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Six months in to the Trump presidency and you need a steady diet of fentanyl, Thunderbird, and head trauma to believe that Donald Trump is a master negotiator, a real leader, or any good at this whole presidenting thing. The national political stress test that is the Trump administration seems designed to force Republicans leaders into contortions that would break a Cirque de Soleil gymnast.

Republican Members of the House and Senate watched their 2017 agenda go down in flames. The money that Republicans planned to cut via Obamacare repeal was meant to fund massive business and upper-income tax cuts. All the winning stopped hard, and even the dead-enders in Congress know Trumpism took a shock this week. The coming months are a menu of misery: a debt-ceiling fight, the increasing evidence and pressure of the all-consuming Russia probe, and the certain knowledge that Trumps self-destructive dumbassery is the defining news driver of the summer.

Trying to follow Trumps manic changes of position on the doomed, roadkill-stank of the health care fight was like watching a cat chase a laser pointer. The GOP went into the fight without a real plan to market it, they let industry lobbyists craft it, and then they counted on Donald Freaking Trump to help sell it. Please clap.

As Trump dragged Senators to the White House for a North Korean-style rant, threatened Dean Heller to his face and proceeded to take four different positions on where to go next, Republicans took all the political damage a repeal vote would have incurred with the dubious benefit of having Trump lecture them in the Oval Office on how badly they sold their plan. The few who clung to the idea that the president was about to show some actual leadership on the bill didnt anticipate Trump giving an interview that wouldonce againknock the news cycle into orbit.

Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, and Jeff Sessions all had to learn painful lessons on the cost of being on the Trump Train this week. For Flake, Heller and a few other Republicans, setting themselves on fire for a vote on Obamacare repeal was political poison. Their legitimate fear of their constituents was greaterfinallythan their fear of Trump. Winning over Trump voters is no longer a sane response to the insanity of your political situation. Many Republican elected still arent getting this because they think they can make it work. They stare at Trumps base-approval numbers, torn between fear and temptation.

To remind my Republican friends for the hundredth time, the Trump base isnt your base. His supporters hate you as much as Trump hates you. Trump devotees dont care about shrinking the size and scope of government. They dont care about the Constitution. Theyre not Republicans, except as a flag of convenience. If you havent noticed the theme from Fox to Rush and across the rest of the Trump-fanatic clickservative media isnt My God, this bill was political death for anyone who voted for it. Instead, it was Why wont Republicans follow Donald Trump over the cliff? What good is a majority if it wont destroy itself in a vote that 70 percent of the population hates?

So, to my Republican elected friends, there are a lot of reasons that GOP Trumpism wont work, but the biggest one is this: Donald Trump hates you. You are, at best, props and extras in The Apprentice: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No matter how many times you abase yourself before him, no matter how much you grovel, it will never be enough. The moment you do anything to preserve your own political fortunes, he will turn on you. The moment you deviate from constant service to his colossal ego, youre going to end up on blast. He has no allies. Only fluffers andfoes.

If you dont see it yet, the clickservative media and the Trump base is fundamentally nihilist. They hate you even more than Trump does. Theyre the party of Uli Kunkel, not Ronald Reagan. They expect nothing but the spectacle, the house fire and the sound of glass breaking. The performance art of the one-man show Red Don is their only political satisfaction, and like junkies, theyre chasing the political dragon of more stimulation, more chaos, and more destruction. The Democrats are so pathetic that Republicans are the inevitable target of Trump voters fury.

Trumps threats against Dean Heller and Jeff Flake are nothing compared to the epic, world-class humiliation he delivered to Attorney General Jeff Sessionsa brutal, near-fatal whipping of the most loyal dog in his kennelin Wednesdays wide-ranging, lunatic interview with The New York Times.

