans and Republican-leaning voters than their Democratic counterparts. Banks are somewhere in the middle. Neither group likes the national news media, though the Democrats are more favorable. (We get it, you dont like us.) It used to be that colleges and universities were another one of those institutions that could generate at least theoretical goodwill on both sides of the aisle.

Voters Views on Colleges and Universities

What could possibly account for such a steep drop in trust in universities? Several analysts, including Philip Bump, suggested that this is backlash against the rise of identity politics on college campuses. Bump noted an increase in Google searches for safe space over the time period in which the flip happened.

This has to be a major factor. Conservative media has focused heavily on campus protests, free-speech clashes, and debates over (for example) whether offering ethnic food in dining halls constitutes cultural appropriation. Multiple states have introduced legislation designed to protect unpopular speakers, taking up model legislation circulated by a think tank.

Still, Im skeptical that this explains all of the change. After all, to mix a metaphor, conservative leaders have used the Ivory Tower as a punching bag for decades, at least since William F. Buckley began using his famous quip about preferring government by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phonebook to a regime of Harvard professors, a quip that dates itself by invoking phonebooks (but appears to date to the early 1960s). Campuses have also been battlegrounds for culture wars since then, and no acrimony today can match the battles at Berkeley or Kent State in the 1960s and 1970s, though its true that conservative media is also far stronger now. Unfortunately, theres not a great deal of corroborating evidence to draw on, either. While some pollsincluding Pewhave measured support for hate-speech codes among Millennials, that doesnt tell us anything concrete about the backlash. A steep drop in enrollment at the University of Missouri reached the headlines recently, a ripple effect of huge protests there, but there isnt a corresponding drop in attendance around the country.

So if safe spaces account for only some of the shift, what else might be at work? One theory that seems to make a lot of sense is that the composition of the Republican/Republican-leaning demographic has shifted. (For simplicity, lets just call them the Republicans from here on out. Pollsters and political scientists have long ago shown that while a growing number of Americans identify as independents, most of them vote pretty consistently for one party or the other.)

This is alluring because it fits with the fact that, as Nate Silver has written, it appears as though educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. If the voters who Trump picked up over Mitt Romney are more likely not to have a college education, it isnt surprising that they would have less attachment to the role of colleges and universities. However, as Pews Jocelyn Kiley pointed out to me, Pew hasnt found a huge shift in partisan identification to match the change. Besides, positive feeling about colleges and universities has slid among all Republican demographics.

Trump might bear closer examination as a driver, though, even if it doesnt come through in changing party composition. Over the period in which Pew measured the enormous switch, the president has been by far the most potent force in Republican politics, showing that he could overcome the party establishment and much of the conservative media. That allowed him to reverse long-held GOP stands on certain issuesnot just in the platform, but in the minds of Republican voters, too. Not long ago, free trade was a bedrock belief of the GOP. Yet consider this Pew result from last August:

Partisan Views on Trade Agreements

An even more dramatic, if less substantive, example is Vladimir Putin, whose net favorability rose a dizzying 56 points from 2014 to late 2016 in a YouGov/Economist poll. (Gallup found a smaller, though still sizable, increase.)

Trump hasnt put much effort into bashing colleges for safe spaces and the like. It was highly unusual when, in February, he tweeted angrily about students trying to prevent Trump-backing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley:

In fact, whats most striking about Trump is that he barely talks about higher education at all. Sure, there were some desultory boasts about his own attendance at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School during the campaign, but Trump never even bothered to produce a higher-education platform (even as Hillary Clinton made a plan for affordable degrees a centerpiece of her stump speech). When he finally did get around to discussing it, in the campaigns closing days, it was mostly to criticize rising tuition and to promise to bring it down.

Trumps innovation maybe wasnt to bash college so much as to ignore it. Previous candidates, in both parties, paid at least lip service to the idea of expanding educational opportunities and retraining workers whose jobs were eliminated by changes in the U.S. economy. The first indications that that was changing came in the 2012 GOP primary, when Rick Santorum (B.A., Penn State; M.B.A, Pitt; J.D., Dickinson Law) accused Barack Obama of being a snob for trying to expand access to education. Trump didnt bother to make the case for retraining or education; he simply promised dispossessed blue-collar workers that their jobs in mills, factories, and especially coal mines were going to come back.

