An EPIC Trump FAIL: TrumpCare (SNIGGER)

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Two more Senate Republicans oppose health-care bill,
leaving it without enough votes to pass

The decision by Senators Mike Lee (Republican-Utah) and Jerry Moran (Republican-Kansas)
to oppose the latest effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system leaves the legislation
short of the support it needs to pass and could end the months-long effort to make good
on the long-standing Republican campaign promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

By SEAN SULLIVAN and LENNY BERNSTEIN | 1:15AM EDT - Tuesday, July 18, 2017


Republican Senators Mike Lee (Utah), left, and Jerry Moran (Kansas), right. — Photograph: European Pressphoto Agency/Reuters.

TWO MORE Senate Republicans have declared their opposition to the latest plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, potentially ending a months-long effort to make good on a GOP promise that has defined the party for nearly a decade and been a top priority for President Trump.

Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kansas) issued statements declaring that they would not vote for the revamped measure. The sudden breaks by Lee, a staunch conservative, and Moran, an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky), rocked the GOP leadership and effectively closed what already had been an increasingly narrow path to passage for the bill.

They joined Senators Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Susan Collins (Maine), who also oppose it. With just 52 seats, Republicans can afford to lose only two votes to pass their proposed rewrite of the Affordable Care Act. All 46 Democrats and two independents are expected to vote against it.

Republicans, who have made rallying cries against President Barack Obama's 2010 health-care law a pillar of the party's identity, may be forced to grapple with the law's shift from a perennial GOP target to an accepted, even popular, provider of services and funding in many states, which could make further repeal revivals difficult.

Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans will confront a Republican base that, despite fervent support for the president, still seeks a smaller federal government and fewer regulations.

All of these forces remained vexing factors on Monday as senators bailed on the bill. And no evident solution was offered by the White House — which has been limited in its sale of the GOP plan — or from McConnell, for how to bring together a party in which moderates and conservatives are still deeply divided over the scope of federal health-care funding and regulations.

McConnell did announce late on Monday that he plans to push for a vote in the coming days anyway, but with a catch: senators would be voting to start debate on the unpopular House-passed bill. McConnell has promised to amend the bill to a pure repeal, but with no guarantee that such an amendment would pass.

“In addition to not repealing all of the Obamacare taxes, it doesn't go far enough in lowering premiums for middle class families; nor does it create enough free space from the most costly Obamacare regulations,” Lee said in a statement.

Moran said the bill “fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address healthcare's rising costs.”

The two senators timed the release of their statements and made clear that modest tinkering around the edges of the legislation drafted by McConnell would not be enough to meet their demands.

They joined a pair of GOP colleagues in calling for a complete redrawing of the legislation that would take many months, short-circuiting McConnell's wish to end the debate this month.

The news threw the effort to pass the legislation into turmoil, with additional Republicans weighing in on Twitter about a flawed process that must take a new direction. Trump tweeted that “Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan.”

Senator Lindsey O. Graham (South Carolina) called for a “new approach” while Representative Mark Meadows (North Carolina) tweeted, “Time for full repeal.” White House aides, meanwhile, said they still plan to press ahead.

The setbacks appear to have left McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin) with few good options. Conservatives have suggested moving a bill that would simply repeal the Affordable Care Act and set up a timeline of several years to figure out how to replace it, a politically risky move that also might lack support to pass.

Another move, which McConnell threatened recently, would be to work with Democrats to prop up the insurance exchange markets that have been imploding in some states — which probably would win passage but would infuriate the conservative base that has been calling for the end of the Affordable Care Act.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” McConnell said in a statement released late on Monday. He revealed plans to move forward with a vote in the coming days anyway, in some ways daring his Republican opponents to begin debate and open the legislation up to amendments.

Democrats quickly jumped at the opportunity to declare the effort dead.

“This second failure of Trumpcare is proof positive that the core of this bill is unworkable,” said Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York). “Rather than repeating the same failed, partisan process yet again, Republicans should start from scratch and work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our health-care system.”

Republican leaders had returned to the Capitol on Monday still pledging to press ahead with plans to pass a far-reaching overhaul, but the day had begun with uncertainty as the health of Senator John McCain put the future of the flagging effort deeper in doubt.

In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell said that he had spoken with McCain (Republican) on Monday morning and that “he'll be back with us soon.” The Arizonan is recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot above his left eye that involved opening his skull.

McConnell had delayed action on the health-care bill until McCain's return in hopes that he could be persuaded to vote yes. That hope faded after Lee's and Moran’s announcements, however, with McCain issuing a statement from Arizona calling for a fresh, bipartisan start.

“One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,” McCain said. “As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to Obamacare's failure.”

In addition, Senator Ron Johnson (Republican-Wisconsin) hinted on Monday that he might vote against advancing the measure to floor debate — departing from his posture last week.

McCain, 80, is awaiting results of tissue pathology reports “pending within the next several days,” the hospital treating him said in a statement over the weekend. He will be away from the Senate for at least the rest of the week. A McCain spokeswoman had no further update on his condition on Monday.


Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizon) at the Capitol in May. — Photograph: Melina Mara/The Washington Post.

Graham, perhaps McCain's closest friend in the Senate, spoke to him by phone as he was walking to the Senate chamber for a vote during Monday evening. The two had an animated conversation, and Graham said McCain was “dying to get back.”

“They were doing a routine checkup and they found the spot and it looks like everything is going to be A-okay,” Graham said. He said McCain's doctors “don't want him to fly for a week, adding, “I think he would walk back if they would let him.”

