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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at an interview in Washington on May 24.

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

If Senate Republicans want to meet their goal of passing a health care bill by the Fourth of July recess, they have exactly two weeks to do it. Congress is scheduled to recess at the end of business on June 30, which means Republicans have to move at breakneck pace while keeping debate to a minimum. Whats the rush? For any Americans who are aware that the Senate is racing to pass a tightly guarded health care billand if the GOP strategy works, there wont be many of them!Republicans are hoping their outrage dissipates over the holiday weekend. And the world goes on.

Jim Newell is a Slate staff writer.

Passing this secretly developed, still-unfinished bill within two weeks would be a world historic achievement in underhanded policymaking. Put another way: This is the moment Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born for. This, reader, is his jam.

Ask a different member of the Senate Republican leadership whether they are sticking to the June 30 deadline, and youll get a different answer. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican, has always been more of an end of July guy. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Republican, treats it as more of a hope or an aspiration, a way of focusing the mind.

McConnell and his team, though, have not been deterred from the goal of a floor vote before the July4 recess, the Washington Post reports. [A]s McConnells team sees it, the options have all been vetted. Now, the difficult decisions about what to put in and leave out of the final bill are all that remain.

Much of the media has been operating under the assumption that the Congressional Budget Office would need two weeks to score the Senates legislation. Thats why senators were hoping to finalize the language by Monday night. Its now Friday, and the language still isnt finalized. But the CBO and Senate Republicans have been interfacing on legislative options for a while now, and leaders hope that the score could come quicker since CBO wouldnt be building an analysis from scratch. As Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso told Talking Points Memo, the issues theyre dealing with are dial-able so you can say, If you set this number, it does this and if you set that number, it does that. In other words, the CBO is just waiting for decisions on certain inputsgrowth rates for Medicaid spending, the length of the Medicaid expansion phase-out, expiration dates for certain taxes, lists of regulatory waivers that will be available to states, and so forth. Perhaps CBO could get a score done in, say, one week.

This is the moment Mitch McConnell was born for. This, reader, is his jam.

So whos going to make those tough decisions about which inputs to include? Its definitely not going to be all the Republican senators, and theres definitely not going to be anything like consensus reached. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, for example, are never going to agree about the proper growth rate for Medicaid. It will be up to McConnell and Cornyn to choose the proper balance that gets their conference closest to the 50 votes they need to pass the bill. Thats the phase they appear to be in right now. On the Hill Thursday afternoon, individual senators like Portman, Toomey, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins were ducking into McConnells office. The brainstorming sessions are finished, and now its about determining what each senator can live with.

Now, what about the Democrats? Lets be generous and say McConnell settles on a recipe by over the weekend, and the CBO begins scoring early next week. The score comes back early the following week, and McConnell posts the bill. Is there much Democrats can do to stop it?

One theory among progressive activists is that Democrats could leverage the vote-o-rama process. Under reconciliation rules, senators can offer an unlimited number of amendments during the 20-hour debate period; after the debate, each filed amendment would be considered with an up-or-down vote. That rapid-fire voting session is referred to as a vote-o-rama.

Ezra Levin, an executive director with Indivisible, suggested on Twitter this week that Democrats should extend the vote-o-rama well past a long nights work. He urged Democrats to threaten to filibuster by amendment, by filing tens of thousands of amendments to clog up chamber through the 2018 midterms.

But McConnell would have recourse. Though McConnell could let Democrats have their fun for a little whileat least to give off the veneer of a transparent, open processhe can eventually motion that the amendment process had become dilatory, the chair would rule in his favor, andbarring some appeals and other motions to draw the process outthe vote-o-rama would be finished. It might still be worthDemocrats while to push ahead this way,though,to see how long they candraw out the processbefore McConnell breaks, and to please their base.

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No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or puttethitunder a bed; but settethiton a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. More...

