Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America devote their martinis to House passage of the updated American Health Care Act. They explain how the bill is not as good as it could be but is far better than the original version for conservatives. They also discuss the uncertain future the legislation faces in the U.S. Senate and the GOP’s narrow margin for error. And they scratch their heads as Republicans hold a victory rally for a bill that is not yet law.
A candidate given little chance to win in a left-leaning state is focusing his message on fighting illegal immigration and political correctness, while bashing the Democratic incumbent and his “establishment” Republican rival.
Sound familiar?
Corey Stewart points out he has been beating the drum on these issues for years and is not modeling his campaign for Virginia governor on the unorthodox approach taken by Donald Trump.
Nonetheless, Stewart, a four-term chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, is railing against the record of term-limited Gov. Terry McAuliffe, accusing clear GOP front-runner Ed Gillespie of refusing to take stands on difficult issues, vowing to clamp down on illegal immigration, and stiff-arming political correctness to the point of holding a photo opportunity withe the Confederate flag.
Polling has been scant ahead of the June 13 primary, which also includes State Sen. Frank Wagner. However, a Christopher Newport University survey from late March shows Gillespie with a commanding lead. The former Republican National Committee chairman and 2014 U.S. Senate candidate, sports 38 percent in the poll. Stewart is next at 11 percent and Wagner had 10 percent.
For his part, Stewart says Republican voters better take a closer look at this race if they want to win in November.
“I’m the only Republican who’s been able to win up here in Northern Virginia county-wide. My district is 454,000 people. It’s a 60-40 Democratic district. I’ve been able to win it four times, the only Republican who’s been able to do that,” said Stewart.
“I know how to win, I’ve done so as a conservative. I led the nation’s toughest crackdown on illegal immigration. I’ve been able to cut spending deeply in my county, reduce taxes, the lowest tax jurisdiction in Northern Virginia,” said Stewart, who clarified that the county does not have the lowest property tax rates in Northern Virginia but the lowest average property tax bills.
Part of that is due to property values being far lower there than in neighboring Fairfax or Loudoun counties. Adjusted for inflation, however, property tax bills in Prince William County are slightly lower than when Stewart first became chairman.
Stewart hammers Gov. McAuliffe for Virginia losing 10,000 manufacturing jobs per year over the past four years, losing the battle for companies and jobs to neighboring North Carolina, and refusing to crack down on fraudulent voting.
However, he says Gillespie, whom Stewart refers to as “Establishment Ed,” would not be a whole lot better.
“Ed Gillespie has refused to take any hard line positions on anything. If you ask him to take a position on illegal immigration, he’ll say he’s against it, but if you look at his record he said when he was running for the Senate in 2014 – on the Larry Kudlow show – that he was for amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens, including gang members,” said Stewart.
What is clear is that Gillespie was on the record in support of the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill the Senate approved in 2013.
Stewart says it’s not just about immigration.
“He is a liberal. He is for amnesty on illegal immigration. On the life issue, he says he’s pro-life but then he would not sign legislation that would prohibit partial-birth or late-term abortions. Even his tax cut policy, he says he’s going to cut taxes, but he doesn’t cut a single nickel in spending,” said Stewart.
“On the state and local level, you cannot cut taxes unless you’re able to cut taxes. He won’t do it because he knows it’s controversial. He refuses to take a hard line position,” said Stewart.
Stewart says his work to balance the budget after the 2008 financial crisis proves he can trim government spending.
“We cut $185 million out of our base budget in Prince William in a single year, and that’s what I want to do in Virginia. We’ve got a state budget that’s out of control. State taxes are far too high, and we’re losing a lot of jobs to North Carolina because of it,” said Stewart.
“What I’d like to do is reduce the top marginal income tax rate from 5.75 percent to 4.75 percent,” said Stewart. “That’s the number one thing we can do in Virginia to improve the business climate.”
However, most media coverage of Stewart in this campaign has not been about his economic plans or even his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. Instead, it’s been his very vocal denunciations of efforts to remove Confederate monuments or statues.
The hottest flashpoint came in February, when the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local park. A judge recently issued an injunction against the removal, but Stewart says something much bigger than a single statue is at stake – the scourge of political correctness.
