New York Times | Trump's Threats to Recalcitrant Republicans New York Times President Trump and Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, arriving for a meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol on Tuesday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times. To the Editor: Re President Warns Holdouts in G.O.P. Over Health ... |
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Trump's Threats to Recalcitrant Republicans - New York Times
House Republican leaders, racing toward a planned Thursday vote on their proposed health-care overhaul, unveiled changes to the legislation late Monday that they think will win over enough members to secure its passage.
The tweaks addressed numerous GOP concerns about the legislation, ranging from the flexibility it would give states to administer their Medicaid programs to the amount of aid it would offer older Americans to buy insurance. They are the product of two weeks of negotiations that stretched from the Capitol to the White House to President Trumps Florida resort.
The bill's proponents also appeared to overcome a major obstacle Monday after a key group of hard-line conservatives declined to take a formal position against the bill, known as the American Health Care Act.
The House Freedom Caucus has threatened for weeks to tank the legislation drafted by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), arguing that it does not do enough to undo the seven-year-old Affordable Care Act. Their neutrality gives the legislation a better chance of passage: If the group of about three dozen hard-right GOP members uniformly opposed the bill, it could block its passage.
Their decision not to act as a bloc frees House leaders and White House officials to persuade individual Freedom Caucus members to support the measure a process that the Freedom Caucuss chairman said was underway.
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Theyre already whipping with a whip thats about 10 feet long and five feet wide, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). Im trying to let my members vote the way that their constituents would want them to vote. ... I think theyre all very aware of the political advantages and disadvantages.
House leaders hope to pass the bill Thursday and then send it to the Senate. Trump is expected to press for the bills passage in a Tuesday morning meeting with Republican lawmakers.
Some of the changes unveiled Monday were made to placate conservatives, such as accelerating the expiration of the ACAs taxes and further restricting the federal Medicaid program. But a major push was made to win moderate votes, including a maneuver that House leaders said would allow the Senate to beef up tax credits for older Americans who could see major increases in premiums under the GOP plan.
There were signs Monday that the bill had growing support among the moderate wing of the House GOP. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), who had voted against the leadership in an early procedural vote on the health-care legislation, said that he was satisfied enough that I will support the bill.
MacArthur said he was assured that the bill would do more for older and disabled Americans covered under Medicaid and that an additional $85 billion in aid would be directed to those between ages 50 and 65.
Thats a $150 billion change in this bill to help the poor and those who are up in years, he said.
Several House Republicans from Upstate New York won an amendment that would allow counties in their state to keep hundreds of millions of dollars of local tax revenue that they forward to the state government to fund its Medicaid program. One member, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), told the Syracuse Post-Standard on Monday that her support of the bill was conditioned on the amendments inclusion.
Opponents of the bill Republicans and Democrats alike called the deal a sordid giveaway on social media networks Monday night. Many compared it to the state-specific deals that were cut to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010 and panned by Republicans such as the Medicaid reimbursement boost that then-Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) secured for his home state that Republicans mocked as the Cornhusker Kickback.
The Freedom Caucus had pushed for a variety of alterations, from an earlier phaseout of the ACAs Medicaid expansion to a more thorough rollback of the insurance mandates established under the law. But for political and procedural reasons, few of the groups major demands stand to be incorporated into the bill.
Its very clear that the negotiations are over, said Meadows, who met with White House officials at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.
Many Freedom Caucus members who left the groups Capitol Hill meeting Monday night said they remained sharply opposed to the legislation.
Nothings changed, said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the caucus. Weve still got lots of problems with this bill. ... The presidents a good man, and the White House has been great to work with, but opposition is still strong with our group.
Under the groups rules, it can take a formal position to oppose the bill if 80percent of its members agree. No Democrats are expected to support the bill, meaning Republican leaders can afford to lose no more than 21 of their own members.
Meadows said after Monday nights meeting that taking a hard position against the bill creates some dynamics within the group that perhaps we dont want to create, hinting at tensions in the groups ranks. One of its members, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), decided to support the bill last week when he met with Trump in the Oval Office, emboldening House leaders who think that even hard-liners will be hard-pressed to oppose Trump.
