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"There's no question but that the president's naivete with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgment about Russia's intentions and objectives, has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face. And unfortunately, not having anticipated Russia's intentions, the president wasn't able to shape the kinds of events that may have been able to prevent the kinds of circumstances that you're seeing in the Ukraine, as well as the things that you're seeing in Syria. ... This is not Fantasyland. This is reality where they are a geopolitical adversary."

Mitt Romney, March 23, 2014, on Barack Obama

If there has been any defining trait among modern Republicans, it's their ingrained distrust of Russia. For decades, the GOP made a habit of accusing its opponents of being weak-kneed and gullible about Moscow's intentions. If Donald Trump had been elected president as a Democrat, they would be painting him as the most craven appeaser since Neville Chamberlain.

But he was elected as a Republican, which has required some reorientation in the GOP. A lot of Republican voters have simply turned their worldview upside down. One recent poll found that only 1 in 4 thinks Russia should be treated mainly as a threat with two-thirds preferring warmer ties.

GOP officeholders, caught in the middle, are generally wary of Trump's policy toward Moscow. By a 98-2 vote, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill to tighten the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration, which the president opposes. But the measure has stalled in the House. And most of the party's members of Congress have done their best to downplay or excuse Trump's strange fondness for Vladimir Putin.

That remained true even after the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met last year with someone he believed was a Russian government lawyer offering "sensitive information" on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

If this was not collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, it was a conscious attempt at collusion with a hostile government on the part of the candidate's son. No wonder Donald Jr. lied about it until his emails were exposed.

That the Russian failed to produce what she promised doesn't make the meeting any less incriminating for Trump. If you give money to someone you believe is a hit man to kill your spouse, you can't claim innocence when he disappears without doing the job.

But many Republicans who should have been objecting couldn't bring themselves to speak up. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan were practically mute. When asked if the news was cause for concern, Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, "No."

Only a few longtime Trump critics, notably Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were vocally disgusted by what they had learned. Many of their colleagues are just hoping Trump and those around him are not obviously guilty of major felonies.

The standard for presidents used to be higher. In 1980, Ronald Reagan accused President Jimmy Carter of "cozying up" to the Soviet Union. In 1992, President George Bush attacked Bill Clinton for traveling to Moscow as a student in 1969. Even after communism collapsed and the pro-American Boris Yeltsin was elected president, Sen. Bob Dole ran in 1996, charging that Clinton "cherishes romantic illusions about the soul of a former adversary."

Romney flayed Obama in 2012 for telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have "more flexibility" on policies affecting Russia after the election. "I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses," Romney vowed.

In the past, the GOP demanded that presidents recognize the threat posed by the Russian government, understand the policies needed to counter it and have the backbone to stand up to any challenge. Trump, by their own criteria, has failed each of these tests.

Obama was vilified as a Russian patsy for actions that don't remotely approach what we know Trump and his circle have done. Today, all but a few congressional Republicans avert their eyes and swallow their tongues. Most of them, however, must be appalled to see the nation's security in the hands of someone so willing to overlook Putin's malicious behavior.

It may not be clear to them that Trump should be impeached. But by now, they have to know he can't be trusted.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.

Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at http://www.printersrowapp.com.

schapman@chicagotribune.com

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Republicans have lost the courage to stand up to Russia - Chicago Tribune

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said closed-door GOP conference meeting Friday morning that all 12 appropriations bills will be finished in committee by the end of next week. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

House GOP leaders will decide next week whether to brave an ugly floor fight over a massive GOP spending bill a proposal applauded by some rank-and-file Republicans but that risks embarrassment if it fails.

In a closed-door GOP conference meeting Friday morning, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said all 12 appropriations bills will be finished in committee by the end of next week. Starting Monday, leadership will begin a tentative whip count on whether lawmakers would vote for a package before the August recess that combines all of those bills into one $1 trillion government funding bill.

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The idea, first proposed by Rep. Tom Graves, a senior appropriator, is to give House Republicans a chance to pass a red-meat spending bill that will lay out GOP priorities. Though the bill would never pass the Senate in the face of Democratic opposition, the process would allow House Republicans to offer potentially hundreds of amendments, an exercise that excites members who are frustrated that theyve had no input on how to fund the government.