The cause of McCain's blood clot remained unclear on Monday. The most common causes of clots in the head, especially for older people, are falls, car crashes and other incidents that cause traumas, even minor ones, said Elliott Haut, a trauma surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. By one estimate, 1.7 million people suffer traumatic head injuries each year, with motor vehicle accidents the leading cause and blood clots that affect the brain a common effect.

Traumas can cause blood to leak out of small vessels in two locations in the head: between the brain and a tough, fibrous layer known as the dura, causing “subdural hematomas”, and between the dura and the skull, causing “epidural hematomas”.

“People die of these every day,” Haut said in an interview, emphasizing that he could not speak about McCain's health, because he had no details of the case.

Another possibility is that the clot is related to McCain's history of melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer that can spread to other organs, including the brain, and form new tumors. Haut said that is much less likely but not impossible. Diagnosis of a clot in the head requires a CT scan, and it often follows symptoms such as headaches or blurred or changed vision, he said.

Senate Republicans have been under self-imposed pressure to complete their work on health care. As they have struggled to show progress, McConnell has said he would keep the chamber in session through the first two weeks of August, postponing the start of the summer recess period to leave time to work on other matters.

Key Republican senators — and the GOP governors they turn to for guidance — have raised concerns about how the bill would affect the most vulnerable people in their states. Private lobbying by the White House and Senate GOP leaders has not mollified them.

Johnson said on Monday that last week he was “strongly in favor” of taking a procedural vote allowing the bill to advance to floor debate. But he said he was unhappy with recent comments by McConnell that the bill's deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future and are unlikely to take effect anyway.

Johnson said he read the comments in The Washington Post and confirmed them with other senators. He said he planned to talk to McConnell about it during Tuesday at the weekly GOP policy lunch. In a statement late on Monday, McConnell responded: “I prefer to speak for myself, and my view is that the Medicaid per capita cap with a responsible growth rate that is sustainable for taxpayers is the most important long-term reform in the bill. That is why it has been in each draft we have released.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, threatened on Monday to sue the federal government if the health-care bill becomes law. The measure “isn't simply unconscionable and unjust. It's unconstitutional,” he wrote on Twitter.

The Schumer letter also asks that GOP leaders not move ahead with the bill until the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office releases a complete score on it. The CBO had been expected to release its findings as soon as Monday, but that did not happen. A GOP aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly, said a release later this week was possible but not certain.

The CBO has been projecting what the bill would do to insurance coverage levels, premium costs and the federal budget deficit. Having an unfavorable report in the public domain for an extended period of time with an uncertain date for a vote would fuel critics’ argument against the bill, making it harder for McConnell to round up votes for it.

A CBO report on an earlier version of the legislation projected that it would result in 22 million fewer Americans with insurance by 2026 than under current law. It predicted that the measure would reduce the budget deficit by $321 billion over the same period. On average, premiums would first rise, then fall under the measure, the CBO projected.

Neither a McConnell spokesman nor the CBO said when the new report would be released or why it was not released on Monday.

White House officials have been seeking to cast doubt on the findings from the CBO and other independent analyses of the bill. But some key Republicans responded with skepticism.

Over the weekend, influential Republican governors said they were not sold, even after talking privately with the officials during the National Governors Association's summer meeting.

Several key GOP senators have voiced concerns about the measure's long-term federal spending cuts to Medicaid. Others have said the bill would not go far enough in overhauling the Affordable Care Act. The opposing pressures have left McConnell in a tough position in which he has struggled to find a solution.

In the meantime, Senate Republican leaders plan to focus on trying to confirm more Trump administration nominees and some less far-reaching legislative goals. As they do, they will be watching for updates on McCain's condition.

“Following a routine annual physical,” the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix said on Saturday, McCain “underwent a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye on Friday, July 14th.” The hospital added that “surgeons successfully removed the 5-cm blood clot during a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision.”

Acute subdural hematomas can be fatal half the time and even more often in older people. They can also cause strokes. Unlike clots in the legs and lungs, they must be treated through surgery, rather than blood thinners, Haut said.

In 2009, actress Natasha Richardson died of the effects of an epidural hematoma after declining medical attention following a fall while skiing.

It is not known whether McCain takes blood thinners, but those can make it more likely that blood will escape from vessels after a trauma, Haut said.

• Evan Wyloge in Phoenix and Paul Kane, Robert Costa, Kelsey Snell and Abby Phillip in Washington contributed to this report.

• Sean Sullivan has covered national politics for The Washington Post since 2012.

• Lenny Bernstein covers health and medicine for The Washington Post. He started as an editor on The Post's National Desk in 2000 and has worked in Metro and Sports.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • GRAPHIC: Which GOP senators have concerns with the health-care bill

 • Is Trumpcare finally dead?

 • McConnell defers vote on Senate health-care bill as McCain recovers from surgery

 • VIDEO: McConnell delays vote on health-care bill as McCain recovers from surgery

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/amid-uncertainty-about-mccains-health-senate-returns-with-gop-agenda-in-flux/2017/07/17/6dd31530-6b02-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Coming up ..... another EPIC Trump FAIL:



from The Washington Post....

Steven Mnuchin, Trump's treasury secretary,
is hurtling toward his first fiasco

Steven Mnuchin's struggles to win support in Congress or the White House for his strategy
to raise the federal debt ceiling are casting doubt on whether the political neophyte has
the Washington clout to win approval of a measure that could be necessary to avoid
a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.

