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Speaker Paul Ryan, right, and his House Republicans are reportedly planning to introduce its Obamacare replacement bill this week.

Congressional Republicans will introduce their much-anticipated bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, NBC News reports, citing a senior House aide.

Draft legislation would provide expanded tax credits and health savings accounts for individuals, while cutting spending on tax subsidies and Medicaid, NBC writes. It would also practically eliminate the employer and individuals mandates to provide and carry health insurance. That legislation may have changed but a House Republican aide earlier called it the bones of what would happen.

Also read: Trump embraces HSAs as a pillar of repeal and replace, but they will need work.

SEC nominee targeted: A coalition of progressive groups is planning to announce a campaign to derail President Trumps nomination of Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Washington Post reports. Organizers say the campaign will include a six-figure digital advertising buy. As the Post says, it comes amid broader efforts by Democrats to highlight Trumps choice of finance-industry insiders for key administration positions despite his antiWall Street rhetoric when he was a candidate.

Knives out for Priebus: Politico writes that administration officials are increasingly putting blame on Trumps chief of staff, Reince Priebus, as the White House struggles to gain its footing nearly two months into the new presidency. More than a dozen Trump aides, allies and others close to the White House said Priebus was becoming a singular target of criticism within the White House.

One senior administration official said theres a real frustration among many, including Trump himself, that things arent going as smoothly as hoped for. The White House, meanwhile, pushed back on the story, with Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon saying the presidents agenda is being implemented in record time, which shows you what a great job Reince is doing.

Also see: Opinion: With wiretapping tweets, Trump undermines the presidency.

Regulation tally: Federal agencies and the GOP-led Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed more than 90 regulations in the month and a half since Trump took office, according to a tally by the New York Times. The Times called the effort one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades, with dozens more rules possibly being eliminated in the coming weeks.

Read more from the original source:
Republicans to introduce health bill this week | Knives out for Reince Priebus, Trump's chief of staff - MarketWatch

President Trump and congressional Republicans are poised to roll back a series of Obama-era worker safety regulations targeted by business groups, starting with a rule that would require federal contractors to disclose and correct serious safety violations.

The Senate is set to vote Monday evening to eliminate the regulation, dubbed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. Finalized in August and blocked by a court order in October, the rule would limit the ability of companies with recent safety problems to complete for government contracts unless they agreed to remedies.

The measure to abolish it has already cleared the House. The next step after the Senate vote would be the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it.

A half-dozen other worker safety regulations are also in Republican crosshairs, with one headed to the Senate floor as soon as this week. Many are directed at companies with federal contracts. Such companies employ 1 in 5 American workers meaning the effort could have wide-ranging effects.

This is the opening salvo of the Republicans war on workers, said Deborah Berkowitz, who was a senior policy adviser at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration when many of the regulations were crafted. It sends a signal that Congress and the administration is listening to big business and their lobbyists and they are not standing up for the interests of the American workers.

[Federal Insider: Fair-pay order for contractors under attack in Congress]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and other leading business groups have urged Congress and the Trump administration to eliminate the regulations, arguing that they discourage businesses from competing for government contracts, thereby reducing jobs.

This is the same old playbook from the left that never changes, said Randy Johnson, the Chambers senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits. Any changes in employment laws proposed by the employer community is disingenuously described as an attack on workers. The left has never seen a regulation they dont like, no matter how many jobs it kills.

Hours before the Senate vote on the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a staff report that says that 66 of the federal governments 100 largest contractors have at some point violated federal wage and hour laws. Since 2015, the report says, more than a third of the 100 largest OSHA penalties have been imposed on federal contractors.

Too often, federal contractors break labor laws while continuing to suck down millions in taxpayer dollars, Warren said in a statement.

[Hill Republicans move to scrap Obama-era regulations]

That concern prompted the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation. Among the strongest data points: Rodney Bridgett, 37, a worker at a Tysons Foods beef processing plant in Nebraska, was crushed by a piece of heavy equipment when a chain snapped on the plants kill floor in 2012.