It comes down to this: If McConnell and a majority of senators want to rush this secret bill to a vote before the Fourth of July recess, then they can. McConnell needs 50 votes for the bill, and he needs 50 votes to bust through whatever procedural roadblocks Democrats lay before him.

Some Republican senators have begun to speak out against the secrecy of the project, noting that it makes them uncomfortable. That discomfort, however, has not been palpable enough for them to exert real leverage over the way McConnell has conducted the process so far. Any three Republican senators could have told the majority leader in early May that they wouldnt vote for the bill unless it went through the normal open committee process. Maybe they didnt think it would get this bad. Or maybe they agree with him: Speed and secrecy is the only way to do this.

Read more here:
Can Republicans Actually Pass the AHCA in Two Weeks? - Slate Magazine

Republicans celebrate the passage of the House health-care bill in May. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Right-wing critics of Obamacare have been predicting for years that the law would enter an actuarial death spiral, in which healthy customers flee and insurers raise rates to unsustainably high levels as only the most sick and expensive patients remain. The alleged death spiral has played a crucial role in Republicans rhetoric, undergirding their claim that the law is collapsing of its own accord. When President Trump repeatedly insists Obamacare is collapsing, dead, or gone, he is popularizing in vulgar form an analysis that people like Paul Ryan have been spreading for years.

The most obvious sleight of hand in this argument is that, even if it were true that the Obamacare exchanges were entering a death spiral and collapsing, it would hardly justify the Republican health-care bill. The exchanges account for a bit less than half the coverage gains in Obamacare. The rest of the newly insured come from expanded childrens health insurance and, especially, Medicaid.

Remember, Medicaid expansion is how Obamacare provides insurance to the poorest Americans (those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level). The allegedly collapsing exchanges only insure people with incomes above that level. And the spine of the GOP plan is hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid. Theres not even a patina of an argument that Medicaid is collapsing. The supposed death spiral in the exchanges is the Republican pretext for cutting a completely different program.

In any case, the death spiral is a fiction. An S&P analysis last spring found that insurers in most markets had found a stable and profitable price point. The conclusions received some attention, but the guts of the analysis deserve a bit more attention. What S&P found was that health costs of people buying insurance on the exchanges have converged with health costs of people who get insurance through their employer.

Look at the chart below from the report:

The dark blue line is the per-patient cost of people in the individual market. The light blue line is people in the employer market. Before Obamacare, individual insurance costs were much lower because insurers weeded out anybody who had a preexisting condition, and only sold insurance to people who were extremely healthy. Then, when Obamacare passed, the regulated exchanges enabled people with expensive medical needs to buy affordable individual insurance for the first time.

The costs of those patients ran well above the employer market in the first year or so it was available. That happened in part because many of the newly insured Americans had waited years for coverage and had a backlog of medical needs. Thats why the dark blue line shot up well ahead of the light blue line in 2014 and 2015. That trend is what a death spiral would look like the dark blue line would keep rising well ahead of the light blue line. But that hasnt happened. Since last year, the costs of patients in the individual market and patients in the employer market have converged.

So why are we reading all these stories about insurers pulling out of markets and premiums going way up? Oliver Wyman, an actuarial firm, examines the markets and concludes that at least two-thirds of the higher premiums next year are due to political uncertainty created by the Trump administration and Congress. The administration is threatening to withhold payments insurers are owed under the law, and also not to enforce the individual mandate. These deliberate efforts to subvert the exchanges are having their intended effect. But the underlying expected cost of insuring patients is low without a government engaged in deliberate sabotage, the firm estimates premiums would only rise 58 percent, a very modest level by the historic standards of health insurance costs.

Obamacare can be improved, especially in rural markets where hospitals and doctors are spread far apart and competition has always been difficult to produce. But the threat to the exchanges is the same as the threat to Medicaid: not any inherent flaw in the operation of the programs, but a governing party that ideologically opposes the transfer of resources that is needed to make health care available to the poor and sick.

Dont be complacent: High-rise building failures are never accidents, and contempt for the poor is global.