Meanwhile, college is becoming increasingly expensive and therefore out of reach, even at the public universities that have historically been a boon to lower-income citizens. While college enrollment jumped during the recession, as people sought shelter from a poor jobs market, graduation rates fell. And since then, enrollment has fallen, too, especially for lower-income students. A PRRI/The Atlantic poll found that 54 percent of white working-class voters now consider college more a gamble that may not pay off than a smart investment in the future; those who viewed it as a gamble were almost twice as likely to back Trump as those who disagreed.

Regardless of the degree to which each of these factors, along with any others, contribute to the drop in favorable views of colleges and universities, the implications are potentially far-reaching. If more than a third of the country, and six in 10 Republicans, think that institutions of higher education are harming the country, its hard to imagine that wont eventually result in larger drops in enrollment. And since, whatever Trump says, those manufacturing and mining jobs almost certainly arent coming back to their old levels, that could create a drag on the nations economy in the future.

More here:
Why Do Republicans Suddenly Hate College So Much? - The Atlantic

For 31-year-old Sierra Parker, who has worked as a janitor for four years, the impending decrease makes her feel as if Missouris lawmakers have robbed workers of their voices. Parker said that when the wage went up to $10, I was feeling like, Oh finally they are concerned about the citizens of Missouri, the hard-working people. Parker, who is also studying business in school, was hoping to transition from janitorial work to the non-profit sector to fight homelessness, having been homeless herself for many years. If they take the $10 minimum wage, Im right back where I started from, she said.

In St. Louis, wages have gone up for white-collar workers even when factoring in rising housing costs. But they have fallen for blue-collar workers, according to one study. The higher minimum wage would have helped to remedy this.

While the battle over health care repeal and tax reform has taken center stage at the federal level, the scourge of Republican-led preemption bills is a reminder that many of the Democratic Partys biggest problems remain local.

Its a good sign, then, that the Democratic National Committee has finally begun to invest in state parties, as they announced earlier this week. Starting in October, the DNC will give state parties $10,000 a month, while also launching a $10 million State Party Innovation Fund. Its a step that may help turn back the well-funded tide of Republican domination over the past decade. A full 32 state governments are now entirely under Republican control. An even more harrowing stat: Over the course of Barack Obamas two terms, Democrats lost 960 seats at the state legislative level.

But many of those seatseven in deep red districtsare starting to look winnable. Just this week, Democrats achieved a surprise victory, flipping two GOP-controlled state legislature seats in special election races in Oklahoma. The emerging sentiment on the left is that Democrats have to show up and compete everywhere. It is no longer feasible to rely on the partys lopsided strength in big cities, and initiatives like Fight for $15 have to be wrapped in a larger, coordinated program to make inroads in rural areas and win back state legislatures.

For people like Rogers, Straughter, and Parker, who are going to feel in the most intimate way the effects of the partys losses in recent years, this has become a necessity, not a choice.

Read the original:
Republicans Are Coming for Your Minimum Wage Hike - New Republic

WASHINGTON Senate Republicans are still moving ahead with a vote on their health care bill next week, but barring some sudden changes of hearts, it looks like they will fall short of the votes and no one seems to have a real idea of what to do then.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expected to release the text of a revised bill Thursday, along with an amendment drafted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would dramatically undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions in the name of lowering costs for healthy people. On Wednesday afternoon, Cruz suggested, but did not directly state, that he would vote against the motion to proceed on the bill if his amendment was not attached.

If there are not meaningful protections for consumer freedom that will lower premiums, then the bill will not go forward, Cruz said.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Pressed on whether that meant he would vote against a motion to proceed, Cruz said the bill would not have the votes to go forward.The Cruz amendment would allow insurers who offer at least one health plan that complies with Obamacare regulations to offer other, cheaper plans that dont.

Regardless of whether Cruzs amendment is included, a vote on the motion to proceed may be going down anyway. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Politico on Tuesdayshe was not optimistic that this would be a bill she could support, and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) famously expressed a number of issues with the bill in a high-profile news conferencein June issues that would largely be exacerbated or unaddressed with the addition of Cruzs amendment.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also strongly suggested he would vote against a motion to proceed on the revised bill no matter the status of Cruzs amendment. He called it the same as the old bill, except worse, and, should a motion to proceed fail, he would push Senate GOP leaders to hold a vote on a straight repeal.