Tyson spokesman Worth Sparkman called Bridgetts death a tragic accident and said the company aspires to have zero work-related injuries and illnesses, and continue to improve our culture related to safety every day.

OSHA investigators found that Tysons supervisors had repeatedly failed to inspect the faulty chain. While OSHA sought to fine the company, the Obama administration moved separately to target a major source of Tysonss revenue: nearly $300million a year in federal contracts.

The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation was finalized in August. Days later, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) sued, securing a temporary injunction that prohibited the federal government from implementing it.

ABC and other business groups objected to the rules requirement that companies disclose citations for alleged safety violations that they are still challenging.

They define violations to include mere allegations and citations where the contractors havent had a chance to defend them, said Marc Freedman, executive director of labor law policy with the Chamber. We consider this a violation of their constitutional due-process rights.

David Madland of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the rule applies only to companies with contracts worth $500,000 or more. If the rule is eliminated, he said, taxpayers will lose alongside affected workers. One purpose of the rule was to make it easier for federal agencies to identify contractors who were not honest brokers when it came to employee pay.

People who rip off workers rip off the government, Madland said.

After Trumps election, the Chamber and other business groups added the rule to wish lists for regulations they wanted to see eliminated. Republican lawmakers quickly identified a tool to assist in those efforts the rarely used Congressional Review Act (CRA). Approved in 1996, the law had been used only once to kill a worker safety rule that would have forced companies to alter their workstations or change tools and equipment if their employees suffered work-related repetitive-stress injuries.

The CRA allows Congress to roll back recently enacted regulations by a simple majority vote. Once a rule is killed, it is killed forever. No future administration can pass a similar measure unless Congress is persuaded to pass a law instead a far more difficult task.

Reps. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) and Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) are leading the charge to kill Labor Department regulations using the CRA. In addition to the effort to eliminate the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation called the blacklisting rule by the Chamber and many Republican lawmakers Byrne introduced a measure to quash a regulation called the Volks rule.

Adopted in January, the rule responds to a 2012 D.C. Court of Appeals decision Volks Constructors v. Secretary of Labor that limited OSHAs power to issue citations for record-keeping violations older than six months. The new rule gives OSHA authority to issue citations and levy fines against companies for failure to record illnesses, injuries and deaths that date back as far as five years.

Last week, the House voted to kill the Volks rule. If the measure clears the Senate, Trump is expected to sign it.

Byrne said he does not think OSHA needs the Volks rule. If you are determined to be a bad actor, youll be a bad actor, he said. I dont think this is going to encourage noncompliance. I think that OSHA is being lazy on getting its investigations done.

Byrne also called the rule an overreach, saying the changes should have been made in law, not through regulation.

Rep. Robert C. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) is leading efforts to block the rule-killing measures. He argues that Byrnes measure to kill the Volks rule will block OSHAs enforcement efforts and create a safe harbor for those employers who deliberately underreport.

OSHA says staffing levels permit investigators to visit an American business roughly once every 140 years, unless a serious violation is reported.

Scott also defended the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, saying that nothing in the regulation would ban a company from securing a federal contract. He noted that only companies with serious, pervasive, intentional and repeated safety violations would have to report them.

Who qualifies for that who we need to help? Scott said. If you can save money by underpaying your workers and violating OSHA, why should you have a competitive advantage over those who are complying with the law?

Leaders on both sides of the battle hold key committee assignments and have close financial ties with the constituencies they are championing. Foxx and Byrne received hundreds of thousands in donations for their 2016 reelection campaigns from employees of federal contractors and their trade groups, including ones that have been at the forefront of efforts to kill the two worker safety rules. Foxx received $7,500 from employees of ABC, while Byrne received $10,000 from ABC employees.

Scott, meanwhile, is a long-standing champion of unions and civil rights groups who are in favor of the keeping the Obama-era rules. During Scotts 2016 reelection campaign, more than half of his donations came from union employees, including $10,000 from the United Steelworkers and $30,000 from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, according to records maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

More here:
Republicans poised to roll back worker safety regulations - Washington Post

House Republicans, despite stiff political headwinds, are readying an ambitious push this week to begin moving legislation to replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, a crucial test of their ability to fulfill one of their partys main campaign promises.