Jeff Sessionswho isnt out of the woods on Russian connections himselftook a massive personal and political risk by stepping away from the investigation, but in Trumps eyes, the oath Sessions took as attorney general to serve the law and protect the Constitution is secondary to the blind loyalty he owes King Donald of Orange. Jeff has displayed absolute loyalty to Trump from the moment he joined candidate Trump on stage in Mobile, Alabama, relentless and early defender of The Donald and helped to normalizehim with rank-and-file conservatives. Sessions sacrificed his Senate leadership role, and to be frank, his reputation to accept the role as Trumps attorney general. Loyalty to Trump will always be met with public betrayal and humiliation.

This week weve seen Trump in his most loathsome and essential forman abusive, reckless child demanding more more more and offering not a shred of discipline, loyalty, or responsibility in return. Mommy and daddy in this case are a House and Senate willing to overlook Little Donnies propensity to kill small animals, set fires, and mutter darkly about how hes going to teach the other kids at school a lesson they wont forget.

In the meantime, hows that wall coming?

Continued here:
When Will Republicans Learn That Donald Trump Hates Them? - Daily Beast

July 21, 2017, 11:13 a.m.

A cadre of Republicans have spent days taking slings and arrows after breakingwith party activists and many of their colleagues to support California's premiere climate change program.

Now some of them are defending themselves in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

"We served our people and did our jobs as legislators by rolling back taxes, cutting regulations and protecting Californians from higher costs," wroteAssembly Republican Leader Chad Mayesof Yucca Valleyand Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, two of the eight Republicans who voted for the legislation on Monday.

The Journal had criticized some Republicans for supporting the extension of the state's cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. The newspaper's editorial board said California Republicans are "so beaten down in the minority that they now confuse surrender with victory."

Cap and trade could boost gas prices by24 to 73 cents a gallon by 2031, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office.

ButMayes and Chavez argued that the program ispreferable to other, more costly regulations that would have been needed to meet the state's climate goals, which became law last year. The final legislation also included two other Republican goals:the rollback of a fire prevention fee, which has been levied on landowners, and the extension of a tax credit for manufacturers.

"Republicans in California must live with the realities of a deep-blue Democratic state," they wrote. "This isnt Washington, D.C., or Kansas. We have to cut taxes and regulations every chance we get."

Read more from the original source:
Assembly Republicans defend climate vote as 'protecting Californians from higher costs' - Los Angeles Times

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Senate Republicans all but admitted defeat Tuesday in their seven-year quest to overturn the Affordable Care Act, acknowledging that they lacked the votes to make good on their vow to repeal and replace President Barack Obamas signature legislative accomplishment.

Hours after GOP leaders abandoned a bill to overhaul the law known as Obamacare, their fallback plan a proposal to repeal major parts of the law without replacing them quickly collapsed. A trio of moderate Republicans quashed the idea, saying it would irresponsibly snatch insurance coverage from millions of Americans.

I did not come to Washington to hurt people, tweeted Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who joined Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in opposing immediate repeal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who spent weeks trying to knit together his fractious caucus in support of the original GOP legislation, said he would nonetheless schedule a vote early next week on the repeal plan. But he appeared to acknowledge that it seemed doomed.

This has been a very, very challenging experience for all of us, McConnell told reporters. Its pretty obvious that we dont have 50 members who can agree on a replacement.

(Bastien Inzaurralde,Rhonda Colvin,Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

The collapse of the effort marks a devastating political defeat for congressional Republicans and for President Trump, who had pledged to roll back the Affordable Care Act on Day One of his presidency.

It also leaves millions of consumers who receive health insurance through the law in a kind of administrative limbo, wondering how their care will be affected now that the program is in the hands of government officials who have rooted openly for its demise.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters in the White Houses Roosevelt Room that he now plans to let Obamacare fail. It will be a lot easier. That way, he said, his party would bear no political responsibility for the systems collapse.

Were not going to own it. Im not going to own it, the president said. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. Well let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us to fix it.