“I believe political correctness is a bondage from which we must break free. It’s limiting our first amendment freedoms in this country,” said Stewart, who believes the left is whitewashing history to scrub away the parts it doesn’t like.
“They’re starting by labeling all these statues that we have in Virginia, to Robert E. Lee and others, as white supremacist statues. Now it’s false, but they’re tearing down. The city of Charlottesville voted to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee that’s been there since 1924. And it’s spreading. They said next time they’re coming after Thomas Jefferson,” said Stewart.
But Stewart goes beyond the push to preserve Confederate history to at least the brink of embracing it. In March, he held an event where he prominently displayed the Confederate flag and vowed to defend it.
“Folks, this is a symbol of heritage. It is not a symbol of racism. It is not a symbol of slavery,” Stewart was quoted as saying in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Folks, this is a symbol of heritage. It is not a symbol of racism. It is not a symbol of slavery.”
So where does he stand?
“I know that some people are offended by the Confederate flag, but it is part of our history. It is part of our past. Although there are many people offended by the flag, they have to understand there are millions of other people across this country who have ancestors who fought honorably for the Confederacy,” said Stewart.
“They’re simply trying to honor their ancestors. They’re trying to honor their heritage. They’re not trying to offend. We need to stand up for everybody. Everybody should be able to honor their heritage,” said Stewart.
The Gillespie campaign called the photo opportunity with the Confederate flag “desperate” and labeled the flag itself as “divisive.”
Stewart realizes his approach on this and other issues can be abrasive, but he says his style is appreciated by his constituents.
“I’ve always been very blunt, some would say brash but I’m very, very blunt, and I’ve won on that. The reason is because people are so sick and tired of political correctness. They’re sick of the swamp and we’ve got a swamp here in Virginia, just like there is one in Washington, D.C.,” said Stewart.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America groan as Aetna announces it will pull out of Virginia and Iowa’s last insurer is leaving most of the state for the individual marketplace. They’re stunned as more Republicans tell pollsters they trust the government to do the right thing more than Democrats do. And they react as an MSNBC contributor declares that anyone who doesn’t rely on government is elitist.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed an omnibus spending bill Wednesday, despite conservative disgust that many GOP priorities were left on the cutting room floor even though Republicans control Congress and the White House.
The 309-118 vote keeps the government funded through September. Republican leaders tout the increased funding for the military and border security and cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency. However, conservatives are grousing about what’s also in the bill, namely full funding for sanctuary cities and Planned Parenthood and nothing for construction of a border wall. Democrats had threatened to filibuster over wall funding.
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, is among those fuming over what he considers a bill that fails to do what GOP lawmakers promised to do during the 2016 campaign.
“It’s a big loss and it’s not the best we can get,” said Buck. “The people of America elected a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican in the White House. We should be reflecting Republican values and this bill does not reflect Republican values.”
“This is the first chance we had to show the American people that there is a difference between the Obama administration and the Trump administration, between Harry Reid as a Senate majority leader and Mitch McConnell as a Senate majority leader. If we’re going to make that clear distinction for the American people, so they know when they go to the polls they’re going to be voting for more spending or less spending, we should make that with this bill,” said Buck.
Even more baffling to Buck is that congressional Republicans insisted on extending funding only to this point late last year so that Trump could get a head start on his priorities.
“The reason that we didn’t pass a two-month continuing resolution last fall was because we wanted a president in place. We wanted his administration in place. We wanted his priorities in place and that’s not what happened,” said Buck.
In addition to the individual programs that are addressed in the omnibus bill, Buck says the red ink is now piling higher under Republican stewardship.
“Last year, we incurred $600 billion of debt in a bipartisan omnibus bill. I was told recently that it will take two trillion dollars to service the debt of that $600 billion. This bill is even more deficit spending. Between last year and this year, we will have incurred four trillion dollars of expenses to pay off the debt, just in two years,” said Buck, who is also the author of “Draining the Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse then You Think.”
He says this bill follows on the heels of the Obama administration insisting on a dollar of domestic spending for every new dollar of military spending. Buck says Washington is delivering a gut punch to future generations.
