Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see multiple non-partisan experts insist the Republicans still have a shot at keep a majority in the House of Representatives, although the odds are not in their favor. They also shudder as Democrats look to be in strong position to win governors’ races in many key states. They cringe as Beto O’Rourke supporters rewrite the disco hit “YMCA” in support of the Texas Democrat. And Jim and Greg do their best to carry on professionally leading up to this week’s Bears-Jets game, even as special interest attack ads try to whip animosity between them.
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House to Vote on ‘Abolish ICE’ Bill, GOP Blows Strzok Hearing, Did Trump Damage PM May?
Listen to “House to Vote on ‘Abolish ICE’ Bill, GOP Blows Strzok Hearing, Did Trump Damage Theresa May?” on Spreaker.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America commend House Republicans for planning a vote on “Abolish ICE” legislation that Democrats have already begun to step away from. They also criticize tactics of some House Republicans during the Peter Strzok testimony, in which members seemed more interested in scoring a dazzling soundbite than effectively questioning the witness. And they question President Trump’s negative remarks about British Prime Minister Theresa May, noting the alternative to her government could be far worse.
Tax Cut Bill Revealed, Trump’s Execution Tweets, Northam’s Epic Flip-Flop
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America largely cheer the House Republican tax plan, which cuts business and individual tax rates, kills the death tax and simplifies the system. They also sigh as President Trump tweets out his desire to see this week’s Manhattan terrorist face capital punishment, a public statement many Americans agree with but could complicate federal prosecution of the murderer. And they highlight the latest development in Virginia Democrat Ralph Northam’s no good, very bad week, as the candidate for governor flip-flops and suddenly supports banning sanctuary cities in Virginia.
‘They’re Furious at Our Senators’
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, is fully behind President Trump’s demand for full congressional funding for a border wall and both he and his constituents are exasperated with the state’s two Republican senators for offering no solutions of their to overhaul or repeal Obamacare.
Gosar is a member of the House Freedom Caucus who fended off a primary challenger backed by national party allies in 2016. He says the GOP Senate is a major disappointment, with the failure to address Obamacare as the prime example of its inability to get things done.
“What has the Senate done? They copped out on Obamacare. And to my senators (Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake), if you didn’t like what the House put forward, where are your ideas?” said Gosar, a dentist who first ran for Congress as part of the tea party wave in 2010.
He says while politicians are posturing, people in his state are suffering from Obamacare.
“We’re catastrophically moving down this pathway where we’re seeing Americans getting a 40-90 percent increase in their premiums coming up. Obamacare is failing. There’s not enough money to fix it. We’re seeing Medicare being implemented in all the group plans, so it behooves us to be big boys and girls and have that conversation,” said Gosar.
Gosar says the anger of Arizonans towards McCain and Flake is palpable everywhere he goes.
“They’re furious at our senators. There isn’t one meeting I don’t have where people are going off on our two senators. Leadership comes at a price and that means you have to put solutions on te table. That means that ‘No’ can;t be your answer, it’s going to be what it takes to be ‘Yes,'” said Gosar.
In addition to hearing his constituents vent about their senators, he’s also hearing about their hardships created by our current health care system.
“I have represented most of the rural parts of Arizona. They’ve got a piece of paper that says they have health insurance but they can’t afford to pay the co-pays and deductibles. It’s a travesty. They see no job growth out here. They don’t see opportunity. Those were all the things they were promised,” said Gosar.
Gosar says Trump has done what we can to improve conditions but Congress needs to do the heavy lifting.
“Whether it be tax breaks, tax cuts, getting government out of the way, this president has done his fair share with the Congressional Review Act and with executive orders to streamline the regulatory process. Now Congress has got to respond. It can’t continue working in a broken, dysfunctional fashion,” said Gosar.
Dr. Kelli Ward, a former Arizona state senator, is already running against Flake in next year’s GOP primary. Ward challenged McCain last year and lost badly in the primary, leaving some conservatives to push for Gosar and other conservatives to enter the fray.
Gosar says he’s thought about but is not close to any decision.
“We’ll see. That’s as good as we can say at this point in time,” said Gosar. “We want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. I don’t need another title, I’ve got four titles above congressman: that’s a husband, a father, a citizen, and a doctor,” said Gosar.