I ran on repealing Obamacare, Paul told reporters Wednesday. It doesnt repeal Obamacare. It creates a giant Obamacare superfund. I cant be for that.

If they lose on this vote, Im giving them an alternative, Paul said. The alternative is two bills: clean repeal, and a big government spending bill that they can work with Democrats on for big government-spending Republicans.

Republicans seem to acknowledge that they will, at some point, need to stabilize Obamacare markets. Even in their bill replacing the Affordable Care Act, there are funds that would reimburse insurers for the cost of their most expensive patients, allowing them to hold down premium increases.

But without their bill, many Republicans concede they should do something to bring more certainty to insurers offering plans in 2018.

At a minimum, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has suggested Republicans could fund the so-called cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which subsidize the cost of Obamacare plans for people with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level. President Donald Trump has threatened to end those payments, and, in response to that uncertainty, insurers have offered more expensive plans or simply not offered plans at all.

Funding those CSR payments would be a small step that Republicans could take with Democrats to reinforce the Obamacare insurance markets. But that move would almost certainly draw the ire of conservatives, and its unclear what legislative vehicle Congress could use for CSRs.

A budget deal or debt ceiling increase with Democrats would be an obvious choice, but theres little impetus to pass one of those bills at this point, and Republicans would functionally be giving up on their repeal efforts and removing the one negotiating chip they may have to force Democrats to the table on a bipartisan health care bill.

A more likely scenario the actual bare minimum is that Republicans do nothing. The Trump administration could continue to make the CSR payments or could end them and truly throw the Obamacare exchanges into chaos. Trump has the CSR payments as leverage to extract concessions on other priorities, like his wall along the Mexican border in an omnibus spending deal, and he could make the subsidies contingent upon an item like that funding.

It would then be up to Democrats whether they would give in to Trumps demands or gamble that voters will just blame Republicans for the collapse of the insurance market and, perhaps, a government shutdown.

That potential showdown is all the more reason some Republicans are floating the idea of working with Democrats on new legislation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) claims to already be working on a bipartisan health care bill a strategy endorsed by more moderate Republicans, such as Collins and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) but his idea of a bipartisan measure at this point sounds less than half-baked and far short of bipartisan.

Were trying to find consensus among ourselves and at the same time reach out to some Democrats who would be open-minded to the solutions being at the state level, not necessarily in Washington, Graham said Wednesday.

If that sounds like like something Democrats might resist, it probably should. Grahams idea of Democrats jumping aboard seems more aspirational than real.

It is a concept, he said. I hope it can get bipartisanship.

Asked about the basic tenets of his health care bill, Graham declined to provide any real details until Republicans had either passed or dispensed with their current legislation. (Graham said he thought the bill coming to the floor next week would fail.)

But the GOPs best hope of getting a bill through still seems to be this weeks revised legislation. While the health care plan continued to appear short on support Wednesday, McConnell still has more than $400 billion in savings he can dole out to win over reluctant Republicans. Many of Murkowskis concerns for Alaska could be addressed with that money, as could some concerns of other Republicans over the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion and high premiums for low-income seniors, though aides and senators have indicated that the new bill will mostly preserve the current provisions on ending the Medicaid expansion.

McConnell could also get a helping hand from the Senate parliamentarian, as shell have to rule on whether Cruzs open-ended language on coverage options is actually allowable in a reconciliation bill, which requires only 50 votes to pass but limits what senators can do in order to reconcile spending with their budget. While striking down the Cruz language could be the death blow for the health care bill, it could also convince Cruz and other conservatives like Mike Lee (R-Utah) to accept a more incremental approach.

At this point, McConnell seems to need a shakeup, and a parliamentary ruling could be what shifts the current dynamics.

The idea, however, of Republicans going back to the drawing board, perhaps seeking out some Democrats to support their measure, doesnt look like a winning strategy. Republicans are already split over a health care bill for both repealing too much of Obamacare and not enough, and Democrats appear completely united in their opposition to anything resembling the Republican plan.

If the revised bill fails, GOP senators have little idea what Plan B is. Ill leave that up to the leadership to decide what to do, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said Wednesday. Youre going to have a health care system that implodes.