“We have increased spending across the board in ways that are just unfair to future generations. I think the people who put this bill together are wrong. It went through the wrong process. It was 1,657 pages that were dumped on us just a couple of days ago. It is not the way to govern in this country,” said Buck.
Buck also dismisses the argument by some Republican leaders that a showdown with Democrats over spending should happen, but not until the appropriations process for Fiscal Year 2018 begins.
“I have heard that for two years as a congressman. I heard it for the two years before that, when I was a candidate. I imagine that if I am here another three or four years, I will hear the same thing. We’re always going to fix this problem tomorrow. We’re not going to fix this problem today,” said Buck, “Today is the day we (should) fix this problem.”
How does this cycle get reversed? Buck says it begins with regular order.
“Conservatives win when our leadership in the House says we are going to pass twelve appropriations bills, send those to the Senate and make them do their job,” said Buck.
In the previous Congress, Senate Democrats refused to consider individual appropriations bills. Buck says the GOP needs to force their hand.
“If Chuck Schumer wants to filibuster and hold things up in the Senate, that’s their problem. That’s not the problem of the House. The Senate needs to either get rid of he filibuster and go with a 51-vote majority or they need to let the Senate filibuster and hold those Democratic senators accountable,” said Buck.
Buck is not upset with President Trump for vowing to sign the omnibus, suggesting the president does not have much of a choice this time. However, he hopes to see Trump drive the process come September and he warns the American people are not going to tolerate many more bills like this one.
“If we have another spending bill that looks like this, I think the American people are going to be very upset. They don’t have anywhere else to turn right now. They’ve seen trillion-dollar debts accumulate with President Obama and a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. Now they’re seeing hundreds of billions of dollar debts with a Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House,” said Buck.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching Hillary Clinton remain immersed in her state of denial, as Hillary takes responsibility for losing to Donald Trump but seems to blame everyone else. They also react to Pres. Trump tweeting about nuking the legislative filibuster and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it’s not going to happen. And they ‘re almost speechless as the Democrat running for Congress in Montana invites skeptics of the liberal line on climate change to go into their garages and start their cars.
The chairman of the House of Representatives’ powerful tax writing committee says the tax reform blueprint laid out by President Trump last week is “exciting” and predicts enactment will lead to stronger businesses and more financially secure families.
Trump’s economic team laid out the administration’s principles on Wednesday, including a call for the corporate tax rate to drop from almost 40 percent down to 15 percent, a doubling of the standard individual deduction, and creating just three tax brackets instead of seven.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, loves that Trump is going bold on tax reform.
“This is very exciting,” said Brady. “Americans saw something they haven’t seen in 30 years, which is a president willing to lead on tax reform and committed to working with the House and Senate. We want to get this done this year.”
“We only get one chance in a generation to do this, and like Reagan, we have to go bold to do it,” said Brady.
But Brady is not in a tremendous rush. He says the process needs to play out in the weeks ahead.
“Beginning [this] week, we’re going to roll up our sleeves, sitting down with President Trump’s team and the Senate as well to put together a single tax reform plan that’s going to take place over the coming weeks,” said Brady.
While partisans and the media are focused heavily on the pace of legislative action in the early stages of the Trump administration, Brady says getting it right in a timely fashion is most important.
“I think a lot of press in Washington are focused on which month this happens. My focus is on the year and that means this year, 2017. After 30 years of this broken, complicated tax code, it seems like exactly the right time to deliver,” said Brady.
Brady says the Trump blueprint would be a boon for businesses and families. He says dropping the corporate tax rate to 15 percent would make a monumental difference in America’s business climate. He says the small business owners will be smiling too.
“For small business owners, we propose to cut your taxes by more than 40 percent. That’s so you can send less to Washington. you can invest more in your business, your workers, your success. We provide full, unlimited write-offs of all your investment and building’s equipment, software and technology,” said Brady.
He says other provisions should ease the burdens of small business owners as well.
“We eliminate the death tax, so family-owned businesses no longer have to worry about Uncle Sam swooping in and taking nearly half of what you’ve earned over a lifetime. Then we eliminate some of the double taxation. For small businesses, this is game-changing, since this will grow the economy by more than nine percent” said Brady.