The plan marks the first time GOP lawmakers will do this since Obamacare was enacted seven years ago and will provide an early indication of whether President Trump can rally his partys members of Congress, many of whom are anxious about how to repeal and replace the healthcare law.

The legislation could affect health insurance for tens of millions of Americans not only those with Obamacare coverage, but also people with employer-provided insurance and Medicaid.

The House legislation which was being finalized over the weekend, according to GOP officials aims to fundamentally restructure the system that Obamacare created, which has extended health coverage to more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans.

GOP plans call for scrapping insurance marketplaces that require insurers to offer a basic set of benefits and that provide government subsidies to help low- and moderate-income Americans who dont get health benefits at work to buy health plans.

Republican legislation would lift many requirements for benefits that plans must cover. And it would create a new system of subsidies that are linked to consumers age, rather than their income, according to leaked drafts. That would make insurance harder to buy for millions of Americans, especially low-income working people, outside analyses suggest.

GOP leaders would eliminate taxes that have helped offset the cost of Obamacares coverage expansion, including taxes on medical device makers and insurance companies and on households making more than $250,000 a year.

Instead, Republicans are proposing to tax the health insurance that employers provide their workers. Employer-provided benefits are currently tax-free. The change could cause the price of insurance that many Americans get on the job to go up.

The House plan would phase out hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid that has allowed many states to expand their Medicaid programs to millions more poor Americans.

House Republicans also want to give states more flexibility to reshape their Medicaid programs, allowing states to potentially limit benefits or require poor patients to pay more for their medical care.

The GOP plan would eliminate Obamacares unpopular insurance mandate, which requires Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty.

In its place, House Republicans have proposed to allow insurers to charge higher premiums to Americans who let their insurance lapse.

Most of these proposals are deeply controversial, even within Republican ranks. That is a big reason why Republicans have not previously moved forward with a plan to replace Obamacare.

"There is not a consensus at this point," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday on CBS News Face the Nation.

White House officials and senior GOP lawmakers nevertheless are sounding upbeat.

We're putting the finishing touches on our plan, Vice President Mike Pence said in Wisconsin on Friday on a trip with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to visit House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in his district.

And House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), whose committee could hold a hearing on proposed legislation as soon as this week, said hes confident the president is behind the House plan. There was no mistaking he is exactly on the same page as House Republicans, Brady said.

Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have suggested Congress could send President Trump legislation as soon as this month, even though Republican leaders as of Sunday had still not released the text of their healthcare legislation.

Obamacare 101: A periodic primer on the Affordable Care Act

While the Republican-led Congress did pass a bill to repeal large parts of Obamacare, which President Obama vetoed last year, this marks the first time the party will offer a replacement bill and subject it to the scrutiny of congressional hearings and the legislative process.

But the GOP faces mounting opposition from major advocacy groups representing patients, doctors, hospitals and now even businesses, a traditional Republican ally.

At the same time, internal GOP divisions threaten to derail the legislative campaign before it even gets off the ground.

Leading conservatives in the House and Senate have said they will oppose any legislation that does not fully repeal Obamacare, while many Republican senators and governors representing states with major coverage gains have voiced serious reservations about rolling back too much of the existing law.

Conservatives have criticized the House GOP plan as Obamacare-lite, accusing party leaders of replacing one tax-funded government entitlement with another.

Theyre going to have a new tax, a new government subsidy program and a new [insurance] mandate, charged Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has rallied against the plan with the conservative House Freedom Caucus and influential outside groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth.

Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell need to stand up to those in the Republican Party who are fighting to retain and repair Obamacare, rather than repeal and replace it, said David McIntosh, president of the free market advocacy group Club for Growth, which is known for backing primary election challenges to wayward Republicans.

Together, the conservatives have the votes to potentially tank the House GOP plan because to pass any healthcare legislation, Republican leaders cannot afford to lose more than 18 votes in the House.

Their margins, especially in the Senate, but also in the House, are thin, warned National Retail Federation vice president Neil Trautwein, a former aid to McConnell.