He left in place a policy protecting young undocumented immigrants while canceling protections for their parents. Its unclear whats next.

Jeronimo Yanez, who faced a second-degree-manslaughter charge, testified that he feared for his life.

Trump has made it impossible for Republicans to claim he is naive. Now, his behavior can only be explained by a guilty conscience or an unsound mind.

Look at this tweet, every time I do it makes me laugh.

The property was listed for rent on Thursday, and its already been snatched up.

The president is clamping down on travel to and trade with the communist country.

There are currently 8,400 U.S. troops in the country, along with 5,000 NATO soldiers.

That would leave Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand in charge. Heres what you need to know about her.

Michelle Carter sent her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, numerous texts urging him to kill himself.

Obamacares dead, says the man holding a gun to its head.

A Friday-morning tweet suggests Rod Rosensteins job is in danger and the special prosecutors is, too.

The investigation into the presidents son-in-law expands.

Asking him to subject himself to oversight comes as easily to him as it would to Putin or Duterte or Mugabe.

Because investigators are probably going to want to see it.

Its not clear what prompted Rod Rosensteins statement.

Lawmakers took to the field just a day after the shooting of House whip Steve Scalise.

Lynne Patton doesnt have any experience in housing policy, but she does have a lot of experience working for the Trump family.

The most expensive House race in history just got weirder and more heated.

The vice-president will be represented by Richard Cullen, a former Virginia attorney general.

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Obamacare Is Not Collapsing Unless Republicans Kill It. Here's Proof. - New York Magazine

The latest outrage against the American people is that Mitch McConnells Republican Senate is drafting a vast health-care bill in complete secrecy and plans to rush it to a vote without hearings or scoring. There is outrage.

There is outrage about the likely contents of the bill, which will in one way or another throw millions of Americans off their insurance and give a big tax cut to the rich.

There is outrage about the process, which cloaks the contents from everyone who will be affected by it.

There is outrage about the flamboyant hypocrisy of it all, after President Trump promised to insure everybody and the GOP complained that Obamacare was written in the dark of night and rushed through Congress, even though the Obamacare process actually included endless hearings that were televised.

Well, you can skip the outrage over the hypocrisy part and save your breath. The GOP has already succeeded in neutralizing the very concept of hypocrisy. Republicans engage it in nonstop, because they have learned, or rather taught us, that it doesnt matter at all.

This is one thing that I have learned from the comments section of my blog. Unsympathetic writers engage in a continuous parade of criticism of progressives, using charges of behavior that in fact consist of exactly what Republicans do. Now to this endless game of I know you are, but what am I? one might be tempted to assign conservatives with the practice of projection, that is, attributing to others what you are guilty of yourself. But wait. A commenter the other day said it is members of the left that are guilty of this and are engaging in projection. I know you are, but what am I? continued, ad infinitum.

And so farther and farther into the house of mirrors, more extensive even than Trumps personal collection that he likes to regard himself in.

And the solution? Forget hypocrisy as a topic. It has been battered to senselessness in a case of American domestic abuse.

Save your energy for describing what Republicans actually are trying to do (take health coverage away from Americans), what the actual consequences of that are (increased wealth inequality and more dead Americans) and most important, stopping them (by voting).

Read the rest here:
Yes, the Republicans are wild and crazy hypocrites, and it doesn't matter - Washington Post

SALT LAKE CITY Eleven Republican candidates running to replace U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Friday theyd all like to scale back the U.S. governments spending and repeal President Barack Obamas health care law if theyre elected.

The candidates participated in two debates at an Orem high school on Friday night, with a top-tier debate involving the five candidates who polled highest among GOP delegates who will winnow the crowded field at a Saturday convention.

During the top-tier debate, the candidates made almost no mention an issue dominating Washington the widening probe into Russias election meddling, and possible ties between President Donald Trumps campaign and Russia.

One candidate, former state lawmaker Chris Herrod, referenced the investigations in his opening statement as he discussed his time teaching at universities in Ukraine in the 1990s and his familiarity with the former Soviet Union.