Just a few days ago, President Trump held a campaign rally in Phoenix. In addition to sparring with the media and defending his response to the chaos in Charlottesville, Trump demanded Congress fund his central campaign promise of a wall along the southern border, even vowing to shut down the government to make it happen.
Gosar says no one should be surprised by Trump’s blunt tactics.
“This gentleman is not built as a politician and that’s why America voted him in. He’s a disrupter. The business as usual has got to stop. We’re $20 trillion in debt,” said Gosar.
He also says not approving the money would be a huge mistake.
“I don’t think I would cross the president and I don’t think I would cross the American people. This is something the American people want. So far the Senate has let them down in regards to promises they made on Obamacare and so I think they’re getting restless. They don’t see solutions but they see a man that’s struggling to make sure that he honors the promises that he made to those people,” said Gosar.
Gosar also asserts that the controversy over the wall is only a creation of the past decade.
“The wall was authorized over a decade ago and it was a bipartisan effort. A sovereign country has a right to defend and dictate it’s borders,” said Gosar.
So how did this become such a political lightning rod?
“It’s because the political correctness in the media has gotten into people,” he said.
Another hot-button issue is the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. He says all contracts ought to be renegotiated every few years and NAFTA has been on the books for more than two decades. He says the issues of border security and trade are very closely linked.
“I think these are all interwoven and I think the president has a good thought process about how to drag all these together to get what he believes the American people want because they voted for him. He made no qualms about border security and building the wall,” said Gosar.
Gosar also applauds Trump sending more border patrol agents and immigration judges to stem the tide of illegal entries and to adjudicate cases much more quickly. He does, however, urge the president to make more personnel nominations in the Justice Department and elsewhere to improve the effort even more.
But with Trump in a very public battle with members of his own party about blame over Obamacare and other issues, will any big ticket items on the GOP agenda actually get done when Congress returns next month?
Gosar says they have no choice.
“Winston Churchill made the famous analogy saying, ‘You can always count on Americans to do the right thing when they’ve exhausted everything else. Well, here’s our sign looking at Congress.. We’ve exhausted everything else, at least from the House. We’ve got over 200 bills over there waiting on the Senate to take a look at,” said Gosar.
While he can’t say for sure what will get done, Gosar says if one big thing can get to Trump’s desk, other major priorities will fall like dominoes.
“The atmosphere is going to be very confrontational. It’s going to be very high stakes. But once that first brick falls, a lot of this stuff is going to fall right in line,” said Gosar, who personally hopes Obamacare repeal is the first brick to fall.
“I would hope that it’s health care, because I think that sets the stage for tax breaks [and] the budget and that looks at a positive influence for the American people to move forward,” said Gosar.
‘They Have to Do It By September’
Republicans in the Senate have been pouring cold water on expectations of producing a health care reform bill anytime soon, but a leading health care expert says the GOP realistically has just over three months to get it done.
“If they’re going to do this with only 51 votes in the Senate, they have to do it by September,” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner. “Frankly, I think they want to do it before the August recess so that they can get on with the rest of the agenda.”
The can officially start working on the bill now that House leaders have finally sent it to the upper chamber. It was on hold while lawmakers waited on the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill to make sure their calculations on how the legislation would impact the deficit were accurate. They were.
Despite moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Dean Heller, R-Nevada, saying the House bill was a non-starter for them, Turner suspects the final Senate version will end up looking pretty familiar.
“They will make some changes to the House bill and they will very much call it their own, but I think a lot of those structural elements of the safety net, the bridge to new coverage, the state flexibility on regulations and the Medicaid reform, I think we’re going to see all of that in there,” said Turner.
She says those four components are critical and are in the House bill: providing help for individual market consumers who no longer have reasonable coverage options, creating a transition to a market-based system, giving states more power to define plans and foster competition and changing Medicaid so it doesn’t devour state resources for all other priorities.
Turner says the House crafted it’s bill with Senate rules in mind.
“The House did try very hard to bend over backwards so that it’s version of the legislation complied with Senate rules,” she said. “They didn’t want the Senate to have to change it too much.”
Still, Turner does expect the Senate to spend more tax dollars on providing for people with pre-existing conditions.
“The Senate is going to dial things back in different ways and probably provide even more protections than the House bill did for pre-existing conditions protections. I do think that that has been an inflamed issue that is very much overstated,” said Turner.