By DAMIAN PALETTA | 7:27PM EDT - Monday, July 17, 2017


President Donald Trump walks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to The White House after signing Executive Orders
at the Treasury Building on April 21st. — Photograph: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post.

SHORTLY BEFORE he was sworn in as treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin spoke with his predecessor to get some advice.

Pay attention to the debt problems in Puerto Rico, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Mnuchin, and remember that China's currency issues are more complex than the incoming president, Donald Trump, had suggested during the campaign, according to two people briefed on the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions.

And in pointed remarks, Lew told Mnuchin to take the debt ceiling seriously — or face a potential financial crisis.

Months later, Mnuchin is hurtling toward his first fiasco, unable to get Congress, let alone his colleagues in the Trump administration, on board with a strategy to raise the federal limit on governmental borrowing.

His struggles are casting doubt on whether the political neophyte, who made his name on Wall Street, has the stature in Washington to press through a vote on a measure that former treasury secretaries of both parties have said is critical to preserving the nation's reputation for financial stability.

Unlike other issues facing the Trump administration — such as passing a health-care bill and overhauling the tax code — raising the debt limit comes with a hard deadline of late September, according to Mnuchin. Failure to do so could lead the U.S. government to miss paying its obligations, causing what analysts would consider a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.

“We're going to get the debt ceiling right,” Mnuchin said in an interview on Monday. “I don't think there is any question that the debt ceiling will be raised. I don't think there is anybody who intends to put the government's ability to pay its bills at risk.”

Sensing there could be resistance on Capitol Hill to raising the debt ceiling quickly, he reviewed past debt-ceiling fights. He also holds a weekly meeting with advisers about the government's cash balance and debt issues.

One former Treasury official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive agency deliberations, said officials are now “brushing up on options in the ‘crazy drawer’.”

In past administrations, Treasury officials have designed plans to prioritize payments to government bondholders so that if the government runs short on cash it could, in at least a technical sense, avoid defaulting on U.S. debt.

Such a scenario would be very difficult to manage because some bills would either be delayed or not paid — but it could be necessary to prevent an actual default. Still, prioritizing payments this way could lead to a spike in interest rates and a stock market crash, analysts have said.

The coming months promise to test Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Hollywood producer who joined the administration as a Trump loyalist, with no experience in government but plenty of experience by the president's side, serving as campaign finance chairman.

Trump attended Mnuchin's wedding in June, and on the wall beside Mnuchin's desk is a news clipping announcing his appointment, signed by Trump along with — in black Sharpie — “I'm very proud of you.”

Beyond the tax code and the debt limit, Mnuchin's portfolio includes blocking terrorist financing, easing regulations and conveying Trump's nationalist economic policy at home and abroad.

Mnuchin earlier this summer told lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling in a clean vote that includes no other budget changes before they leave town.

“My preference is to get it clean,” he said on Monday. “My preference is to get it done, and my preference is to get it done sooner rather than later.”

But Mnuchin's push on the debt ceiling was undermined from the start within the White House by Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney is a former Republican congressman and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who was brought into the White House, in part, to help influence how conservatives would vote on key issues.

Mulvaney publicly questioned Mnuchin's call for a clean vote, saying that he would prefer spending cuts or other budget changes as part of any proposal to increase the debt ceiling. Some White House and Treasury officials were incensed to see Mulvaney break ranks, said several people involved in internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Treasury officials complained to the West Wing that Mnuchin's credibility was being undermined, and Trump told a gathering of Senate Republicans that they should work with Mnuchin, and no one else, on the debt ceiling.

But Mulvaney had sufficiently muddied the administration's message. And even though Trump told lawmakers that Mnuchin was his point person on the debt limit, the White House still has not publicly come out in favor of a no-strings-attached vote. Top administration officials have now conveyed to Congress that they will support combining an increase in the debt ceiling with other budget changes, as long as Congress works it out soon.

Asked about his relationship with Mulvaney, Mnuchin said, “Mick and I have a very good relationship. I think the press made that out to be more than it is.”

Representative Mike Quigley (Democrat-Illinois) pressed Mulvaney during a hearing June 21st to explain the conflicting signals from Mnuchin and Mulvaney.

“These two are working against each other,” Quigley said. “It sends mixed messages.”

He added, “It's also a dangerous message that you don't have to fulfill your obligations.”

Mulvaney has tried to downplay the rifts but has suggested that his approach was more politically astute.

“It would be foolish of us to come up with a policy devoid of having talked to the Hill,” Mulvaney said to reporters in June.

Lawmakers and congressional aides who have met with Mnuchin describe an earnestness that they viewed as refreshing but also easily outmaneuvered by experienced political hands.

“He's certainly in the minority in the administration,” said Representative Mark Meadows (Republican-North Carolina), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. “The problem is, yes, you could get a clean debt-ceiling, but it would be 180 Democrats in the House with 40 or 50 Republicans, and that's not a good way to start.”

Meadows said that he recently attended a meeting of eight of the most conservative Senate and House lawmakers about how to handle the debt ceiling and that not once did they consider the idea of backing Mnuchin's proposal for a clean debt-ceiling increase.

Mnuchin has struggled to give the public an accurate read of how long the Treasury could pay bills before Congress has to act, alternating — sometimes within a matter of minutes — on whether the true deadline is the beginning or end of September.