He called Russian President Vladimir Putin a very good chess player who has out-maneuvered the press.

We need to get over the talks of collusion and actually get to the issues at hand, Herrod said, which was met with applause.

A few candidates spoke of their admiration of Chaffetz, a Republican known for his hard-charging investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton. When he announced his intention to resign at the end of June, citing a desire to be with his family, the pending vacancy in the heavily Republican 3rd Congressional District drew a number of lawmakers, lawyers and others who jumped at a chance to run in an open race considered a sure bet for the GOP.

The top-ranked candidates, which also included Provo Mayor John Curtis, state Sens. Deidre Henderson and Margaret Dayton, and Salt Lake City lawyer Stewart Peay, all spoke of wanting to repeal Utahs new Bears Ears National Monument or curbing the law that Obama used to declare the 1.3-million acre (5,300 square kilometers) monument in December.

Environmental groups and a coalition of tribal leaders say it gives needed protections to ancient ruins and sacred tribal lands, but many Utah Republicans consider the monument an overly broad, unnecessary layer of federal control that will hurt local economies by closing the area to new energy.

Henderson said the monument declaration was outrageous and an egregious land grab.

Dayton said the 1906 Antiquates Act, which allows presidents to declare monuments, has been abused by presidents and locked up too much land, including another southern Utah monument, the 1.9 million acre (7,700 square kilometers) Grand Staircase-Escalante.

That monument, created in 1996, closed off too much land that could have helped the local economy, including one of the countrys largest known coal reserves, Dayton said.

Peay said if he was elected, one of his first moves would be to introduce a bill giving Utah an exemption from the Antiquities Act similar to carve-outs requiring Congress to approve any new monuments in Alaska or Wyoming.

The candidates were all asked which federal programs theyd cut and gave very similar answers, describing deep cuts or the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education and reforms to Social Security.

Republicans will trim the packed field at Saturdays convention, where about 1,000 GOP delegates will settle on one candidate. That person will advance to an August primary election, where theyll compete against candidates who opted to gather voter signatures.

Curtis took both routes.

Tanner Ainge, a son of Boston Celtics general manager and former Brigham Young University basketball standout Danny Ainge, is skipping the convention but competing in the primary election. Because Tanner Ainge is skipping the delegate convention, he wasnt invited to participate in Friday nights debate.

The six lower-polling candidates who appeared in the earlier debate largely agreed on the issues and earned applause for calls to repeal Obamas health care law and balance the federal budget.

Those candidates included political activist Debbie Aldrich, state Rep. Brad Daw of Orem, lawyer Damian Kidd, defense contractor Paul Fife, Murray resident Shayne Row and Keith Kuder, an emergency roadside assistance advocate.

Utah Democrats will narrow their field of three candidates at their own convention Saturday.

See the rest here:
Republicans running to replace Chaffetz to debate Friday night - Daily Herald

THE MORNING PLUM:

Republican senators are now making a great show of expressing their disapproval with the scandalously opaque and secretive process that the GOP Senate leadership is employing in the quest to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The complaints have grown so loud that the New York Times hasdevoted a prominent article to them.

But its very likely that all of this will end up amounting to just another ruse and that, in retrospect, we will see this as yet another layer of fraudulence among many that have encrusted this whole process throughout.

To be sure, the GOP senators expressing dissatisfaction with the process may well be sincere, at least to some extent.The process is better if you do it in public, and that people get buy-in along the way and understand whats going on,groused Bob Corker of Tennessee. Seems like around here, the last step is getting information, which doesnt seem to be necessarily the most effective process, griped Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. None, barked John McCain of Arizona, when asked to describe his comfort level with the process.Numerous other GOP senators have complained they dont know whats in the bill theyre going to be voting on within days or weeks.

But heres the rub: If these senators really wanted to improve this process, they could be doing more to make that happen than they actually appear to be, and its within the realm of the plausible that they would succeed, at least to some degree.