“The House bill provided $138 billion to the states to be able to take care of people who have pre-existing conditions and have high health care costs. All evidence is that would be more than enough to do it,” said Turner.
Turner also suspects the Senate may be less conservative in curtailing Medicaid expansion than the House bill. And another issue that GOP moderates are likely to fight is the slashing of tax dollars for Planned Parenthood.
With the House bill passing precariously in May, it’s unclear what impact any substantial Senate changes will have on final passage. But Turner warns the House that whatever they get back from the Senate – if they get anything back from the Senate – may be their one chance to get anything done this year and maybe in this Congress.
“I think everybody knows that whatever the Senate gets through, the House is going to have a very difficult time changing it. I think it’s very likely going to be take it or leave it,” said Turner.
If we get to that point, Turner suspects voter outrage over the possibility of getting nothing done will likely compel passage of an imperfect bill.
“I don’t think any of them want to go back to the voters in 2018 next year and say, ‘Sorry, for four elections we told you we were going to repeal Obamacare and we just kind of couldn’t figure out how to do it.’ They all know they have to figure out how to do it,” said Turner.
Lower Health Costs or Pay the Price
The House Republican health care bill cleared another hurdle on Thursday, but one of the most fiscally conservative GOP lawmakers says the bill will never pass unless it acts to immediately reduce the cost of coverage and includes repeal of Obamacare’s burdensome regulations.
The House Budget Committee approved the American Health Care Act, 19-17. Three Republicans voted against it, including Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va.
“The budget committee went forward with it, but some of the guys are getting promises that we’re going to have some fixes and some fairly significant fixes going forward,” said Brat, who believes the Republicans are heading toward disaster on their present course, largely because they don’t address health care costs effectively.
“Both conservative and liberal think tanks and health experts agreed that the current House bill maintains the current structure of Obamacare,” said Brat. “You keep the individual exchanges. You keep the individual market and you keep the insurance regulations, so I don’t know how anyone expects the price of health care to go down.”
And without lower costs, Brat says Republicans are walking into a political buzz saw with no upside.
“That’s the big thing we have to fix and we all want Trump to be successful. For him to be successful, we have to make those changes or in a few years we’ll be in another death spiral,” said Brat. “It’s fairly simple. Either you lower the price of this thing so people can afford it or else you’re going to pay the price politically.”
He says the key to driving costs down is to address insurance regulations, a priority President Trump has been pushing for months.
“Our leadership bill has prices going down 10 percent after three years. So we’ve got price increases coming. We’ve got to make sure that does not happen. The biggest way you can prevent that is to get at the insurance regulations,” said Brat.
There’s also the issue of choosing what’s in a plan. For example, Brat notes that because of the many requirements Obamacare mandates in every approved health plan, it’s impossible for young, healthy people to buy low-cost, high-deductible catastrophic plans.
GOP leaders currently argue that market-based reforms would be included in separate legislation from the first bill which deals mainly with taxation and mandates. That’s the third phase of replacing Obamacare. They also say regulatory repeal is not in the bill because Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price can roll those back unilaterally. That is phase two.
Brat is not impressed.
“The problem there is it’s not permanent. We’ll have this kind of bumper pool every four years, when you switch administrations you’ll change health care for the whole country. We want that that bucket number two, that Price is going to take care of, to be put into the bill itself,” said Brat.
He says allowing greater competition for coverage and including regulatory reform in the bill could salvage the legislation for many conservatives.
“I think if leadership goes forward with that and pushes it over to the Senate, that’ll get a lot of people to ‘yes.’ That could be the sweet spot,” said Brat.
How will this play out in the coming weeks? Brat says Trump is the key.
“I don’t think we’re even close to having the votes, so Trump will come in and negotiate and put his foot down on a system that he wants. He wants to increase competition across state lines and to reduce the costs for everybody so it’s affordable. If we can get it done in a month or two, it can be signed, sealed and delivered if we can zap these insurance regulations,” said Brat.
He says those components would also allow Republicans, who ran on repealing and replacing Obamacare, to make good on their promises to the American people.
“We can put [a bill] together brick by brick but the key is you’ve got to start out with the glue. Repeal, that was the promise. Then move forward from that and build a scaffolding up from there,” said Brat.