A Treasury official later clarified that it had sufficient funds to pay all of the government's bills through September. The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, has projected that Treasury should be able to pay all of its bills through early to mid-October.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) recently said that he would hold the Senate open for two weeks in August to take care of unfinished business — namely the health-care bill. It's unclear whether they'll tackle the debt limit or whether the House, where the odds of raising the debt limit are even more remote, will remain open.

One of Mnuchin's challenges is that he still lacks the Washington alliances many Treasury chiefs enjoy.

He has stayed in close contact with friends and former colleagues from the world of finance, such as Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman and Brian Brooks, who was his vice chairman at OneWest Bank, which Mnuchin ran after acquiring IndyMac’s assets during the financial crisis in 2008. He has also reached out to former treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and recently met with other former secretaries, including Lawrence H. Summers and Robert Rubin. And he has discussed the debt ceiling and other issues with Glenn Hubbard, a top Bush administration economic adviser, who came away impressed.

“He has an unassuming manner, but he should not be underestimated,” Hubbard said.

But although Brooks has been nominated as deputy treasury secretary, that role and many other senior Treasury posts remain unfilled. And many Washington conservatives who have spent years backstopping Republican cabinet members know little of Mnuchin's goals or tactics.

“The guy is literally a name to me and a cipher beyond that,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a longtime Washington GOP economic adviser and former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Although Mnuchin may be struggling to learn the ways of Washington, he does have an important patron: Trump.

In a way, they share the same pedigree. Both were born into wealth (Mnuchin drove a Porsche in college) and generated even more during their careers.

Trump's background was in real estate and Mnuchin's was in banking, but both had a hankering for entertainment and celebrity that drew them close. Even while on Trump's campaign, Mnuchin remained an active Hollywood producer.

During the campaign, the two traveled together extensively, and Mnuchin surprised a number of Trump's other aides when he took a front-and-center policy role during the transition into the White House, helping design tax and infrastructure programs that were to be the centerpiece of Trump's presidency.

People who have met with him at Treasury describe him as polite and curious, with an unabashed affection for Trump that can cloud his message.

During a speech early in his term, Mnuchin said that Trump had “superhuman” health. At a news conference in Canada, Mnuchin criticized former FBI director James B. Comey for leaking details of conversations with Trump. Typically, Treasury chiefs avoid getting dragged into news-of-the-day politics at all costs. And Mnuchin recently said the president “handled it brilliantly” when meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To be sure, Mnuchin appears to be enjoying the trappings of being a cabinet secretary. He meets weekly with Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen, often for breakfast or lunch, to discuss a variety of financial market issues.

His wife, actress Louise Linton, has accompanied him to at least two congressional hearings, an unusual occurrence.

Whereas Lew seemed to eschew all the security and publicity — he once stood alone at night in Union Station waiting for his wife to get off a train — Mnuchin travels differently. He was recently seen leaving a Washington custom tailor shop in the middle of a workday with a group of Secret Service agents. His wife gave an interview to Town & Country magazine detailing all the types of diamonds and pearls she would wear at their June wedding.

Mnuchin has made clear that a tax overhaul is a focus of the president, tied to a broader goal of growing the economy at a rate of 3 percent a year, compared with 1.6 percent last year.

Economists say that is unlikely in any sustainable way — and roundly agree that, if the debt limit isn't increased, the economy will begin contracting, not expanding.

But on the signed news clipping in Mnuchin's office, Trump made clear that even growing the economy at a moderately faster pace would not be sufficient. Right after he wrote how proud he was of Mnuchin, he added, “5% GDP.”

• Damian Paletta reports on White House economic policy for The Washington Post. He also covers intelligence and national security for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related media:

 • VIDEO: Mnuchin to Congress: ‘I urge you to raise the debt limit’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/steven-mnuchin-trumps-treasury-secretary-is-hurtling-toward-his-first-fiasco/2017/07/17/28c0ecf8-5da9-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump set out to uproot Obama's legacy. So far, that's failed.

By DAVID LAUTER | 12:25PM EDT - Tuesday, July 18, 2017


President Obama meets with President-elect Trump in the Oval Office on November 10th.
 — Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press.

RARELY has a president taken office so focused on undoing his predecessor's works as Donald Trump. Six months in, he has little to show.

Monday brought twin blows. Not only did the Affordable Care Act survive another Republican repeal effort, maintaining President Obama's signature domestic achievement, but Trump was forced to certify that Iran continues to comply with the nuclear deal that was the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Obama's second term.

Beyond those two headlines, Obama's program to shield some 750,000 so-called Dreamers from deportation continues intact, much to the frustration of some of Trump's most ardent backers. The tax hikes on upper-income earners which were among the hardest-won battles of Obama's first term remain in effect. U.S. relations with Cuba remain open, following Obama's normalization policy, despite Trump's public show last month of tightening some travel and trade restrictions. And the sharp increases in U.S. use of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy, largely at the expense of coal, continues, Trump's rhetoric notwithstanding.

None of that means Trump has failed. Halfway through his first year, Trump has achieved some of his goals, although his repeated boast that he has “signed more bills — and I'm talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever,” is untrue no matter how one counts.

His announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord in 2020 has been the best known part of a concerted administration effort to roll back Obama-era environmental initiatives.

And even before his election, Trump's campaign against trade agreements roused opposition that helped kill Obama's proposed 12-nation Pacific trade pact and slow the expansion of global trade deals. Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the by-then-moribund Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first workday after his inauguration.

But Trump's unusual concentration on repealing what his predecessor did, rather than putting forward initiatives of his own, has also hampered his effectiveness to a remarkable degree.

