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Greg Walden recently was riding comfortably in his Subaru Outback, the cruise control guiding his car, when a big black bird a crow, he suspects swooped down in front of him. The car braked on its own, the Oregon congressman recalled. Of course, my wife woke up. Startled in the passenger seat beside him, she asked if he was tired. She didnt believe him when he said no.

To Walden, though, the minor incident illustrated a point. Compared to his old Dodge van, it reacted before I reacted, he told Recode in an interview. Braking assistance is hardly some new, gasp-inducing feature in sport-utility vehicles, but Walden said it helped crystallize for him how more-advanced technology fully self-driving cars might someday prevent more harrowing traffic incidents.

Fast forward to Tuesday, as a committee in the U.S. House under Waldens watch debated a total of 14 bills that Republican lawmakers believe might someday clear the roads for more driverless vehicles. Lawmakers like Walden believe their early efforts are a boon for safety, not to mention U.S. business. We lose 30,000 to 40,000 people a year in highway fatalities, he explained, adding: What can we do to set standards that will make sure that innovation is taking place in the United States?

Chief among Republicans offerings is a bill that would permit the likes of Google and Uber to test their self-driving cars around the country, scrapping a current system in which states from New York to California have pitched varying, if conflicting, rules on how and where autonomous vehicles can operate. The idea is sure to satisfy the tech and auto industries, which have lobbied extensively in Washington, D.C., to push the policy boundaries for self-driving cars.

Some lawmakers, however, sounded an early note of caution Tuesday that Congress itself might be at risk of speeding. We need to figure out a responsible way to keep innovation moving forward, while ensuring safety at every stage, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

For the moment, at least, theres no single, overarching, autonomous-vehicle-specific law on the federal governments books nothing that says where companies can test their tech and what sort of safety standards might apply in vehicles that someday might not even have steering wheels.

Before President Barack Obama departed office, his administration worked with tech and car companies on a set of voluntary safety standards for driverless cars. But much remains unresolved, and in a rare break from the norm on Capitol Hill, theres bipartisan interest in working through the issues: Senate Democrats and Republicans recently signaled they also planned to start debating self-driving car rules in the coming months.

One concern for Republicans: Lacking federal standards, 22 states have imposed some sort of regulations, according to a tally by the National Conference of State Legislatures, often in an attempt to address safety concerns with a technology they believe is in its infancy.

To Walden and his GOP colleagues, the flurry of state-level activity marks a break with a longstanding division of labor, one that sees the federal government determining national safety and driver standards while leaving only the logistics, like approving licenses, to the locals.

From the front bumper to the back bumper whether its a pickup truck or a car or a van how the vehicle works and is designed should be the province of the federal government as has been the case for more than 50 years, said Rep. Bob Latta, who convened the Tuesday hearing.

Preempting the states would be a boon for tech giants like Google and Uber and automakers including Ford and Volvo; one of their lobbying groups, the Self Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, offered lawmakers its stamp of approval during testimony on Tuesday.

One of its aides, David Strickland, the former director of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, said 50 states ultimately adopting 50 different safety standards for self-driving cars would amount to a disaster.

But some in Congress seemed reticent to strip states self-driving car laws from the books. Schakowsky, for one, said Stricklands former agency, NHTSA, needed to adopt a federal standard for autonomous vehicles before Congress could replace existing state safety regulations. Trouble is, that agency still has no full-time director under President Donald Trump a fact that rankled one of Schakowskys colleagues, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone.

We should not be moving bills out of the committee until we hear from the administration, said Pallone, the committees chief Democrat.

Another Republican proposal would allow the government to designate as many as 100,000 self-driving cars to be exempt from existing federal motor safety rules, even though those guidelines which govern everything from steering wheels to airbags were written many years before that technology existed. A third would set up a federal board to study the cyber security of autonomous vehicles.

And still a fourth proposal would allow the manufacturers of those vehicles to share data, including information about crashes, with the U.S. government in a way that appears to make it impossible for reporters and watchdogs to obtain that data through record requests. There, the aim is to protect carmakers confidential information about their technology. To consumer watchdogs, however, it may ultimately serve to undermine the publics trust in a technology still coming to market.