Its actually been the consensus of the conference to get all this done before August, Graves (R-Ga.) said upon emerging from conference Friday, optimistic that his idea will take. Were here to get our job done, and Ill tell you, members are excited about the opportunity to put our priorities forward and advance it to the floor.

The strategy could open something of a Pandoras box, however. Lawmakers would be required to vote on controversial amendments that could be used against them in their districts, from provisions on the Confederate flag to gay rights proposals that put them in bind. Democratic amendments chiding the administration for the Russia controversy are almost assured.

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Perhaps more worrisome: The bill might fail on the floor, which would provoke another flood of damaging headlines about the GOP's deep divisions and inability govern.

While Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), another senior Appropriations member, said the Graves strategy was the preferred approach, he acknowledged that reaching 218 votes could be a challenge for the fractious conference. Republicans have yet to unite around a broader fiscal 2018 budget, let alone a $1 trillion government funding package with hundreds and hundreds of pages, he said.

Thats why GOP leaders want the conference to commit to passing the final bill whatever it looks like before they move down this path. McCarthy asked members to read the various spending bills over the weekend and be ready to give leadership feedback next week. Leadership has reminded members that they wont get everything they want, and if their amendments or ideas fail on the floor, they should be ready to support the final version anyway.

Getting such a commitment from members, however, could be difficult since they will want to see the final product before committing to vote for it.

Former House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said hes optimistic GOP leaders will succeed in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass the omnibus spending package.

I think so, but its such an early moment here, Rogers told reporters Friday morning. The people havent seen the bills. But I think when they do, theyll find that these bills are solid, theyre complete and they give us a chance to take a shutdown off the table.

Whats different from previous intra-party clashes, Rogers said, is that appropriators have made concessions that should appease the fiscal conservatives who usually vote against spending bills.

We cut spending. We fully fund the military request. Social issues weve taken care of in the bill, he said. So I think weve taken away all the objections that most people had.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa), a centrist Republican on the Appropriations committee, expressed concern that some of the bills called for unrealistically low spending levels, which would run into opposition in the Senate.

But he said he would support a bundled funding package, in part because it would include the bill funding military construction and veterans programs that his subcommittee wrote.

Im in the bus, he joked. Im the leadoff hitter.

Dent also lamented that many of the hard-line Republicans who back this spending package will ultimately oppose the final plan that can pass both chambers of Congress.

If this gets me to an agreement in the end, to the real numbers, I can deal with it, Dent said. But the point is my frustration is, there are people who will vote for the takeoff, for the initial launch, but theyll be nowhere to be found for the landing, for the real bill that matters.

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House Republicans weigh massive partisan spending bill - Politico

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Alex Wong/Getty Images and Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Last September, in a classified briefing, the CIA told senior lawmakers that Russia was working to elect Donald Trump president. In that meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed skepticism of the intelligence and questioned its veracity. And he made a threat of sorts. At the time, the Washington Post reported that McConnell made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. Put simply, if President Obama spoke out on Russian interference, McConnell would turn it into a partisan football. The president kept quiet.

Jamelle Bouie isSlates chief political correspondent.

Of the turning points that brought us to our present crisis, this is among the most consequential. McConnells stance in that briefing didnt just enable Russian hacking, it precluded official scrutiny and criticism of that hacking and effectively gave cover to key members of Team Trump as they sought information to use against Hillary Clinton. McConnell downplayed Russian interference for what were likely partisan reasons, with little knowledge of the scope of and even less fear for the far-ranging implications of what he was covering up. And in that, he presaged the response of the entire Republican Party, which didnt just utilize the hacked and leaked information but has looked the other way at every sign of something untoward involving Donald Trump and the Russian government.

Republicans are still looking the other way, even as that stance becomes more and more untenable. And they are looking awayas well as downplaying the seriousness of the issuedespite the real chance that the truth is more damning than what we know at the present, and that it may damage our country more than we want to believe. This see no evil response is especially egregious given recent revelations around Donald Trump Jr. and his efforts to obtain favorable information for his fathers campaign. We now know Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically to what was communicated as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump and arranged a meeting between himself, the lawyer in question, Jared Kushner, and thencampaign manager Paul Manafortas well as, weve just learned, a former Soviet intelligence official.