They have a better chance of getting this out of the House, but its not automatic, even though they are taking draconian steps to get their caucus in line. And what they are doing with this secrecy and locked rooms isnt helping.

House Republican leaders came under fire last week for only allowing committee members to view drafts of proposed healthcare legislation in a first-floor room of the Capitol that was off limits to Democrats and even Senate Republicans.

Many advocacy organizations are urging House Republicans to slow down and allow more time for independent assessments of the legislation.

To date, the independent Congressional Budget Office, which lawmakers rely on to calculate the effect of proposed bills, has not released an estimate of how much Republicans plans would cost and how many people could lose health coverage.

Making substantial changes to our healthcare system by changing current law would impact tens of millions of our patients, Dr. Nitin S. Damle, president of the American College of Physicians, said in a letter to House committee leaders last week.

Congress therefore must avoid any unintended adverse consequences, the letter said, calling for an open and transparent legislative process.

Under the current GOP plan, the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees are expected to hold hearings on different pieces of the legislation as soon as this week.

That could allow the full House to vote on an Obamacare repeal bill by as early as the end of the month and send it to the Senate, where a much longer debate is expected.

John Desser, a former health official in the George W. Bush administration and former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), predicted Ryan would rally his caucus and get the 218 votes hell need.

The speaker has lived and breathed health policy for over two decades, and may just be perfectly positioned to bring together his conference and explain the opportunity they have to get this right to reluctant or recalcitrant members, he said.

But Desser, now a vice president for eHealth, an online insurance marketplace, cautioned that other challenges await.

Getting it through the Senate after that may require the gravity-defying leadership of Mr. Trump and his team, he said.

noam.levey@latimes.com

@noamlevey

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Facing big political hurdles, House Republicans ready an ambitious legislative push to repeal Obamacare - Los Angeles Times

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump peers out into the crowd during a campaign event at the International Air Response facility on December 16, 2015 in Mesa, Arizona.Ralph Freso Getty Images

Updated: Mar 05, 2017 8:04 PM UTC

Republican lawmakers want more information from President Trump following his unsubstantiated allegations that former President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate intelligence committee that is currently investigating Trump's team's ties to Russia, said Sunday during a "Meet The Press" interview that he has seen "no evidence" to support Trump's claims that were laid out in a series of tweets early Saturday morning .

"I'd imagine the President and the White House in the days to come will outline further what was behind that accusation," Rubio said. "The President put that out there, and now the White House will have to answer as to exactly what he was referring to."

And while many prominent Republicans have not addressed the topic, a few others joined Rubio in asking the President to release more information regarding his allegations, which Trump likened in a tweet to "Nixon/Watergate."

"It would be more helpful if he turned over to the intelligence committee any evidence he has," Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who is also a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation .

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton echoed his colleagues during an interview on Fox News Sunday . "It doesn't mean that none of these things have happened, just means I haven't seen them yet," he said.

Trump has not clarified the source of his information, but many have pointed to a Brietbart News story that was broadcast Friday about the FBI obtaining warrants to monitor his campaign as part of an investigation into its alleged Russian ties.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer called on Congress to conduct a probe and called the news "very troubling" in a statement Sunday.

House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes said on Sunday that his panel will include Trump's allegations into his current investigation of Russia meddling in the 2016 election. The committee "will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates," Nunes said in a statement.

More here:
'No Evidence': Republican Lawmakers Want Answers About President Trump's Wiretapping Claim - Fortune

Republicans on Capitol Hill are turning their attention to repealing another signature accomplishment of President Obama: the 2010 Wall Street reform law.

Key lawmakers are eyeing a special budgetary to pass repeal legislation in the Senate on a simple majority vote, bypassing Democrats.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, says the budgetary process known as reconciliation, which can be used to circumvent the filibuster, should be considered as a tool to roll back burdensome Obama-era regulations on the financial sector.