But Trumps comments appeared to ignore the many Republican lawmakers who are anxious about depriving their constituents of federal benefits on which they now rely. The president invited all 52 Republican senators to join him for lunch Wednesday at the White House to try to get the repeal effort back on track.

Senate leaders have been struggling to devise a plan to overhaul Obamacare since the House passed its version of the legislation in May, a flawed bill that some House members openly invited the Senate to fix. With just 52 seats, McConnell could afford to lose the support of only two members of his caucus and even then would rely on Vice President Pence to break the tie.

The measure he produced would have scaled back key federal insurance regulations and slashed Medicaid deeply over time. But it did not go far enough for many conservative Republicans, who wanted to roll back more of the ACAs mandates on insurers.

And the bill went much too far for many moderates, especially Republicans from states that had taken advantage of the ACAs offer to expand Medicaid eligibility. The bill would have cut Medicaid funding and phased out its expansion in 31 states and the District of Columbia. Some senators worried that their states would be saddled with the unpalatable choice of cutting off peoples health coverage or shouldering a massive new financial burden.

This is the Senate. Leadership sets the agenda, but senators vote in the interests of their states, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) offered a blunt assessment of why the effort fell short: We are so evenly divided, and weve got to have every Republican to make things work, and we didnt have every Republican, he said.

Two Republicans Collins, a moderate, and conservative Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) declared late last week that they could not support the latest version of the bill. Late Monday night, as six of their colleagues talked health-care strategy with Trump over dinner at the White House, conservative Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) announced that they, too, would oppose the bill, and the measure was dead.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), whose job is to count votes, said he had no idea Lee was defecting until he left the White House meeting though he had gotten a heads up from Moran.

Key Republicans held out hope that the effort could be revived. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he would like to see the Senate move on something to keep the repeal-and-replace process alive.

Pence, speaking at the National Retail Federations annual Retail Advocates Summit, lent his support to the repeal plan, challenging Congress to step up and repeal the current law so lawmakers could work on a new health-care plan that will start with a clean slate.

Republicans last voted on repeal in 2015. Every current GOP senator who was then in the Senate voted for it, except Collins. But it was a meaningless protest vote; Obama was president, and he quickly vetoed it. With Trump in the White House, a vote to repeal the law without replacing it could have far-reaching consequences.

Abolishing Obamacares central pillars such as the mandate that taxpayers buy coverage; federal subsidies for many consumers premiums; and Medicaid coverage for roughly 11 million Americans without replacing them could wreak havoc in the insurance market. In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that premiums in the individual insurance market would rise by as much as 25 percent next year and would roughly double by 2026.

The CBO said repeal would cause the number of uninsured people to rise by 18 million next year and by 32 million by 2026.

For insurers, the worst possible outcome in this debate has always been a partial repeal with no replacement, which is exactly what Congress is about to take up, Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation, wrote in an email. Insurance companies would be on the hook for covering people with preexisting conditions, but with no individual mandate or premium subsidies to get healthy people to sign up as well.

[Nevadas GOP governor resists the Senate health-care bill]

With the repeal effort foundering, White House officials seem to lack a clear road map for managing the law. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Health and Human Services Department, said Tuesday, Im not sure whats going on right now.

HHS Secretary Tom Price issued a news release Tuesday saying, The status quo is not acceptable or sustainable. But he offered no clues to what his agency plans to do in the coming weeks as insurers finalize rates for 2018 and decide whether to participate next year in the federal insurance marketplaces.

We will work tirelessly to get Washington out of the way, bring down the cost of coverage, expand healthcare choices, and strengthen the safety net for future generations, Price said.

[Analysis: Here are the 4 reasons McConnell couldnt get the Senate to replace Obamacare yet]

Several lawmakers and governors, meanwhile, said they would begin pushing for a bipartisan fix to shore up the ACA. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in a statement that his panel would hold hearings to explore how to stabilize the individual market under the existing law.