One of the truisms of American government — as Trump is now learning to his dismay — is that taking away a benefit is generally harder than starting something new.

That's one reason why presidents typically prefer to push their own agendas, rather than focus to the extent Trump has on uprooting their predecessors' actions.

Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon did not, for example, undo the New Deal or Great Society programs of, respectively, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Reagan moved quickly to repeal the Jimmy Carter administration's regulations on oil and natural gas production. But his administration's chief focus was on its own plans for tax cuts and a military buildup.

President Clinton devoted his first couple of years in office to winning a tax increase on high-income Americans, a healthcare plan which failed, the North American Free Trade Agreement (another Trump target, as it happens) and two major gun control measures. George W. Bush's first year seemed set to be built around tax cuts and his No Child Left Behind school reform plan until the September 11th, 2001, terror attacks redefined his presidency. Obama's opening year centered on efforts to recover from an economic crisis​​​​​​, re-regulate Wall Street and, of course, pass what became the Affordable Care Act.

Trump's campaign did feature elements of what could form the basis of a distinctive first-year agenda. He talked about a massive plan to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and airports. He called for wholesale renegotiation of trade agreements. He advocated a sharp reduction in the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country. He endorsed a multibillion-dollar plan to give tax money to families to pay tuition for private or religious schools. And he touted a complete rewrite of the tax code, along with deep tax cuts.

He has not delivered concrete proposals on any of those ideas.

In part, that failure to follow through on those ideas stems from the reality that each of them, with the possible exception of tax reform, deeply divides the GOP. Some of Trump's proposals, such as those on trade, divide his own administration. Whether Trump's ideas on taxes fit those of his party remains unknown because — as with health insurance — he has never specified what he has in mind.

Compounding the problem of a divided party is Trump's clear lack of interest in developing policy and his slowness in choosing people for top government jobs. Together, those deficits have left his administration hamstrung in efforts to define an agenda of its own. By default, that’s left Trump with the agenda the Republicans developed during the Obama years — one built around opposition to the party then in the White House.

The administration's weakness on policy advocacy has been glaring over the last week as the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare dangled in the Senate. Trump made no concerted effort to win over public opinion — no extended speeches laying out a case for the Republican bill, no news conference to answer questions about his position.

On his preferred method of communication, Twitter, Trump sent more than 60 messages in the week leading up to the collapse of the GOP Obamacare repeal effort on Monday night. Only six concerned healthcare — fewer than his tweets about the Women's Open golf tournament that was held at the country club he owns in New Jersey. None of the tweets defended the plan's controversial elements; instead they simply demanded that senators act.

When Trump did speak about the bill, he sometimes undermined the positions taken by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Senators who discussed the measure with Trump came away suggesting that he didn't understand what the plan contained.

When all was over, Trump's response on Tuesday was to express deep frustration.

“Let Obamacare fail,” he declared at the White House. “We're not going to own it. I'm not going to own it. I can tell you, the Republicans are not going to own it.”

As Trump staffs up government departments and regulatory agencies, his administration should be in stronger position to build an agenda around initiatives he'll be more willing to own. But so long as he remains more focused on undoing his predecessor's work than building something of his own, that cry of frustration is unlikely to be his last.

• David Lauter is the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief. He began writing news in Washington in 1981 and since then has covered Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and four U.S. presidential campaigns. He lived in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2011, where he was the L.A. Times' deputy Foreign editor, deputy Metro editor and then assistant managing editor responsible for California coverage.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-obama-legacy-20170718-story.html

[Donald]

Yeah...a bit like hoping kiwirail can make a profit and actually justify employing people😳

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Donald Trump is a LOSER!!

Six months as President of the USA and with a Republican majority in both Congress and the Senate, yet he hasn't managed to get a single piece of legislation covering his election promises passed into law.

No repeal or replacement for Obamacare.

No money from congress for his wall; and Mexico has told Trump to “go fuck himself!”

“I will make America great again!” said the Orange Goblin. Instead he has turned the country into an international laughing stock.

Remember the old Self Help advertisement from the 1960s?

“Self Help are CHEAPER, CHEAPER, CHEAPER!” accompanied by a crowing rooster.

I reckon somebody should make a 21st century version of that ad: “Donald Trump is a LOSER, LOSER, LOSER!”

Hehehe....3½ more years of farce & comedy in the greatest entertainment show on the planet.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

EDITORIAL: Republicans, ignore Trump's call to ‘let Obamacare fail’.
Do this instead.

Has there ever been a more cynical abdication of presidential responsibility?

By EDITORIAL BOARD | 2:33PM EDT - Tuesday, July 18, 2017


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky), center, with other senators at the U.S. Capitol on July 11th
in Washington D.C. — Photograph: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post.

“LET OBAMACARE FAIL”, President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning. Has there ever been a more cynical abdication of presidential responsibility? Mr. Trump is apparently indifferent to the pain that sabotaging the individual health insurance market would cause millions of Americans. Congress must therefore act responsibly.

Barring some totally unforeseen developments in Congress, Mr. Trump's breezy promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has evaporated — and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) previously acknowledged the GOP's responsibility if such a circumstance came to pass: “If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” he said earlier this month. In other words, his Republican majority finally would have to reach out to Democrats to help shape and pass a bill to repair, not replace, Obamacare.