The Trump Jr. meeting is just the latest revelation in a kaleidoscope of connections that, even if not illegal (that were aware of as yet), should be alarming to anyone regardless of party. We know of a GOP operative who said he had contacted Russian hackers in an effort to find deleted emails from Hillary Clintons private server, and we know the operative said he was coordinating with Trump loyalist (and later short-time national security adviser) Michael Flynn. We know that Jared Kushner and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have had several contacts with Russian officialsincluding Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyakthat they omitted from official documents, and we know of various contacts and meetings and relationships between various Trump associates and assorted Russian business. It is true we have no concrete evidence of direct cooperation between Team Trump and the Russian government. There is no fire, so far. But there are thick bellows of smoke. We at least know that Trumps campaign was receptive to Russian help, even if they didnt coordinate or collude.

Its an implicit statement that foreign interference is an acceptable path to partisan gain.

There is a response to this, increasingly popular among Trumps defenders: Collusion isnt illegal. But thats almost beside the point. Democracy is only possible if there is confidence in the process, and foreign interventionpotentially solicited by one campaignis deeply damaging to that confidence. It threatens the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. For our system of government, the question of Russian interferenceand the extent of Trumps awareness and involvementis existential.

But that fact, and the steady stream of damning revelations, has not kept GOP lawmakers from giving Trump and his team the benefit of the doubt. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch called the Donald Trump Jr. story overblown, praising the 39-year-old as a very bright young man, a very nice young man. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis called the Trump Jr. emails a distraction. House Speaker Paul Ryan has been subdued, declaring it absolutely unacceptable that Russia has meddled in our elections but also refusing to say if he would have accepted a similar meeting with Russian intermediaries. McConnell punted, deferring to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation when questioned on recent revelations.

And while other Republicans, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, used harsher language when referring to Team Trumps dalliances with Russia, theres no indication that any Republicans have wavered in their overall support for the Trump administration. There have been no calls for an even deeper investigation, no sense from GOP lawmakers that this is an urgent affair. Republicans are playing a dangerous game: covering up a scandal, without knowing the full scope of the offense.

What if future revelations detail actual collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? Though there is currently no proof, do Republicans really believe the chances are zero that thisor even worse possibilitiesare true? What if strategic use of hacked information gave Trump a critical edge in the election? What if we learn that Russia actually influenced the results? Even if its actions didnt determine the eventual outcome, the resulting doubts would still be real and potent. By allowing the collapse of trust, the Republican Party will have abetted a wholesale subversion of American democracy.

If nothing else, Republican behaviorthe extent to which the party is still powering through a hyper-partisan agenda, even as evidence of something untoward mountsis an implicit statement that foreign interference is an acceptable path to partisan gain. At the risk of clich, it normalizes outside meddling in American democracy. And the 2016 election wont even be the end of Russian interference in our elections. There is real potential for further, more damaging hacking aimed at often-obsolete local election infrastructure. Preventing this is of national concern and requires cooperation from both sides at all levels of government. It requires both parties to show a commitment to the ideals of American democracy.

Unfortunately, its not clear that both parties have that commitment. The GOPs recent enthusiasm for voter ID laws (and the voter suppression they cause) has long since thrown that issue of commitment into question. But the institutional indifference to foreign intervention is something different. It signals a dangerously zero-sum attitude, where any priceincluding subversion from outside forcesis worth paying if it clears a path to partisan and ideological victory. Perhaps the worm will turn and Republicans will join Democrats in demanding real answers from President Trump and his associates. For now, at least, we have a Republican Party that values its success above the integrity of our system.

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The Most Dangerous Game - Slate Magazine

In last Sundays Denver Post, John Ingold wrote a front page story entitled The Faces of Medicaid. In this story he compassionately described a little girl who was disabled, a boy with severe autism and a senior suffering from the Alzheimers disease. Ingold highlighted their dependence on Medicaid, a shared federal/state partnership that provides a health care safety net for the poor and disabled. The Republican-led Congress is now considering significant reforms to Medicaid due to its sky-rocketing costs as part of efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare.