As it happens, that part isnt entirely true. The markets appear to be in better shape than Burr and his allies concede or perhaps even realize. Just this week, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released a study of insurer financial performance that concluded the individual market has been stabilizing and insurers are regaining profitability.

Premiums or out-of-pocket costs remain a lot higher than many people feel they can afford, and insurer pullouts have left some areas, particularly rural ones, with few or even no choice of insurers. But some carriers are expanding their options, filling in gaps others are leaving, and many industry officials say the biggest source of uncertainty isnt the underlying market weakness that plagued the program in its first few years; its the neglect and sabotage from hostile officials, including the ones working out of the White House.

With a little more money, or at least some assurances that the existing money will continue, the worst outcomes of an Obamacare market collapse could be avoided.

But Republicans dont look all that interested in that white flag approach at least not until theyve demonstrated they cant pass a bill of their own. And even then, Republican leaders see big problems if they cant muscle through this health care legislation.

Asked on Wednesday what Republicans would do if they couldnt pass their bill, GOP Conference Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) suggested Republicans didnt have a backup plan.

That would be highly problematic, Thune said.

Jonathan Cohn contributed to this report.

Continue reading here:
Republicans Stare Down Failure On Health Care With No Real Plan B - HuffPost

Leadership vows to cut off recess are a staple of congressional theater, used as a ploy to force lawmakers to address an issue or face the prospect of seeing their overseas fact-finding trips canceled. But the threats usually produce some action and are very rarely acted upon. The fact that Mr. McConnell felt compelled to actually abbreviate the recess, just days after Republicans were snickering at the very idea, underscored the seriousness of his partys plight.

Republicans had other motives for acting. Some anticipated that President Trump would happily whack them on Twitter if they fled as previously scheduled in a couple of weeks without first completing a health care bill. He had foreshadowed that possibility earlier this week with a tweet across the bow: I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new HealthCare bill fully approved and ready to go!

The recess also made for miserable optics given the scant list of achievements Republicans have posted in what is often the most productive time for an empowered new president and his allies in Congress. Skepticism abounded in the Capitol on Tuesday as to whether the extra two weeks would be all that worthwhile, but it seemed to Republicans to be a better option than returning home or heading off on vacation.

I dont know how you go on a full-month recess without getting it done, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said of the health care bill.

In addition, reducing the recess also provided Republicans a way to inflict some punishment on the Democrats they see as a significant source of their problems. In conceding their lack of achievement, Republicans sought to direct much of the blame for the shortened recess and the poor Republican showing to the opposition, led by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.

I think it is admission of the fact that Senator Schumer has been very effective at slowing things down to a crawl and blocking the confirmation of President Trumps cabinet and other sub-cabinet level officials and making it hard to get things done, said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. I think it is important we demonstrate we are productive starting next week with the health care bill, and that is what Im focused on.

Mr. Schumer was having none of it. He said the Republicans problem wasnt the calendar, it was the substance of their health care bill.

And by the way, I have sympathy for the Republicans, Mr. Schumer said. If I were them, I wouldnt want to go home and face the voters either, because theyre not getting a very good reaction when it comes to this bill.

Mr. McConnell said the early August agenda would extend beyond health care, which Senate Republicans still hope to finish off next week. He ticked off a few other measures, including an always contentious debt limit increase, a usually bipartisan Pentagon policy bill and an important piece of legislation for the Food and Drug Administration.

Not to mention all of these confirmations that are backlogged, he said. We intend to fully utilize the first two weeks in August.

Even if they make significant progress in their additional weeks of work, which remains an open question, Republicans face continued difficulties.

For instance, House Republicans on Tuesday rolled out a Homeland Security measure that would provide $1.6 billion in physical barrier construction along the Southern border. In other words, it would fund the wall sought by Mr. Trump but vehemently opposed by Democrats in the House and Senate as well as by some Republicans.

That dispute could start a spending impasse, which could lead to a government shutdown after Sept. 30. Such a result would put many federal workers on an unwanted recess of their own, no matter how long senators stick around in August.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: A Short Recess, And Long Faces.

Visit link:
Republicans Reluctantly Acknowledge a Failure of Governing - The ... - New York Times