Im not opposed to these vehicles, Im not opposed to testing, but we need somebody to look at this material other than NHTSA and the auto companies, said Alan Morrison, a leading faculty member at The George Washington University Law School, during the hearing Tuesday.

Other terrain remains uncharted territory for the committee. By design, its a different portion of Congress that deals with heavy trucking a major area of disruption in the realm of self-driving cars, and one that could leave many drivers out of work if companies like Uber succeed.

Nor has the committee tackled broader issues, like privacy, that affect the industry, despite the clamor from consumer protection advocates that cars, like smartphones, have become warehouses of knowledge about their owners.

And Walden said its too soon for Congress to wade into philosophical questions about the complex decision-making algorithms powering the forthcoming fleet of self-driving vehicles in the first place questions like, does a self-driving Google Prius or Uber ride kill its owner in order to spare more lives?

I think Congress will have a role in that. I think were a ways away from that ... When you get to the point when you have no steering wheel, I think a lot of those discussions will be had, Walden said.

Youre going to lose some people because of what autonomous vehicles do, he continued. But if you can cut that loss to a 10th or a half or name the number [from what it is now], it has to improve overall, and I think thats what we have to keep our focus on whats the overall good here?

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Republicans want to open US roads for companies testing self-driving cars - Recode

Threading the needle of getting defense hawks, fiscal conservatives and those steering tax reform within his own party has been a difficult task, but House Speaker Paul Ryan has reminded House GOP members that this year's budget is critical for getting top priorities like tax reform through both chambers.

It's unlikely any Democrats will back the fiscal blueprint, so Republican leaders are locking down support from the various factions of their conference. They plan to hold up the proposal as evidence they are following through on the promise of GOP control of the White House and the Capitol intent on reshaping the federal government.

The fiscal blueprint is expected to propose more than $1.1 trillion for the next fiscal year and would provide more money for the military and domestic spending than President Donald Trump requested in his budget, which he sent to the Hill in May, according to several congressional aides familiar with the proposal.

Republicans reached an agreement on the discretionary funding levels for the Pentagon and domestic agencies, and the last sticking point Republican leaders had to overcome was over how much deficit-reduction should be taken out of mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The budget plan would provide $621.5 billion in base defense spending, as well as $75 billion in war funding, known as Overseas Contingency Operations, sources told CNN. That's $28.5 billion more than the President requested $18.5 in the base budget and $10 billion extra in war dollars.

The House budget blueprint would set domestic discretionary spending at $511 billion, an increase compared to the Trump administration's $462 billion budget request, which proposed deep cuts to agencies like the State Department and EPA.

When President Barack Obama was in the White House, final spending deals in recent years included equal increases for defense and domestic spending, but Republicans are trying to move away from that construct now that they control the legislative and executive branches.

While the budget agreement will likely will have enough votes to get those spending bills through the House, Senate Democrats are likely to filibuster them, making a final deal uncertain ahead of a September deadline to keep the government from shutting down.

This emerging budget deal lays out the GOP wish list, but an agreement that funds federal agencies will be tougher to hammer out. Republicans have had to rely on Democrats to pass those in recent years, so they may need to give in on the split between defense and other domestic programs.

Another problem the House faces with the emerging budget agreement is that the defense funding violates spending caps established by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The defense cap for 2018 is $549 billion, and if the cap is not changed, the Pentagon would be subject to across-the-board cuts known as sequestration.

Republican defense hawks want to repeal the budget caps for defense, as Trump has requested, but Democrats won't go along unless the cap is also removed for domestic spending.

For defense hawks, the $621.5 billion topline for defense is a compromise, as House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry and Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain have been pressing for at least $640 billion for the military.

The difficulties in creating a budget deal in the House have also made for a topsy-turvy process crafting individual authorization and appropriation bills. Both Thornberry and Rep. Kay Granger, the chairwoman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, were preparing their defense bills at different levels Thornberry's at $37 billion more than the Trump request and Granger's at the same level as Trump's.