Several moderate Democrats have recently expressed openness to reforming Obamacare in concert with Republicans, and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York) on Tuesday morning endorsed bipartisan cooperation to stabilize insurance markets. If Mr. Schumer is serious, he should appoint a panel of Democrats who are willing to co-operate to serve as his side's negotiators. Those on the more reasonable end of the Senate GOP caucus have begun sounding the right notes, too. Senator Susan Collins (Maine) called over the weekend for engaging with Democrats. From his recovery bed, Senator John McCain (Arizona) insisted on Monday that “the Congress must now return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation's governors.” The Senate is learning, again, that it is hard to govern this country from anywhere but the center.

If enough people in each of the two parties accept that Obamacare is here to stay and that it requires fixes, the next agreements would come fairly easily. The House and Senate Republican health-care bills contained a variety of provisions that would have shored up existing individual health insurance markets. Those can be copied and pasted into a new, bipartisan bill.

Democrats and Republicans should be able to support reinsurance programs, which provide a financial backstop to insurers against customers with very high medical costs, thereby lowering premiums. They should fully fund a program that helps low-income people pay out-of-pocket health-care costs, as Trump-administration-induced uncertainty around this program has roiled insurance markets. In return, Democrats would have to give Republicans something, such as expanding state options to experiment with health-care policy and possibly some loosening of Obamacare regulations.

Both sides might unite around a plan that automatically enrolled everyone into at least a basic health-care policy, with a provision allowing people to opt out. The individual mandate that all Americans carry health coverage also needs to be strengthened to draw more people into the insurance system. Those concerned about the mandate's infringement on individual liberty might be more comfortable if government tax benefits were withheld from, rather than fines applied to, people who declined to maintain coverage.

Moving beyond the partisan goal of replacing Obamacare in fact would unlock a much wider range of options, because lawmakers would no longer be bound by strict parliamentary “reconciliation” rules. Only one option should be taken off the table: the president's irresponsible call to wreck the system.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • EDITORIAL: Trump's voter-fraud commission itself is a fraud itself. — The president’s “election integrity” panel lacks one key virtue: integrity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-ignore-trumps-call-to-let-obamacare-fail-do-this-instead/2017/07/18/e8d0e0b0-6bce-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

With health-bill collapse, Republicans face uncertain
electoral future in 2018

Trump claimed that voters would blame Democrats for their health-care costs
 — a strategy that flies against current polling and electoral history.

By DAVID WEIGEL | 4:38PM EDT - Tuesday, July 18, 2017


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky), center, speaks Tuesday on Capitol Hill amid the failure
of the GOP health-care bill. — Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press.
—
AS THE seven-year Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act crashed on the threshold of the Senate, President Trump offered his party a rescue strategy. Step one: Blame Democrats. Step two: Win more seats and try again.

“We're not going to own it. I'm not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it,” said Trump. “In '18, we're going to have to get some more people elected. We have to go out and get more people elected that are Republicans.”

Trump made explicit what Republicans had been hoping since the repeal fight started — that whatever happened, voters would blame the Democrats for their health-care costs. It's an audacious strategy that flies against current polling and electoral history. It counts on messaging, distracted voters and a built-in electoral advantage to guide the party past the rocks.

“The worm's kind of turned on this issue,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who ran the party's House campaign group in several cycles. “Republicans might have gotten a break by not seeing an unpopular law go into effect. Sometimes, having no law is better than having one that people perceive as bad law.”

By the time the Better Care Reconciliation Act tanked late on Monday, Trump had repeatedly predicted that the “disaster” of the ACA would collapse, forcing Democrats to the bargaining table. The administration's indecision on whether to keep funding subsidies for plans bought on ACA exchanges had been cited by many insurers announcing rate hikes or canceled plans — announcements that the administration cited as proof of collapse.

Polling, however, found most voters ready to blame Republicans for the rate hikes. An April survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 60 percent of voters opposed to using the subsidies as bargaining chips; even 28 percent of Republicans were opposed. Seventy-four percent of voters said they wanted the administration to “make the law work,” and 64 percent said that “President Trump and Republicans in Congress” would be accountable for “any problems.”

Even some Republicans who wanted to force Democrats to negotiate said that six months of negotiations had sapped the party's momentum. “I advocated collapse and replace for months,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina). “But we're so deep into this thing right now, I don't even know if that's a viable option.”


President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, speaks on Tuesday
in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

In interviews on Tuesday, Democrats who face re-election in 2018 expressed disbelief at the idea that they, not Trump, would be held accountable for problems with the health-care system.

“I have a bill in that will stabilize the individual market, if they'd just allow the Senate to work,” said Senator Tim Kaine (Democrat-Virginia), the party's 2016 vice presidential nominee. “Let the committee chairs tackle this.” If premiums spiked, said Kaine, voters would look to “the party that's governing, that refuses to allow a process that would bring premiums down.”

Senator Bill Nelson (Democrat-Florida), who may be challenged by longtime ACA opponent Governor Rick Scott (Republican-Florida), said that he was eager to work with Republicans on shoring up the subsidies. Voters back home, he said, clearly saw the Trump administration as the impediment to fixing the law.

“Let me tell you, people are coming out of the woodwork,” said Nelson. “I go to the Tampa Bay Rays game, I throw out the first pitch, and people are begging: Don't let them take away my health care. People are onto this.”

Nelson is one of 10 Democrats up for re-election in states won by Trump last year, a factor that Republicans once thought would scare incumbents into making deals. Instead, Democrats have grown more confident about their 2018 chances, with few top-tier candidates jumping into “Trump state” races, and credible Democrats running for seats in Nevada and Texas.