Some Republicans say that rolling back the Wall Street reform law should be one of their highest priorities.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin HatchOrrin HatchRepublicans eye strategy for repealing Wall Street reform Two Republicans sign on to effort demanding Trumps tax returns Senate panel approves pick for Medicaid and Medicare chief MORE (R-Utah) told Bloomberg television last month that the law is worse than ObamaCare.

I think its one of the worst bills thats ever been passed through Congress, Hatch said, adding that he did not think any of its provisions were worth saving.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles SchumerCharles SchumerConservative radio host: 'Evidence is overwhelming' of Obama spying Pelosi rips Trump tweets: 'Deflector-in-Chief is at it again' Top Obama adviser to Trump: 'No president can order a wiretap' MORE (N.Y.) in November said he had enough votes to block any Republican efforts to repeal key parts of the Wall Street reform law, known as Dodd-Frank.

But it would be considerably harder for Schumer to stand in the way if Republicans use reconciliation to repeal the parts of Dodd-Frank that affect government spending and revenues.

Democrats "don't have to agree to everything on reconciliation, Shelby noted.

Asked whether congressional committees would be given instructions to repeal parts of the Wall Street reform law in a budget resolution later this year, Shelby said, "We've been talking about a lot of stuff."

The effort has been kept largely quiet, however. It was not one of the items highlighted on the 200-day agenda that Republicans discussed at their annual retreat in Philadelphia, and President Trump did not mention Wall Street during his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellMitch McConnellRepublicans eye strategy for repealing Wall Street reform House, Senate leaders avoid holding town halls Pressure mounts on GOP leaders to back special counsel MORE (R-Ky.) has announced that the second budget resolution that Republicans plan to pass this spring will have instructions to protect tax reform from Democratic filibusters.

But its possible to include multiple instructions so that the resolution includes the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over financial industry regulations, as well as the Finance Committee, which is in charge of taxes.

Budget Committee Chairman Mike EnziMike EnziRepublicans eye strategy for repealing Wall Street reform Lawmakers fundraise amid rising town hall pressure A guide to the committees: Senate MORE (R-Wyo.) said reconciliation instructions affecting the Wall Street reform law could be included in the next budget resolution, which will cover fiscal 2018. But he declined to tip his hand about whether that was a certainty.

"I just work the problem until Ive got a solution," he said.

Trump signed an executive order early last month giving the Treasury Department authority to change key provisions of Dodd-Frank to align with several goals laid out by his administration, such as to make regulation efficient, effective and appropriately tailored.

The president said regulations created under the 2010 law have chilled economic activity.

I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses that cant borrow money, Trump said. The banks just wont let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.

Democrats say the Republican plan to gut the reform law with only 51 votes would likely run afoul of the Senates Byrd rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), which limits what legislation can be passed under reconciliation.

How would they use reconciliation? Its not budgetary, said a Senate Democratic aide.

A former Democrat aide who served in the Senate during passage of the Wall Street reform law seven years ago, however, said Republicans could attempt to target spending on regulation of the financial services industry.

They could target provisions in Dodd-Frank that govern funding such as that they might have been charging or fines they were imposing on banks. That sort of thing they could go after, the Democratic source said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2011 that the Wall Street law would increase government revenues by $13.4 billion and spending by $10.2 billion over a 10-year period. It projected the law would reduce deficits by $3.2 billion.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a veteran member of the Banking Committee, is leading the review of the budget rules to determine what parts of the law can be undone with 51 votes.

We need to make a number of really substantial reforms to Dodd-Frank, Toomey told the Wall Street Journal in December. I am very much in favor of making sure we have all the tools to do this.

Aside from the challenge of getting the Senate parliamentarian who decides whats eligible for special budgetary protection to sign off on the plan, Shelby and Toomey may have trouble convincing some moderate Republicans to go along.

Schumer in November predicted in November that some Republicans would side with Democrats in blocking efforts to weaken the law. Yet Republicans could try to make up for lost votes by targeting red-state Democrats who are up for reelection in 2018.

Republicans from agricultural states say tighter regulations on banks has made it tougher for farmers to obtain financing now that commodity prices are slumping.

Link:
Republicans eye strategy for repealing Wall Street reform - The Hill