This is a defining moment for our nation, but its also a defining moment for the Freedom Caucus, Meadows said. There are core things within this bill as it currently stands that would violate some of the principles of the Freedom Caucus.
Attending the Freedom Caucus meeting Monday were three senators opposed to the House bill Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who hold leverage to block the bill in their own chamber, where Republicans hold a two-seat majority. Cruz said he told the House members that the leadership strategy of pursuing distinct phases of legislation was a dead end and that they needed to push for changes in the present bill.
The Senate Democrats are engaging in absolute opposition and obstruction, and it is difficult to see that changing anytime soon, Cruz told reporters after leaving the meeting.
Trumps visit to the Hill on Tuesday signals that GOP leaders and the president consider larger-scale talks with key blocs of House members to be essentially complete. The effort now turns toward persuading individual members to vote for the package.
Ryan credited Trumps backing in a statement Monday: With the presidents leadership and support for this historic legislation, we are now one step closer to keeping our promise to the American people and ending the Obamacare nightmare.
Trumps visit Tuesday will be his first appearance at the weekly House Republican Conference meeting since becoming president. He last privately addressed Republican lawmakers as a group at the partys policy retreat in Philadelphia in late January and has met with small groups of members on several occasions since.
Trump won the backing of Palmer and several other conservative House members Friday when he agreed to make changes to the Medicaid portion of the bill, including giving states the option of instituting a work requirement for childless, able-bodied adults who receive the benefit. Those changes were included in the leadership-backed amendments that will be incorporated into the bill before it comes to a final vote.
[Whom to trust on health-care reform? Trump supporters put their faith in him.]
To address concerns expressed by a broader swath of GOP lawmakers conservatives and moderates alike leaders said they hoped to change the bill to give older Americans more assistance to buy insurance.
In an extreme case laid out in a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the bill, a 64-year-old earning $26,500 a year would see yearly premiums rise from $1,700 under the ACA to $14,600 under the Republican plan.
House leaders said they intended to provide another $85 billion of aid to those between ages 50 and 64, but the amendment unveiled late Monday did not do so directly. Instead, the leaders said, it provides the Senate flexibility to potentially enhance the tax credit for the older cohort by adjusting an unrelated tax deduction.
That workaround, aides said, was done to ensure that the House bill would comply with Senate budget rules and to ensure that the CBO could release an updated analysis of the legislation before the Thursday vote.
But it also means that the House members who pushed for the new aid will have to trust the Senate to carry out their wishes.
Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.
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House Republicans unveil changes to their health care bill - Washington Post
New York Times | On Health Law, GOP Faces a Formidable Policy Foe: House Republicans New York Times Republican leaders condemned the idea, and the 80 House Republicans who signed the letter acquired a nickname, courtesy of the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer the suicide caucus. But it wasn't long before a bitter disagreement over ... |
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On Health Law, GOP Faces a Formidable Policy Foe: House Republicans - New York Times
Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks during the first day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday in Washington, D.C.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
It is an article of faith among Senate Republicans that everything liberals do is just goddamn awful, from the unelected left-wing justices who legislate from the bench to the blocking of Robert Bork in 1987 to the lame cries for equal treatment of everyone under the law. Indeed, Senate Republicans have so mastered the art of outsize umbrage that at Mondays hearing for Judge Merrick Garland Neil Gorsuch, to fill a Supreme Court seat they themselves blocked and obstructed for over a year, the one note of agreement they sounded was an angry one. They are angry that Democrats believe an Obama nominee should have been afforded the courtesy of a hearing and a vote. They are angry that their nomineewho was picked by the president with promises about how he would vote in abortion and gun caseswill surely be asked about how he will vote in abortion and gun cases. But mostly they are really just incredibly steamed that Senate Democrats are even a little bit mad. Because anger is sort of the Republicans thing.
Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.
Get your own thing, Democrats.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was furious that the cardinal principles of separation of powers and respect for an independent judicial branch are not being honored by Senate Democrats. This is the same Chuck Grassley who pre-emptively attacked the Supreme Court and its chief justice last spring for any attempts to politicize the court vacancy. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch lectured the Judiciary Committee about the fact that the Senate owes the president deference over his judicial nominees. Hearing this, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont about fell out of his chair.
Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, mournfully warned the nominee that the duplicity of Mondays politicized confirmation hearings would be unfair and unfamiliar to him. Evidently the duplicity and politicization to which Merrick Garland Neil Gorsuch will be subjected is altogether unparalleled in modern history. And Sen. Ted Cruz, who is doubtless capable of hacking up a hairball of outrage over hangnails and the existence of Velcro, was affronted that a Democratic president had the temerity to even attempt to fill the chair vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia on an activist Supreme Court that is dominated by unelected lawyers.
The presidents audacity in seeking to fill that seat with a justice of his choosing was indeed so outrageous, Cruz argued in the fall, that if Hillary Clinton were to be elected the Senate should leave Scalias seat open indefinitely. After Trumps victory, Cruz is still enraged, but now its because Democrats are ignoring the fact that since a Republican won, the election was actually a referendum on the kind of justice that should replace Justice Scalia. Cruz is beside himself with fury about questions regarding Merrick Garland Neil Gorsuchs legitimacy. Dont these Democrats know that only Ted Cruz gets to question a jurists legitimacy? To ensure that this is so, Cruz officially declares that effective, like right now, Judge Gorsuch is no ordinary nominee. His nomination carries with it a super legitimacy. Super legitimacy, for the uninitiated, is the power to outrun your own speeding hypocrisy.
One angry senator after another cautioned the nominee not to answer any question about anything ever. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is mainly just angry that everyone in the Senate isnt Lindsey Graham, said he is post-anger. He isnt even angry that Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan vote with the liberals 100 percent of the time (they dont) because what else can you really expect from liberal judges. Senate Republicans took turns being angry that anything other than Scalia-era originalism be given voice in the jurisprudential universe, despite the fact that there is maybe only one originalist sitting on the Supreme Court. They were enraged that any nominee should have to sit and have his record scrutinized given that 10 years agobefore he was a judgethis Gorsuch fellow was confirmed with flying colors. Its all too obscene to countenance.
In the glare of all this furious umbrage, some of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee responded with the standard toolkit of those who have been lifelong victims of abusive rage disorder. They expressed some dismay. They promised to try harder. They occasionally invoked the words Merrick Garland, but because they have no words to express fury or betrayal, they quickly reverted to showy performances of temperate reasonableness at which Senate Democrats excel. Doctrine was reasonably invoked. Chevron was fussed at. Some of the Democratic senators actually managed a creditable display of genuine frustration about GOP hypocrisy. This reached its high point with the metaphorical unfreezing of the frozen truckera plaintiff in a case whose plight the nominee once cruelly dismissed. In an epic hurling of shade, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said, It was 14 degrees below. So cold, but not as cold as your dissent, Judge Gorsuch.
A few of the Democrats appeared ready to rumble, if rumbling involves offering up many case citations. The Republicans fury, by contrast, was unbridled: How dare Democrats put their nice nominee through the indignity of a hearing on the merits when they could instead just lie down on the Senate floor and form a human red carpet for the judge to walk?
The nominee was very emotional and eloquent about his daughters, black robes, and farm animals. He is extremely likeable. He named little guys he has, in the past, supported. That seemed to make the GOPs rage burn even hotter. Who would dare attack a guy who likes chickens and original public meaning?
If youre keeping score after Day 1: Senate Democrats have now defrosted a trucker, name-checked Merrick Garland, and been lectured that Senate Republicans have no choice but to be mean because Democrats have no judicial theory, no coherent strategy, and no intellectual right to fill Scalias seat. On the other side of the aisle, the GOP has nothing but bottomless umbrage. Its taken them this far. Why would they stop now?
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How Dare You Question Our Precious Nominee? - Slate Magazine
Legendary Reporter Carl Bernstein Calls Out Republicans For Stunning Hypocrisy Over Leaks The Daily Banter Democrats wanted to get to the bottom of Russian involvement in the election and possible connections to Donald Trump, while Republicans were much more interested in where leaked information about investigations of Russian interference has been ... |
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Legendary Reporter Carl Bernstein Calls Out Republicans For Stunning Hypocrisy Over Leaks - The Daily Banter