In all of those races, it's not clear how “Obamacare” will play, or how Republicans will play it. From April through to June, the GOP played a perfect game in four special House elections, winning by single digits in typically Republican districts. Yet for the first time since 2010, Obamacare repeal was not a focus of Republican ads and attacks.

Instead, Republicans moved closer to attacking Democrats on what they might want to build on top of the ACA. In Montana's special election, that was the Medicare-for-all plan favored by Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont). In a series of statements this month, the Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee went after Democrats on the estimated cost of creating a single-payer system, similar to Canada's, in the United States. In districts where vulnerable Republicans had cast votes for repeal, putting them on the record for Medicaid cuts and high estimates of lost health insurance, Republicans would warn that Democrats wanted socialism.

“Their House primaries are starting to look like a ten-car pile-up and the activist base is screaming for Democrats to run on single-payer health care,” wrote NRCC spokesman Jesse Hunt in a press release just hours before the Senate repeal push collapsed.

“They don't want to get us off of the Obamacare train; they want to double-down on a failed system that is in the middle of a collapse,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin) said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “Ultimately, it's very clear that they're more interested a single-payer system which means government-run health care. Government-run health care is not in our nation's interest.”

Other Republicans suggested that the health care issue could fade as the election approaches — an advantage for the party, so long as it doesn't fumble on anything else it has promised.

“It's more important for Republicans to do something on taxes,” said Davis. “If they can't produce on that, then I think they have a problem.”

• Kelsey Snell and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.

• David Weigel is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post covering Congress and grassroots political movements. He's the author of ”The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock”, a history of progressive rock music.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Senate health-care bill collapses under opposition

 • VIDEO: Washington reacts after collapse of GOP health-care bill

 • Senate Republicans' effort to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare all but collapses

 • Trump's peculiar analysis of the GOP health-care bill's defeat suggests he's clueless

 • VIDEO: Trump says he's ‘very surprised’ by Lee and Moran's opposition to health-care bill

 • ‘It's an insane process’: How Trump and Republicans failed on their health-care bill

 • Senators pushed Trump to the sidelines. He happily stayed there. Republicans are paying the price.

 • The Take: A party at war with itself hits a wall on health care

 • The Fix: White House dinner is a case study in Trump's inability to close deal

 • Wonkblog: Trump contradicted by his own past tweets

 • Trump's grand promises to ‘very, very quickly’ repeal ACA run into reality

 • ACA remains intact, but consumers and insurers are left with new worries

 • Kathleen Parker: Why repeal-and-replace was doomed from the start

 • Jennifer Rubin: Don't blame the moderates for the health-care debacle

 • Stephen Stromberg: Repeal-and-replace seems to be dead. Now what?

 • Paul Waldman: The GOP failure on health care is just a hint of what's to come

 • VIDEO: Senator Lindsey Graham on health care: ‘I'd like to see a bill that people actually liked’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/with-health-bill-collapse-republicans-face-uncertain-electoral-future-in-2018/2017/07/18/0fbceff4-6bcd-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

President Donald J. Trump is a LOSER.

A NOBODY.

An incompetent DO-NOTHING President.

An emperor with no clothes.

About the only worthwhile thing he has achieved has been to become Russian President Vladimir Putin's LICKSPITTLE.

[Donald]

 LICKSPITTLE..is that the same as Monica Lewinski😜

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Why Obamacare won and Trump lost

The Affordable Care Act's core provisions are broadly popular.

By E.J. DIONNE Jr. | 7:18PM EDT - Wednesday, July 19, 2017


President Trump at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on Wednesday.
 — Photograph: Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency.

THE collapse of the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is a monumental political defeat wrought by a party and a president that never took health-care policy or the need to bring coverage to millions of Americans seriously. But their bungling also demonstrates that the intense attention to Obamacare over the past six months has fundamentally altered our nation's health-care debate.

Supporters of the 2010 law cannot rest easy as long as the current Congress remains in office and as long as Donald Trump occupies the White House. On Wednesday, the president demanded that the Senate keep at the work of repeal, and, in any event, Congress could undermine the act through sharp Medicaid cuts in the budget process and other measures. And Trump, placing his own self-esteem and political standing over the health and security of millions of Americans, has threatened to wreck the system.

“We'll let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us,” Trump said after it became obvious that the Senate could not pass a bill. But if Obamacare does implode, it will not be under its own weight but because Trump and his team are taking specific administrative and legal steps to prevent it from working.

“I'm not going to own it,” Trump insisted. But he will. And if Trump does go down the path of policy nihilism, it will be the task of journalists to show that it is the president doing everything in his power to choke off this lifeline for the sick and the needy.

As long as “repeal Obamacare” was simply a slogan, what the law actually did was largely obscured behind attitudes toward the former president. But the Affordable Care Act's core provisions were always broadly popular, particularly its protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions and the big increase in the number of insured it achieved. The prospect of losing these benefits moved many of the previously indifferent to resist its repeal. And the name doesn't matter so much with Obama out of office.

To the surprise of some on both sides, the debate brought home the popularity of Medicaid, which for the first time received the sort of broad public defense usually reserved for Medicare and Social Security. The big cuts Republicans proposed to the program paradoxically highlighted how it assisted many parts of the population.

This creates an opening for a new push to expand Medicaid under the ACA in the 19 states that have resisted it, which would add 4 million to 5 million to the ranks of the insured.