The most forceful and obvious way they could do this is to go to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) and insist on it. If a handful of GOP senators said they cant vote for the bill under these conditions, McConnell might have to relent, because he can afford to lose only a few.

In fairness, that is a lot to expect from a GOP senator. But there is something else any individual GOP senator or a small group of them could do to try to improve the process: They could go to McConnell and privately say that a slower and more transparent process is actually very important to them.

In this scenario, individual senators would do something that lies somewhere between (on the one hand) merely griping to reporters, which is mainly targeted toward getting good quotes into the media coverage and making elites happy, and (on the other hand) threatening a No vote, which would be pretty dramatic. Instead, the middle ground would be that a given GOP senator would tell McConnell directly that this is something he or she either needs (for political reasons) or really wants (for substantive reasons).

A private conversation with McConnell in which a senator says, This is really troubling to me and I hope you can find your way clear to do it some other way, would be more effective than public complaints, congressional expert Norman Ornstein told me this morning. McConnells top priority is maintaining his majority, so hes going to be very sensitive to these senators own sense of whats damaging to them. Leaders have to listen to individual senators.

That is, leaders have to listen ifindividual senators really mean what they say. The Senate is a murky place, where things mysteriously tend to end up happening if individual senators actually want them to, and dont end up happening if they dont. The crux of the matter is that, if any GOP senators actually did think of the process as a problem, they could convey that to McConnell, and he would feel a measure of actual pressure to respond to their concerns.

The job of congressional leaders is to meet the demands of the rank and file, another expert on Congress, Sarah Binder of George Washington University, told me. Thats the leverage the rank and file has.

Both Ornstein and Binder cautioned that such a move very well might not work on McConnell. Thats because he is under tremendous pressure to get some sort of repeal-and-replace bill passed, and that need might end up outweighing any need or demand from individual senators for a slower, more open process. But this only underscores another truth about this whole saga: Ultimately, what it would mean is that McConnell knows he cannot actually get the bill through the Senate unless it is rushed through with little time for public debate on it.

In other words, if these senators told McConnell that they genuinely want or need an improved process, that would put him in a meaningful bind. Hed have to prioritize the need to get the bill through over his members genuine needs or demands, precisely because the bill cant survive too much public scrutiny, as its so toxic. As Ornstein put it, the fact that the process is likely to remain as it is underscores that McConnells one goal is to get 50 votes and the only way he will get that 50 votes is to keep this process as tightly secret as possible.

Its possible these senators are meaningfully prodding McConnell behind the scenes, of course. But there is no real indication that this is happening.And this will have actual consequences. In a remarkable bit of journalism, Vox interviewed a number of GOP senators and asked themto make a comprehensive, affirmative case for why the GOP bill will lead to good outcomes for the health-care system and the country. They wouldnt, or couldnt, provide meaningful answers. Whether this is the result of bad underlying ideas, or the level of secrecy depriving them of information on it, or some combination of the two, is up for debate. But obviously, the process isnt helping lead to good legislating or a good outcome and will likely make the outcome worse.

Meanwhile, until we learn otherwise, we should assume that the only thing individual senators are accomplishing with their complaints is getting good quotes for themselves in the media without creating any meaningful discomfort for GOP leaders that might induce them to change any of this. Indeed, those good quotes may make it easier for rank-and-file senators to vote for the bill in the end they may argue they are voting for it only reluctantly, after doing all they could to give the public more transparency and input, as their own objections throughout (they will claim) prove they did.

* ANOTHER POLL PUTS TRUMPS APPROVAL IN THE TOILET: A new Associated Press finds that 35 percent of Americans approve of Trumps performance, while 64 percent disapprove. And:

Two-thirds of Americans, or 65 percent, think Trump doesnt have much respect for the countrys democratic institutions and traditions or has none at all. Just a third of Americans, or 34 percent, thinks he has a great deal or even a fair amount of respect for them.