But with a budget deal near, the House's defense authorization and appropriations bills were finalized at the same level as the emerging budget agreement.

Thornberry told reporters last week that he was willing to come down from $640 billion, but he would need assurances there would be future growth for military spending in future years.

The final sticking point to getting House Republicans on the same page was negotiating how much money the plan would cut from the mandatory side of the ledger. Programs like Social Security and Medicare that are funded through mandatory spending account for about two-thirds of the total budget, but they are difficult to reduce because any change requires Congress to pass a new law.

With divided government in recent years, Republicans in Congress have been unable to make a dent in this area. But House GOP members are looking to get some significant savings from changes to some programs that fall under the Agriculture Department, like food stamps, or other welfare programs.

The House GOP budget is expected to direct several committees to come up with roughly $200 billion in deficit savings. Some in the House Freedom Caucus were hoping they could get a significantly higher number, and House Budget Chair Diane Black also appealed to top GOP leaders to make those savings a major component of the final deal, according to several House Republican sources.

Rep. Mark Meadows, the leader of the Freedom Caucus, said there was not a budget deal he could agree to yet.

Meadows said he wasn't concerned with the numbers in the agreement, but rather the details when it came to how the deficit reduction was achieved.

The budget proposal does not provide details on how each committee could achieve these savings targets, but including the provision in the budget resolution gives Republicans in Congress the ability to say they are following through on their pledge to reduce the size of the federal government.

Ryan, a former budget chair, has been sympathetic to those pressing for major deficit reduction, but he is also balancing the challenge of shepherding a major overhaul of the tax code through the House. Leaders wanted to reach agreement on a savings number they felt was manageable for the House Ways and Means Committee to meet as it evaluates what various changes to the tax rates and exemptions will mean for the overall budget.

Republicans don't need to pass a budget the various spending bills that detail how much each agency will get for federal programs are the measures that keep the government operating. But as they did with health care, GOP leaders are using this vehicle so they can use a tool known as "budget reconciliation" to pass a tax reform package through the Senate with a simple majority, avoiding a Democratic filibuster.

Democrats are expected to be united against the package.

Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, hasn't seen the details, but is already arguing that it's the same as the Trump administration's version sent to the Hill in May.

"The reports on the Republican budget proposal indicate that they are embracing much of the Trump budget," Yarmuth said in a written statement to CNN. "Instead of investing in American families and the future of our nation, it appears they are prepared to undermine our country's economic progress, health security, and safety just so they can give massive tax breaks for millionaires and corporations. We will fight this irresponsible proposal every step of the way."

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House Republicans put final touches on budget deal - CNN International

Miami Herald

Man accused of threatening lawmaker on Facebook says he was 'fed up' with Republicans Miami Herald Two weeks after a U.S. congressman and four others were shot during a baseball practice in a Washington suburb by a man with a history of lashing out at Republicans, a Florida lawmaker decided he wasn't taking any chances. So Sunday, after someone ... Florida man arrested for threatening to kill Republican state representativeHot Air all 13 news articles »

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Man accused of threatening lawmaker on Facebook says he was 'fed up' with Republicans - Miami Herald

Here's a dark fact: Every single GOP senator who calls him or herself pro-life who votes for the Republican health care bill knowingly will be voting for legislation that will kill tens of thousands of Americans per year.

Specifically, the Obamacare "repeal and replace" bill that's currently before the Senate could result in at least 26,500 additional dead Americans per year, according to researchers.

The math here is quite clear. Under Obamacare, some 28 million Americans will lack health insurance by the end of 2026. We knew that the Senate plan would drastically increase that number. And on Monday afternoon, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office told us by just how much:Its report analyzing the Senate bill finds that the plan's elimination of the penalty for not having insurance, combined with lower Medicaid spending and smaller subsidies, would result in 15 million more people being uninsured in 2018, compared to the current situation under Obamacare that number would increase to 19 million in 2020, and 22 million in 2026. The CBO released a similar score for the House version of the bill that passed last month, concluding that eventually 24 million more people would lose insurance by 2026. (And what's remarkable about these estimates is that they're actually lower thanthe White House's own estimate from earlier this year: 26 million more uninsured Americans.)