Where the tax bill could run into friction is over a proposed border adjustability tax, which would add a tax on imported goods. While critics say American consumers would end up paying for it in higher prices, Brady says it needs to happen, in part because everyone else except North Korea and Cuba does it.
“They take a major tax off their products heading into America. They slap a tax on their made in America products when it goes in their country,” said Brady.
“A foreign product has a major tax advantage over a made in America product, both here and abroad. So we’re saying for the first time that every product pays an equal tax. So no longer is Chinese steel getting a break over American steel, Mexican beef over American beef, Canadian autos over American autos,” said Brady.
He also says the more level playing field will likely entice many companies that left the U.S. and others that never were here to set up shop in America, adding to even more job creation.
As for families, Brady says the typical family of four will like the bigger paychecks coming home.
“You’re going to keep more of the money that you earn. The tax code is going to be dramatically simpler. If you save for retirement, education or health care, we cut your taxes in half again because we want to reward those types of savings,” said Brady.
“The bottom line is the House Republican blueprint, the idea we’re bringing to the president, is a code so fair and simple, nine out of ten Americans will be able to file using a simple postcard system,” said Brady.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a kick out of the Democratic National Committee arguing in court that it can’t be sued for fraud because everyone knew the 2016 nomination process was rigged. They also grumble at Republicans for giving the Democrats virtually everything they wanted on the latest spending bill. And they express frustration with the media for running breathless headlines every time Pres. Trump says he’s considering something, but they also wonder what other things they could get Trump to publicly mull over.
Monday marked May Day, which was punctuated by scores of “workers” marches around the world, but on of the leading experts on communism says movements like this always end in death, poverty, and misery.
More than a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, political movements at home and abroad are once again embracing ideas of equality for all and casting the wealthy as villains who keeping working people from climbing higher in society.
Lee Edwards is the chairman of the board of trustees for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He spearheaded the effort for a national memorial to those victims that was dedicated in 2007. Edwards is also a distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation and a prolific author on the conservative movement.
He says the promises always sound so good.
“People say, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful. Let’s do away with all classes. Let’s do away with all conflicts and have some utopia in which we’re all going to be friends.’ That just works against human nature. Even (Karl) Marx said the only way we’re going to get to communism is through a dictatorship of the proletariat,” said Edwards.
But 100 years of communism and practice expose the promises for what they really are.
“The communists are the biggest liars in human history. If you think about it, they promised peace, land, and bread to the people in the beginning way back in Russia and then in China. Instead of peace, they got them involved in wars. Instead of land, they took away their land. Instead of bread, they gave them bread lines,” said Edwards.
Perhaps the most chilling result of a century of communism is the death toll.
“There are over 100 million victims as a result of communism. One hundred million,” said Edwards, noting that China’s Mao Zedong and the USSR’s Joseph Stalin are by far the most murderous of dictators, killing their own people by the tens of millions.
And why does does communism lead to systematic government genocide?
“Because they say that we’re going to arrive at this Utopian society, and if you get in our way and you deny us, then we’re going to kill you,” said Edwards, pointing out how Stalin starved 5-7 million Ukrainians to death by ordering the communizing of agriculture there.
In short, Edwards says everyone suffers under communism except the leaders. He says rationing was rampant in the old Soviet Union, except for vodka.
“Everything else was rationed. Everything else was only available to what we call the nomenclatura, the members of the party and members of the army, who were running things in Soviet Russia and still in communist China,” said Edwards.
And while just five official communist governments exist today (China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and Cuba), many others are de facto socialist dictatorships, most notably Venezuela, which is currently in a state of major unrest.
But Edwards is concerned about the rise of communist and socialist sympathies here in the U.S., starting with how Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, attracted a great deal of enthusiasm and support during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“The line between Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism and socialism outright is probably pretty thin. Frankly, I’m concerned that too many young people are not adequately educated or informed about the real failures, about the deaths, about the murders, about the purges,” said Edwards.
“They never heard about the gulag, for example, that series of forced labor camps in which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and millions and millions of people lived in and many of them died. So this is really an educational process that we need to get into,” said Edwards.