Republicans also found, as they did during the budget battles of the 1990s, that when they tie their big tax cuts for the wealthy to substantial reductions in benefits for a much broader group of Americans, a large majority will turn on them and their tax proposals. For critics of the GOP's tax-cutting obsession, said Jacob Leibenluft of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this episode underscores “the importance of making clear the trade-offs of Republican fiscal policy.” To win on tax cuts, the GOP has to disguise their effects — or pump up the deficit.

One Democratic senator told me early on that Republicans would be hurt by their lack of accumulated expertise on health care, since they largely avoided sweating the details in the original Obamacare debate after deciding early to oppose it. This showed. They had seven years after the law was passed and could not come up with a more palatable blueprint.

The popular mobilization against repeal mattered, too. With Republican senators discovering opposition to their party's ideas in surprising places, pro-ACA activists drove two wedges into the Republican coalition.

One was between ideologues and pragmatic conservatives (Republican governors as well as senators) who worried about the impact of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's designs on their states.

The other divide was within Trump's own constituency, a large share of which truly believed his pledge to make the system better. They were horrified to learn that they could be much worse off under the GOP proposal. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month found that 50 percent of Americans preferred Obamacare and only 24 percent picked the Republican bill. Trump's approval ratings are dismal, but the GOP's plans were even worse. Defectors in the Trump base may have been the silent killers of this flawed scheme.

And that is why a scorched-earth approach from the president would be both cruel and self-defeating. Americans now broadly support the basic principles of Obamacare. Republicans, including Trump, would do well to accommodate themselves to this reality.

• E.J. Dionne writes about politics in a twice-weekly column at The Washington Post and on the PostPartisan blog. He is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University and a commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC's “This Week” and MSNBC. He is the author of “Why the Right Went Wrong".

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • E.J. Dionne Jr.: Get off the Trump train before it crashes

 • Marc A. Thiessen: McConnell's health-care Hail Mary

 • Kathleen Parker: Why repeal-and-replace was doomed from the start

 • Craig Garthwaite: Why replacing Obamacare is so hard: It's fundamentally conservative.

 • Eugene Robinson: Obamacare's enduring victory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-obamacare-won-and-trump-lost/2017/07/19/84639b08-6cbf-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html

[Donald]

Who stands where on apartheid Maori seats?

Bottom-lines are being dropped thick and fast around the country but there’s one in particular that’s got politicians divided.

Winston Peters’ policy for a binding referendum on whether to keep the country’s seven Maori seats could cause all sorts of problems for other parties looking to do a coalition deal with the potential Kingmaker after the September 23 election.

So who stands where on whether to put the Maori seats to the vote and who should get to vote?

Unsurprisingly the Maori Party, who holds one of the seven seats (co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell has Waiariki) doesn’t want them abolished and would like to see them entrenched in New Zealand.

It was the Maori Party influence that resulted in the National Party dropping their position to get rid of the seats when the two teamed up in government.

The party’s co-leader, Marama Fox, has attacked Peters for wanting to “put Maori back in a box”.

“It’s ridiculous to think that if we had a referendum in this country that Maori would be successful in retaining the seats because everybody is taught in the same mainstream schools now….we’ve all grown up in the Euro-sized white-washed version of our history.”

She called out NZ First Maori MPs, Peters, Ron Mark and Pita Paraone, for leaving their values behind when they entered Parliament.

“I just look at them and think what did you do when you walked into Parliament, leave your values under the carpet? Seriously guys, and you say I’m representing the greater voice now, what, than your own, or your own conscience, or your own value system, or your entire history of being brought up?”

Fox blamed “red and blue governments” for the “cultural genocide” that means “our own people don’t understand our own culture, language and identity”.

“It’s ridiculous to think that can be overcome with one little referendum.”

Marama Fox shows just how thick she is. In attacking those MPs she highlights just how many Maori, far higher than their population would suggest, are MPs. All without the benefit of special race-based apartheid seats set aside for them.

As the party who holds six out of seven of them, leader Andrew Little says he totally “backs retaining” the Maori seats.

“It’s been our position for a long long time and we’re not changing that.”

So can Labour work with NZ First in any sort of government given their differing view points?

Little says Peters has already come out with a number of bottom-lines and they’re something that will be addressed after the election.

“I’m absolutely adamant the Maori seats are here to stay under a Labour-led government.”

The Maori rort has helped Labour more than it has hurt. Of course he wants to retain the Maori-mander.

National Party campaign manager Steven Joyce put in his two cents after Peters’ made the announcement on Sunday.

“In terms of the Maori seats we’ve always said there will come a time one day when everyone agrees they’re no longer needed but that day hasn’t happened yet.”

On what that means for working with Peters post-election, Joyce quipped the NZ First leader had so many bottom lines now “he must have a dedicated person to keep track on them”.

“We won’t worry too much about that until we see how the election goes.”

Steve forgets that National had this policy before Bill and John got all brown-nosey.

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira is also against a referendum and would like to see the seats entrenched.

Harawira is relying on a win in the Te Tai Tokerau seat this year to return him to Parliament after losing the seat to Labour’s Kelvin Davis.

The ACT Party doesn’t think the seats are needed and leader David Seymour says if Parliament was “serious” about getting rid of them a referendum wouldn’t be needed.

United Future leader Peter Dunne is happy with the seats as they are but if there was a referendum, he says, it should be for Maori to vote on.

As for the Green Party they don’t support a referendum and would leave it for Maori to decide the future of the seats.

Peter Dunne will be happy as long as he is there somewhere. Act is right and who is this Hone guy?

 

-Fairfax
Cameron Slater