Even going with the lesser of these numbers, that's 22 million Americans facing life without health insurance. Uninsured people are often on the precipice of economic disaster, as they could be one illness or injury away from having to face the devastating choice between spending money life's necessities housing, food, clothes, children or having health care. Avoiding this dilemma is the reason health insurance exists. Throwing tens of millions of Americans into this reality is unconscionable in and of itself.

But then there's that 26,500 figure the conservative estimate of the number of Americans who would die every year under an Obamacare repeal plan like the one currently before the Senate. (Other studies put the number even higher.) We know this because of research conducted in the mid-2000s in Massachusetts, which was the first state to enact a program designed to insure everyone. After the program was fully implemented,researchers determined that for every 830 people who gained health insurance, there was one less death per year.

In other contexts, the Republican Party likes to talk about being the party of life. In particular, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has aperfect record from National Right to Life, having voted with the group on every abortion-related bill it has tracked during his tenure.

If McConnell and his Republican colleagues really cared about life if being "pro-life" were anything but a slogan meant to restrict women's rights then they would not be pushing this legislation.

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Why Are 'Pro-Life' Republicans Pushing a Bill That Will Kill Tens of Thousands? - RollingStone.com

Cuts to Medicaid? What cuts to Medicaid? There are no cuts to Medicaid here.

Kellyanne Conway appears on ABC News This Week on June 25, 2017. (ABC News)

The lies came fast and furious on the Sunday shows this weekend, as Republican lawmakers and their surrogates reckoned with a tough truth: The only way to sell the Senates cruel and deeply unpopular health-care bill is to absolutely misrepresent what is in it. And that was before the Congressional Budget Office scored the Senate bill, and found 15 million people will be insured bynext year.Which, by the way, is a kind of crucial midterm election year, in which the presidents party almost always loses power.

Those Sunday lies, though, should force journalists to acknowledge another truth: Donald Trump isnt a rogue Republican; he is making the party over in his image. Before and after Trumps election, youll recall, optimistic Republican leaders predicted that being president might change and sober Trump and that elected GOP leaders could have some influence over the erratic, unprepared commander in chief. But influence seems to have worked the other way: Republicans have seen that Trump can lie without consequence, and theyre trying to make the same approach work for them. Its not that theyve never lied before, but this weekends Lie-O-Rama was remarkable.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway won the prize for lying most brazenly, telling ABCs This Week that while the bill cuts $800 billion from Medicaid, These are not cuts to Medicaid. She then contradicted herself by acknowledging the bill could maybe, possibly cut Medicaid for the able-bodied, but insisted: If they are able-bodied, and they want to work, then theyll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.

Of course, 60 percent of able-bodied adults currently on Medicaid already do work, and 80 percent are in households where somebody worksat jobs that dont provide benefits. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the House bill would throw 14 million Americans off Medicaid over the next 10 years; the Senate bill slashes 15 million patients. Its Medicaid cuts are ultimately deeper, and they both shave and cap funds for the traditional program, not just the Obama expansion. On the same show, Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins contradicted Conway: I respectfully disagree with her analysis. Based on what Ive seen, given the inflation rate that would be applied in the outer years to the Medicaid program, the Senate bill is going to have more impact on the Medicaid program than even the House bill.

On CNN, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price might have tied Conway for brazen lying, insisting,We will not have individuals lose coverage. The CBO, of course, said the House bill would cost 23 million Americans their health insurance; on Monday the score for the Senate bill said it would cut 22 million. But Price didnt leave his lies there; he also claimed that the plan, in its entirety, will absolutely bring prices down. Maybe he meant tax costs for millionaires? Theyll get a $50,000 tax cut, while the top .01 percent gets a $250,000 tax cut. Thats the only explanation of Prices claim that makes sense; older Americans, in particular, are going to face higher costs, and lower federal subsidies. (Oh, and also: The tax cuts Price and others defend as job-creating will be retroactive to the end of 2016. How do you create jobs in the past?)