Among even Republicans and GOP-leaners, nearly a third say Trump doesnt respect our institutions, and a quarter disapprove of his performance. Yet we keep hearing hell never lose his base

* REPUBLICANS IN PANIC ABOUT GEORGIA ELECTION: Alex Isenstadt reports that GOP strategists see a real possibility of a loss in next weeks special House election:

Interviews with nearly two dozen Republican operatives and officials reveal that they are preparing for the possibility of an unnerving defeat that could spur lawmakers to distance themselves from Trump . several private surveys taken over the last few weeks show Republican nominee Karen Handel trending downward, with one private party poll showing 30-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff opening up a more than five-point lead in the Republican-oriented, suburban Atlanta seat.

Again, Republican Tom Price won this seat in 2016 by 23 points. But if Democrats do somehow win, it could weaken the GOP protective wall around Trump and spur more House GOP retirements.

* HEALTH CARE IS A KEY ISSUE IN GEORGIA: NBCs First Read crew makes a good point: The Ossoff-Handel outcome turns in part on the politics of health care:

According to the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of this race, more than 80% of likely voters said health care is an extremely important or very important issue regarding their vote, and just 1-in-4 voters said they approved of the House health-care plan. And remember, this is the race to fill the seat vacated by Republican Tom Price, who is now Trumps HHS secretary.

One in four! I would strongly urge you not to over-read the meaning of this outcome either way. But if Democrats somehow win, Republicans might be a lot less inclined to go forward withtheir awful bill.

* TRUMP OFFICIALS ORDERED TO PRESERVE DOCUMENTS: The New York Times reports that a memo from the Trump transition teams general counsel calls ontransition members to preserve materials related to the Russia probes:

The memo is the latest indication that the investigations special counsel, the former F.B.I. director Robert S. Mueller III, is casting a wide net in his inquiry into possible collusion between Mr. Trumps campaign and Moscow The document request illustrated the seriousness of the inquiry being conducted by Mr. Mueller and investigators in Congress, and how deeply they are delving into Mr. Trumps activities and those of his associates.

Maybe if Trump keeps tweeting the words witch hunt and fake news with lots of capital letters and exclamation points, he can make all of this disappear.

* DREAMERS ARE SAFE: Politico reports that the Trump administration has quietly decided to leave in place protections from deportation for people brought here illegally as children. They will keep their work permits, too, under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program:

Since Trump took office, renewal of expiring DACA permits appears to have continued as normal. More than 17,000 new approvals took place between January and March and more than 107,000 existing DACA recipients had their work permits renewed for an additional two years.

One wonders whether Trump voters will feel let down by this clear departure from his vow to cancel President Barack Obamas executive actions immediately. Doesnt Trump want to Make America Great Again?

* BUT TRUMP ENDS ANOTHER PROTECTION FROM DEPORTATION: Despite the above news, the Trump administration has also formally ended Obamas effort to expand DACA to protect parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, otherwise known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.

The courts had already blocked the DAPA program, but this move makes it official administration policy. So Trump supporters have a consolation prize: While many young immigrants will be protected from deportation, many older longtime residents with jobs and ties to communities will not be.

* AND DOES TRUMP STILL FEEL VINDICATED? Remember the GOP talking point that Comey vindicated Trump by testifying that hed told Trump he wasnt under investigation? The White House is still clinging to this idea, sort of:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy White House press secretarywas asked whether Trump still felt vindicated by the extraordinary congressional testimony last week by James B. Comey, the FBI director whose firing by Trump has contributed to questions about whether the president obstructed justice.

I believe so, Sanders said, before referring reporters to Marc E. Kasowitz, Trumps private attorney.

Once again, Trumps firing of Comey, which was detailed in that vindicating testimony, is what led directly to the appointment of a special counsel, and to the news that Trump is now being investigated for obstruction.

Original post:
Republicans are employing a new ruse to destroy Obamacare. Don't fall for it. - Washington Post (blog)