“You want to start with free markets and then add a safety net. You don’t want to start with socialism and then promise free markets later. That never happens,” said Brat.
So why haven’t these ideas been in the bill from the start? Brat suspects quite a few GOP senators are looking to dodge controversial votes.
“The Senate has become kind of a high noon tea society over there. They’re not taking tough votes. They don’t want this bill to come over in the first place. I think they’re using that as a way to duck. Even our side uses that as a way to duck from pushing through what we have to get through,” said Brat.
Brat also rejects the leadership’s argument that market reforms and regulatory repeal can’t be included in a reconciliation process. He says that’s just not true. He says the Senate can simply vote to determine if a provision is tax or budget-related.
He says getting this major overhaul done and done right is a matter of political will, and adds that not is the time to demonstrate that will.
“Let’s roll the TV cameras in there. Let’s put that live in front of the American people so they can see the process of their own government at work for them, and I think we’ll have a big win,” said Brat.
‘It’s A First Step’
Conservatives and liberals are savaging the House Republican health care plan, but one of the leading advocates for a market-driven approach says the bill is a good start to imploding Obamacare and setting the stage for additional conservative reforms.
The plan is getting hammered by conservatives for not fully repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, failing to allow the purchase of coverage across state lines, and for allegedly replacing one entitlement program with another. Liberal critics say the plan would knock millions of Americans off health insurance and leave them one illness from bankruptcy again.
So what about those claims?
Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner is a veteran of Washington health care debates and was a fierce opponent of the Clinton health care reform effort in the 1990’s and Obamacare since 2009. She is encouraged by what she sees in the American Health Care Act and says the realities on Capitol Hill force this kind of legislation.
“It’s a first step. They’re pushing as far as they can with the process they have to go through. They do not expect any Democrats, in the House or the Senate, to vote for this. That means they have to do this through a particularly difficult process called reconciliation that limits the kinds of things you can repeal,” said Turner.
“They can’t repeal everything in the law through this process because it has to have direct spending and budget implications. They’re doing as much as they can and they have plans to go forward with other pieces of legislation, for example, that will allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines. That’s not possible through this particular pathway,” said Turner.
She says this legislation is needed to gut the worst parts of Obamacare.
“There will also be follow-on legislation going forward, but not if this [doesn’t pass]. You can’t build change on the crumbling infrastructure of Obamacare. You’ve got to begin with changes that lead us in a new direction,” said Turner.
“It’s like a battleship or an aircraft carrier. It takes a long time to turn this around ,” she added.
Turner also says a lot can be done to ease the burden on all Americans without involving Congress. She says Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price can accomplish a lot through the powers granted him in the original Affordable Care Act.
“Sec. Price has control of the regulatory mechanism. There were 20 million words of regulation written to enforce Obamacare. He has the power to undo a lot of those and to rewrite them but also to provide new guidance to the marketplace to engender much more competition and consumer choice,” said Turner.
Sec. Price outlined the very same strategy Tuesday at the White House.
Turner says the GOP bill offers important provisions like eliminating a trillion dollars worth of taxes on the economy and protecting coverage while the system transitions from Obamacare. She also says the bill takes a smarter look at Medicaid dollars that should mean less burden on the taxpayers.
“It begins the pathway to reform the Medicaid program, arguably one of the worst health care programs in the country that is bankrupting the states. At the same time, millions of people (on Medicaid) can’t find a doctor to see them,” said Turner.
And how would it do that?
“This legislation would begin the process of giving states a per capita allocation. A per capita allocation is very different from a block grant. It basically says we are going to make a distinction between moms and babies who are healthy and people who have multiple disabilities,” said Turner.
She also likes that states will have much more say over health care while Washington backs off.
“It gives states more power and more authority, not only to figure out how to take care of their citizens that are on Medicaid, but also to provide their citizens with more choices from the kind of health insurance that they want to buy, rather than have the federal government tell them the health insurance they have to buy,” said Turner.
But will the plan ultimately lower premiums and deductibles? Turner says that hinges on getting people to stay on insurance for the year once they’ve purchased it and getting more, young healthy people into the system.
“You need young, healthy people in the system. What do you do? You try to give them more choices, more options of more affordable coverage. So attracting people, giving them incentive to want to stay covered, by giving states more options to provide them with choices for health insurance – not just Washington’s three or four cookie-cutter policies,” said Turner, who also advocated for multi-year policies so patients could lock in rates for years at a time.