That in itself is difficult because he says academia is often sympathetic to communism.
“There are still Marxist professors who are saying, ‘Oh well, communism is this marvelous idea, it’s just never been tried adequately and therefore we can’t dismiss it,'” said Edwards.
The issue also hit close to home for Edwards recently when protesters in Washington posed while extending their middle fingers to the Victims of Communism Memorial. He says education has to be the answer and his foundation his leading the effort.
“We have created a curriculum on communism from Marx to Mao, which I’m happy to say is being used in high schools, public schools, private schools, home schools. We’ve got to begin very early on. We can’t wait for colleges and universities to begin to tell the truth,” said Edwards.
While he acknowledges a major battle for the direction of young minds, Edwards is fully confident freedom will win.
“I believe there is an instinct within all of us, within our breast, for the desire for freedom. We can see that with people challenging, even today, challenging China, challenging the authoritarian ways of Russia. I believe that is there but it must be encouraged. It must be educated. It must be developed. It’s not going to develop all by itself,” he said.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to Elizabeth Warren criticizing former Pres. Obama for leaving millions of Americans feeling like they’ve been “kicked in the teeth” in the current economy. They also groan at reports that up to 50 House Republicans really don’t want to repeal Obamacare and many of those are even wobbly on giving states more flexibility. And they discuss the ouster of Jim DeMint at the Heritage Foundation and address speculation that Steve Bannon might replace him.
Just days after winning conservative support for an amended bill to gut the taxes and mandates associated with Obamacare, Republicans are still struggling to find the votes for passage, but the man leading the legislative effort is confident the votes will eventually be there.
GOP leaders have given their blessing to an amendment championed by Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. But while giving states more say in the health plans offered to their residents is winning the applause of conservatives, moderates seem to be leaving in numbers big enough to sink the bill.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas., is confident the votes will eventually come around.
“I think the hesitation has only been to be able to digest this, to be able to think about how it applies back home, before they commit their vote. The conversations that I’ve been in are very positive and we’re just going to keep working on it,” said Brady.
And despite the pressure from Democrats and the media on the timetable for getting this done, Brady says he’s less concerned about meeting a specific deadline.
“I’m a big believer in letting the consensus drive the timing. So don’t set a date. I want to deliver on my promise to repeal Obamacare: all the taxes, all the mandates, all the subsidies, defund Planned Parenthood and return control to the states. That is what I am intent on doing,” said Brady.
Brady, who played a key role in crafting the original American Health Care Act, says the current bill is an improvement.
“Centrists and conservatives sat down and said, ‘How can we make this better?’ As a result, the MacArthur amendment , as well as the Palmer amendment before it, continue to lower premiums , which is what we want for every American, gives states more flexibility to design plans that are right for the state and the community rather than Washington control,” said Brady.
Brady says if this bill can get through and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price acts to roll back regulations, much of Obamacare will be history.
“Getting steps one and two done with the White House repeals 90 percent of that or more and puts in place free market options but we still have more work to do,” said Brady.
“Allowing types of business to join together, to buy across state lines, to have much better options, (as well as) malpractice reform, where we get those junk lawsuits out of medicine. All of those are going to have to be standalone bills,” said Brady, noting that Senate rules cannot allow everything to be done by reconciliation, which would skirt the possibility of a filibuster.
Brady says some of the more popular provisions in the current law would stay, including no one being refused coverage for pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26, abolishing lifetime caps and more.
Brady says it is not only vital to pass the AHCA in order to bring relief to struggling Americans, he says it’s vital for the next major priority – tax reform.
“We never anticipated in tax reform having to also repeal another trillion dollars of taxes that were included in Obamacare. All these taxes hurt the economy. They raise costs on patients. They hammer small businesses. We need them gone, but if we had to do that through tax reform, that would mean we couldn’t lower the rates as much for families or local businesses or to become competitive against China and Europe,” said Brady.
In fact, Brady believes getting the AHCA through is really the trigger for accomplishing much of the Trump agenda.
“This is all about momentum for the Republican conservative agenda in Washington. This president wants to shake things up. We need to be right there to deliver on these big changes, so building the momentum off of health care into tax reform, I think, is helpful,” said Brady.