Historically, Medicaid is a shared costs program with the states and the federal government each paying about half its expenses. The Republican proposal moves Medicaid from its current archaic fee-for-service system to one where states can choose to either accept a fixed capitated amount per enrollee, increased annually by a formula of medical inflation plus one percent per year, or a block grant. Under the block grant, states would receive much more flexibility in how they manage the delivery of care for their Medicaid population and provide relief to their budgets by reducing the cost of delivering medical care. However, for vulnerable patients, like the ones highlighted in The Post story last Sunday, there remains the uncertainty of how changes to Medicaid may impact their access to care. Not surprisingly, the uncertainty of how changes to their care will affect them and their families has created an environment of anxiety and fear of the unknown.

The irony of this is that none of the programs described by Ingold were part of the ACA. What the ACA did was to create the Medicaid expansion program. Medicaid expansion added an entirely new class of recipients to Medicaid by making eligible able-bodied individuals, without dependent children, who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level. The ACAs Medicaid expansion program has increased the number of Medicaid enrollees across the country by almost a third and is the main driver of Medicaids dramatic increase in spending.

On Tuesday, I sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggesting that Republicans revisit their approach to ACA reform and break it into three separate initiatives. The first would limit changes to Medicaid to only the ACA-created Medicaid Expansion program and apply any savings as an offset for the taxes and penalties that impact working and middle class families; the second bill would move all other ACA-related taxes out of the health care debate and into the pending tax reform bill; and the third would address the failing health insurance exchanges where individuals not eligible for Medicaid and who do not have employer provided health insurance now go for coverage. This part should be negotiated in a bipartisan manner outside of the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.

Medicaid expansion:As noted above, the traditional Medicaid program is a shared responsibility with costs divided about evenly between the federal government and the states. Under the ACA, the Medicaid expansion program has the federal governments share starting at 100% and phasing down to 90% by 2020. It makes no sense to me that the federal government would favor able-bodied adults over all other Medicaid recipients, such as disabled children, whose costs are reimbursed at 50% by the federal government.

The ACAs Medicaid expansion needs to revert to the standard Medicaid cost shares that the states receive for all other Medicaid enrollees. This could be done by phasing it into effect by allowing all Medicaid expansion enrollees up to January 2020 to remain at the 90/10 split indefinitely while all new enrollees from January 2020 are at the standard reimbursement rate for each respective state (50% in Colorado).

Tax reform:There are 21 taxes and penalties in the ACA, many of which have nothing to do with health care. The ACA taxes on higher income Americans, such as the 3.8% surtax on net investment income, are better addressed in the impending tax reform bill, not during the health care debate.

Health insurance reform: The ACA promised lower health insurance rates but we all know that never materialized. Now the health care exchanges, created under the ACA, are failing as health insurance carriers are losing money on the plans offered through the exchanges with more and more of them dropping out of the program. When there are no carriers willing to provide policies for a certain state or region serviced by an exchange, the program collapses and consumers lose the ability to buy income-adjusted subsidized policies. I believe this is an area where Republicans and Democrats can come together to find a bipartisan solution that works to lower health insurance costs while maintaining consumer protections such as preexisting conditions.

Right now we in Congress have a bipartisan opportunity to fix the many problems Americans have in obtaining access to affordable health care and to responsibly address the unsustainable cost of the ACAs Medicaid Expansion.

Mike Coffman, a Republican, represents Colorados 6th Congressional District.

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Three ways Republicans could better reform the ACA - The Denver Post

Make America Great Again was the battle cry of the Republican Party. After five months of pursuing greatness, this is what Republicans have come up with: Gutting the EPA (boiling water is OK). Making America the laughing stock of the world (yeah, that's right, we're crazy). Getting rid of health care (who needs it?). Restricting voter rights (it's OK, Russia will help us). Attacking the free press (that's only for democracies, all hail our dictator). And on and on and on.

Donald Trump as president has broken all the rules of human decency. He lies (daily), cheats, demoralizes and is a womanizer. He is a racist and bigot who exhibits extreme arrogance and pathological insecurities. The religious right is his base (see, we're crazy). But seriously, he is not the big player. Republicans are in their pockets so deep they've sold their souls. The sad thing about all this is his supporters. They still think there is something in it for them. Sorry, Republicans, you've been screwed and you're taking our country down with you.

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Letter: Republicans are taking our country down - Salt Lake Tribune