A bipartisan group of 11 governors including Republicans Charlie Baker (Mass.), Larry Hogan (Md.), John Kasich (Ohio), Brian Sandoval (Nev.) and Phil Scott (Vt.) said they stand ready to work with lawmakers in an open, bipartisan way to provide better insurance for all Americans.

Asked if he would be willing to work with Democrats, McConnell said that well have to see what happens with next weeks vote.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) renewed their calls for Republicans to work with Democrats.

It should be crystal clear to everyone on the other side of the aisle that the core of the bill is unworkable, Schumer said. The door to bipartisanship is open now. Republicans only need to walk through it.

As Schumer spoke on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), one of the few in the chamber who has tried to be a bipartisan broker on health care, was placing calls to fellow senators who, like him, are former governors a total of 11 senators including Alexander, John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Margaret Wood Hassan (D-N.H.).

Aides said Manchin was presenting nothing specific yet to his colleagues, just a plea to sit down and start bipartisan talking.

While the path forward remained uncertain, consumers and health industry players continued to reach out to lawmakers. On Monday, two members of the American Cancer Societys Cancer Action Network journeyed from West Virginia, and one of them spoke with a Capito aide about an 18-month-old girl who had developed cancer while her mother was working part-time at a bank. After the woman lost her job, both she and the little girl went on Medicaid, allowing the child to receive treatment.

A lot of times people assume anyone on Medicaid is too lazy to work, the childs grandmother Lora Wilkerson told the aide, handing her a photo of the girl bald, with a teddy bear in her arms.

Can you please ask Ms. Capito to look at this picture when she casts her vote? Wilkerson said.

The aide, according to Capitos spokeswoman, made sure the senator saw it.

Mike DeBonis and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

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Senate Republicans effort to repeal and replace ...

If you've clicked on this article(thank you), you're probably thinking: Wait. I thought Republicans' attempts to repeal Obamacare crashed and burned a few days ago.

You would be correct. It died earlier this week. But in the past 24hours, it kind of came back to life, mostly on President Trump's insistence.

And Thursday, thanks to yet another Congressional Budget Office analysis, we get news that further ensured its demise: Republicans can't write a bill that won't leave millions uninsured, which means Republicans can't write a bill that will get approved by 50 of 52 of their ideologically diverse members, which means Republicans have no health-care bill.

This isn't for lack of effort. Republicans have spent the past couple of months trying to come to a consensus, piecing together a couple of different versions of the same bill.

The latest CBO estimate is their third report on a Senate version of legislation, and its predictionis similar to the last two: Senate Republicans' plan would leave 22 million more people uninsured over the next decade than if Obamacare remained law, and it would raise premiums on the most vulnerable.

The second version of the bill pours millions more into health insurance subsidies and Medicaid and opioid funding. But the CBO wasn't convinced that would make any difference on the insurance rate, said Paul Ginsburg, a health policy expert and director of theUSC Brookings-Schaeffer Initiative.

So leaders made the second versionless tenable for conservatives, and it did nothing to assuage moderates' concerns.

Here's a reminder of what CBO found in its estimate on the first version of the bill.

From the first to the second version, there is no significant change to how many people will be covered under their plan and, thus, no change to who votes for it. And, thus, no deal.

So far, Republican leadership and the White House haven't found a piece of health-care legislation that can get 51 votes, said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist whose public affairsfirm represents health-care clients.

Perhaps most telling: Senate Republican leaders have already given up on trying to get this legislation passed.

While President Trump was dining with supporters of the legislation on Tuesday, two conservatives, Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.), threw a grenade at the legislation by becoming the third and fourth GOP senators to oppose it.

In frustration, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decided to let the Senate vote on a straight repeal of Obamacare, even though policy experts said itwould be disastrous to the insurance markets and, potentially, Republicans' political future. That plan died a couple hours later, felled by three female GOP lawmakerswho had been left out of an all-male negotiating process: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Susan Collins (Maine). It is unclear when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who announced he has been diagnosed with brain cancer, will return, leaving McConnell with one fewer possible vote in favor of repeal.