Even with all the lying, the Sunday shows were unable to find a single senator who would flat-out defend the bill and commit to supporting it, although many of those who claimed to be on the fence probably are not. Pennsylvanias Pat Toomey was deeply involved in drafting the bill; on Face the Nation he insisted that Conway is right, and no one will lose coverage if theyre on Medicaid. His colleague, Louisianas Bill Cassidy, explained that the goal is to move some of the Medicaid recipients to private insurance, proving again that the bill is written primarily with the interests of the insurance industry in mind. Cassidy has claimed he would vote against any bill that didnt meet the Jimmy Kimmel test, referring to the comedians viral monologue in which he broke down describing his newborn sons struggle with a congenital heart defect and demanded that no family should have to go without the care that saved his sons life. But magically, on Thursday, when the bill was released, Cassidy crowed to reporters that the new draft met the Jimmy Kimmel test.

Jimmy Kimmel, who happens to be an actual living person, quickly took to Twitter to disagree:

But while were talking lies, we should also praise the GOP senators who told the truth, at least as they see it. Senator Ron Johnson, another supposed opponent of the bill who will probably cave to McConnell, deserves a prize for the most honest, if unfortunate, explanation of how Republicans look at people with preexisting conditions (including, sadly, Jimmy Kimmels infant son). Think of them as people with bad driving records, who are expected to pay higher insurance than safe, careful drivers.

Weve done something with our health care system that you would never think about doing, for example, with auto insurance, where you would require auto insurance companies to sell a policy to somebody after they crash their car. States that haveguarantees for preexisting conditions, it crashes their markets, said Johnson.

So infant Billy Kimmel is like someone who crashed his car, although he cant even crawl yet, let alone drive. Obviously, he should have been more careful before winding up with congenital heart disease. Im sorry, thats not even funny. But this is how they think.

Also on Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence Tweeted that Trumpcare will restore personal responsibility to the issue of health care. He was swarmed by people sharing their stories of cancer and other diseases that would now be considered preexisting conditions and lock them out of affordable health insurance, lamenting their own lack of personal responsibility and the fact that they had the terrible judgment to get sick.

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Those stories wont move Pence, but maybe theyll move others. Collins professes to be concerned not only about defunding Planned Parenthoodwhich some argue might be impossible because of arcane Senate rules that come into play because McConnell is using reconciliation to pass this billbut also steep Medicaid cuts. Alaskas Lisa Murkowski and West Virginias Shelly Moore Capito express similar reservations. The countrys most vulnerable Republican senator, Nevadas Dean Heller, has come out formally against the bill, in language that makes it hard to imagine he can be bought off, with, say, additional funding for opioid treatment and rural hospitals that might lure Capito and Ohios Rob Portman. I would say that, listening to Susan Collins, her objections sound so thoroughgoing, it would be hard to see her vote yes. But experience shows that Collins frequently talks compassion and then caves to her leaders and votes for cruelty. We can hope this time is different.

On the right, Utahs Mike Lee, Texass Ted Cruz, Kentuckys Rand Paul and Ron Johnson all say they are a no, but almost nobody believes them. Paul, thoughlike Collins and Hellerspeaks in such apocalyptic terms about the bill, he almost seems un-gettable. Heller, Paul and Collins are all thats needed to sink the bill; if they stand strong, theyd probably wind up with more company from the partys right and centrist flanks. Nobody wants to be the one that makes this bill fail, but if it looks like it will fail, expect a stampede to avoid having another Rose Garden party to celebrate legislation that will literally cause thousands of deaths.

Only one thing is certain: Protest is making a difference. Planned Parenthood will storm the Capitol on Tuesday. On Wednesday at five, protesters will form a human chain around the Capitol to demonstrate against the bill. After weeks of quiet, congressional offices are reporting new activism; many Republicans voice mail systems are full. The sad defeatism of last week has given way to optimism by Affordable Care Act defenders. But its going to take a lot of work to overcome the determination and structural advantages of House Speaker Paul Ryan, McConnell and Trump, as well as their willingness to lie.

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Republicans Spent the Weekend Lying Their Faces Off About Health Care - The Nation.