While acknowledging the fierce opposition to the plan from the right and left, Turner says the bill not only makes key changes but looks at health care in a whole new way.
“It’s a really different philosophy of giving people the market incentive to respond to consumers who are newly empowered and want to make responsible, good choices,” said Turner. “People want insurance but they don’t want insurance that costs more than their mortgage.”
This is one of multiple perspectives we will be sharing on this legislation as the debate continues.
Three Martini Lunch 2/27/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America think Republicans ought to be pleased with the radical liberals now running the DNC. They also rip everyone involved in the flap over the White House excluding some media outlets from Friday’s gaggle. And they discuss the annual self-righteous preening of the Hollywood elite and how their air of superiority blew up in their face at the biggest moment of the night.
‘A Conservative, Solution-Oriented Agenda’
The new chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus is promising one of the most consequential starts to a presidential administration in modern history, as Republican stand poised to run Congress and the White House.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., made headlines in the last Congress for filing the resolution that led to the resignation of former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in 2015. Now he says House conservatives are ready to make significant contributions on a wide range of issues.
“It’s really pushing that conservative, solution-oriented agenda so that the Senate take notice and understands that watered-down, business as usual kid of decisions aren’t going to happen,” said Meadows.
“Whether it’s on securing our border, whether it’s looking at the Syrian refugee issue, whether it’s pushing back against an anti-Israel UN, they’re going to get the opportunity to take votes and make the important decisions that are important to your listeners that are our constituents as well,” said Meadows.
And despite previous clashes with GOP leaders over spending and who sits in the speaker’s chair, Meadows is confident that leaders are listening to conservatives on key issues.
“I have seen a real willingness on behalf of this leadership to really consider those things in earnest. We know we’re not going to win every battle but also know that the debate will be a fair debate. Hopefully the results will represent the will of the vast majority of the American people,” said Meadows.
The issue getting the most attention leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration is the dismantling of the Obama health care law. Meadows says the House Freedom Caucus will soon advocate voting for replacement legislation at the same time they push for repeal.
“I believe we’ll start to coalesce around Sen. Rand Paul’s idea of having a replacement bill voted on the same day we vote on repeal. I think it’s important for the American people to understand that there are and have been replacement plans out there. It’s important to vote on that,” said Meadows, who says the votes could come as early as late February or early March.
“I think it will pass the House, may fail in the Senate and probably would fail in the Senate,” said Meadows.
That said, Meadows says a lot of Obamacare can be repealed through reconciliation instructions, but not all of it can be scrapped that way. But he says any tax provisions and the mandates can get the boot from a simple majority in the Senate.
Meadows also made headlines last month for offering the Trump transition team a book of 200 federal regulations that Trump could repeal upon taking office. He says the list is quickly approaching 300 regulations and the response from Trump’s team has been very encouraging.
“I’ve been led to believe many of those could be repealed on the very day of the inauguration after the parade. President Trump will then go in and sign those executive orders and treat that as day one of his new presidency,” said Meadows, who believes the American people will be grateful for a government looking for ways to make their lives easier.
Meadows suspects there may be some battles among Republicans over spending down the line, but probably not until the appropriations process plays out in autumn.
He is also pushing back against reports that House conservatives will be less demanding of a Republican president. Reports in December quoted House Freedom Caucus members as saying they might be willing to allow new spending that is only 50 percent paid for in other spending reductions. Meadows insists nothing has changed.
“We believe that any additional dollar of spending must be offset. We don’t have a taxing problem. We don’t even have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem, so if we want to find money for other areas, we need to reallocate that from existing revenue streams,” said Meadows.
“We cannot put the burden on our grandchildren or our children’s future. We’ve got to take the hard position now, the difficult choices now to make sure that we’re fiscally responsible. The Freedom Caucus is committed to making sure that we do that,” said Meadows.
Three Martini Lunch 1/6/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud House Republicans and Democrats for an overwhelming vote condemning the UN resolution against Israel. They also groan as the Trump transition and Gen. James Mattis butt heads over who should fill top Pentagon positions. And they get a kick out of news that former Bush operative Matthew Dowd is thinking of running against Ted Cruz in 2018.