(Also not helping senators go to the mat for this: It's historically unpopular.)

But, politics. Before McCain's announcement, Trump got everyone together for a photo op on Wednesday and vaguely told the Senate to figure something out while vaguely threatening some of the senators who have opposed this legislation. GOP senators then huddled Wednesday night and afterward vaguely said theyhad figured something out.

As he hosted Senate Republicans for a health-care meeting at the White House, July 19, President Trump said "most of the people in this room never saw" the GOP health-care bill that collapsed on July 17. (The Washington Post)

The plan is to have a vote Tuesday on the House-passed version of the bill, and there was a faint possibility that enough senators had agreed to amend it in a way that could pass by the skin of its teeth.

Failure, after all, is a powerful motivator.

And then, the CBO score was released, reminding the senators who hated the House bill (which CBO estimated would leave 23 million more uninsured over the next decade) why they hate this Senate bill.

Bottom line: Health-care experts and political analysts say if a bill that could pass the Senate as the Senate stands now, it probably would have already manifested.

I don't think it can pass, said Alice Rivlin with the Brookings Institution. And they will have to at some point just say: 'Okay, we tried. And we're moving on.'

Republican senators could always come back to this later. In Congress, phoenixes have been known to rise from the ashes.

But that requires a little lot of magic. And this CBO score isn't going to help create any.

See the original post here:
Republicans' health-care overhaul is even deader now - Washington Post

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced bills calling for the repeal of a just-announced regulation that would make it easier for consumers to bring class-action lawsuits against banks.

The rule unveiled last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would ban banks and other financial institutions from using arbitration clauses to block customers from bringing or joining class-action suits. Republicans had immediately pledged to unwind the rule before it takes effect next year.

On Thursday, GOP members of the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee introduced resolutions that would do just that. The resolutions call for using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to new regulations created by federal agencies.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House committee and a vocal opponent of the CFPB, said the rule is anti-consumer and should be thoroughly rejected by Congress.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the sponsors of the Senate bill, called the CFPB a rogue agency and said theres no need for this anti-arbitration, anti-business rule.

Banks and other companies often include language in consumer contracts that forces customers to resolve disputes in private arbitration rather than in court. The CFPB rule would allow that practice to continue, but would ban arbitration clauses that also ban consumers from bringing class-action suits.

Such suits, CFPB Director Richard Cordray said last week in introducing the new regulation, allow consumers who have suffered relatively minor harms to join together to hold a big bank accountable and to bring bad practices to light.

Wells Fargo successfully used its arbitration clause to stymie consumer lawsuits over its creation of unauthorized accounts. The bank ultimately agreed to settle nearly a dozen class-action lawsuits for $142 million after its practices created a scandal. But consumer advocates argued that if an arbitration clause had not been in place the banks practices might have been uncovered sooner.

Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on the House committee, called Thursdays action an outrageous move that would harm consumers.

Republicans should think twice before taking away consumers rights to be heard in a court of law, she said.

Republicans, business groups and attorneys for the finance industry have said that the new CFPB rule would result in a bevy of frivolous class-action litigation. They also argue that, if banks cant use arbitration to block class-actions, they will likely drop arbitration programs, which would mean that bank customers would have to go to court to settle even minor, individual disputes.

Theyll say, If a customer has a claim against us and it doesnt get resolved informally, let them sue us, said Alan Kaplinsky, a finance attorney who pioneered the use of arbitration clauses.

The challenge from Republican lawmakers is just one of the ways the arbitration rule could be scrapped or delayed. Keith Noreika, acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a key bank regulator, has said the rule should be put off while his agency studies whether it could harm the banking system.

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Experience Los Angeles 2049 at the Blade Runner 2049 Experience, only at Comic-Con.

james.koren@latimes.com

Follow me: @jrkoren

Read more here:
Republicans introduce bills to scrap new bank arbitration rule - Los Angeles Times