After Health Care Collapse, GOP Seeks Redemption With Tax Cuts

Robin Buchanan
23:47, Aug 5, 2017
Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.

This time the divide was not between Republicans and Democrats, or even (as is often the case) between House and Senate, but between two branches of the federal government.

One of the hot topics in the Senate this week was whether, in the absence of a GOP health care plan, Congress should stabilize insurance markets and take a potential grenade out of Trump's hands by appropriating so-called Cost Sharing Reduction payments.

On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) asked the Senate to move on, after a week of repeated failed Obamacare repeal efforts. Trump told the Wall Street Journal, "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them". He added that the Republican Party has a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to redesign the nation's tax laws.

The same day the health care bill collapsed last week, the "Big Six" negotiators announced a very broad outline of what Republicans hope to achieve with a tax overhaul. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I'm sure the jaw-dropping cruelty of the Grand Old Party's alternatives has helped too.That's probably not enough for us to expect single-payer to be enacted anytime soon, but there are more moderate alternatives, such as the "public option" that Congress removed during the original ACA debate.

Republicans have campaigned on dismantling the Affordable Care Act since it was passed in 2010.

"That doesn't mean (tax reform) is easy", Toomey said. They'll blame Trump, and by party extension all Republicans in both houses of Congress.

One of the difficulties that Republicans were always going to face in the coming fight over the debt limit was the need to bring along at least eight Senate Democrats. Edward Kennedy's Health Committee spent 13 days marking up its version of the bill and had more than 47 bipartisan hearings on health care.

Protecting the homeland is the federal government's chief responsibility, Republicans say.

Gergen: Special election victories show Trump could beat Dems in 2020
"We showed the world that in places where no one thought it was possible, we could fight", Mr Ossoff told supporters. Filemon Vela told Politico , "You'd have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top".

Though Republicans occupy 52 seats, they were able to garner only 49 yes votes on the health care bill.

In addition to the White House, the political network associated with the billionaire brothers Charles Koch and David Koch has is trying to prod the vulnerable Democrats to join the Republicans.

"At this point, neither of them (health care and tax reform) are accomplished - I believe we can get both done, and I believe we can deliver on all four", he continued. The three attended a meeting of top national security aides on Thursday in the White House Situation Room aimed at settling on a strategy for Afghanistan that Trump, who tends to be non-interventionist, will find acceptable. After the administration's attempts to weaken the bill were unsuccessful, he issued a freaky signing statement calling the legislation "seriously flawed".

Congressional Republicans are using the August recess to drum up support for their ideas, including an event at the Reagan Ranch in California on Aug. 16. The Senate is still in session this week, having shortened its recess in response to criticism of its slim volume of achievement this year.

Already, staff is working on draft legislation. But if they put forth realistic proposals and the Republicans simply bury them, it will underscore the majority's unwillingness, or incapacity, to govern.

Congress, clearly and overwhelmingly, did not see our relationship with hostile regimes in the context of presidential "deals": The sanctions bill passed the House by a vote of 419-3, and the Senate by an equally resounding 98-2.

"Bailing out insurance companies with no thought of any kind of reform is not something I want to be part of", McConnell said. Perhaps they will start out by defeating a Republican incumbent in a Senate race, but it would take a lot more evidence to convince me that Cruz really is in serious jeopardy.

Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.


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