June 29, 2017

Tie Congress's Paychecks to Our Good Health - Nicholas Kristof

JUNE 29, 2017

Members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year, while members of Poland’s lower house of Parliament are paid $32,300 a year.

Hmm. It looks as if we’re getting ripped off. Members of Congress seem to underperform compared to members of Parliament in Poland and across the democratic world.

Conservatives are right to worry that feeding at the government trough breeds dependency and laziness. So I suggest we introduce pay for performance, using metrics like, say, health.

I cite Poland because so many Poles (including the Krzysztofowicz family, later renamed Kristof) came to America for a better life, yet today American babies are one-third more likely to die in their first year of life than Polish children are (and twice as likely as Italian, Portuguese and Czech babies!). Meanwhile, American women are four times as likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth as Polish women, according to the World Health Organization.

If we had Italy’s child mortality rate, we would save 12,000 American babies’ lives each year — that’s 33 children’s lives saved every day.

Meanwhile, the U.S. spends far more on health care — an average of nearly $10,000 per person — than other countries do. Poland spends just $1,680 per person.

This is a stain on America. Choose almost any modern country, and its people pay less for health care and its children are more likely to survive; the C.I.A.’s World Factbook ranks the U.S. 42nd in longevity, and we’ve had a smaller increase in life expectancy over 25 years than other industrialized countries have.

more
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/opinion/congress-salary-health.html

June 29, 2017

Spurned by Trump, Senate Democrats Take a Harder Line

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER JUNE 28, 2017

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Trump won the White House, a cluster of Senate Democrats began the search for common cause with the unlikely new president, scouring the populist policy agenda that dominated his campaign.

For their part, Republicans believed that Mr. Trump’s win in nine states where Democratic senators are up for re-election next year would scare those lawmakers into acceptance of a Republican agenda, perhaps even voting to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Neither has come to pass.

Rather than taking advantage of his honeymoon phase to pick an issue on which Democrats from conservative states might be amenable — fixing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, cutting taxes or stiffening immigration laws — Mr. Trump raced toward the most partisan corner of the room, pushing to repeal the health care law with no input from Democrats, in a manner that has proved deeply unpopular.

Democrats, watching Republicans careen around in search of a health care solution, honored the demand of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, that they stick together in their refusal to lift a finger to help until repeal was taken off the table.

And perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has rarely bothered to ask.

“I am a moderate from a state Trump won,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who is up for re-election next year in a state where Hillary Clinton received just 38 percent of the vote. “You’d think they would have called me sometime.”

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/us/politics/senate-democrats-sought-to-work-with-trump-then-he-began-governing.html

June 28, 2017

Mitch McConnell just blew up one of Trump's biggest lies

By Greg Sargent June 28 at 10:45 AM

The Senate health-care bill has been put on hold, but, zombie-like, it is not dead. Politico reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has privately informed GOP senators that he will try to put together a new compromise version of it by Friday or Saturday, with the goal of having the Congressional Budget Office analyze it, in preparation for a vote on it soon after the July 4 recess.

McConnell will be employing at least two tactics. First, he will use several hundred billion dollars that CBO says the bill would save to try to buy off moderate opponents with side deals, such as increased funding for Medicaid or opioid treatment.

Second, McConnell will press the argument that if this bill does not pass, Republicans will have no choice but to negotiate over the future of the Affordable Care Act with Democrats. Multiple reports have said that McConnell has privately warned Republicans that failure would mean they must enter into talks with Democrats on ways to shore up the individual markets, which would effectively mean that a chance to pass a partisan repeal bill is gone. But, in making this latter argument — which will likely gain more scrutiny in the days ahead — McConnell is effectively destroying one of President Trump’s most cherished false narratives. And this could have all kinds of implications for where this whole debate could head next.

Trump has spent months making several intertwined claims. He has relentlessly asserted that Obamacare is collapsing on its own. He has offered a variation on this by threatening to cut off the cost-sharing reductions to insurers that subsidize out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people, which would drive insurers out of the markets; Trump has said this threat will force Democrats to the table to “deal” with him. And Trump has also blasted Democrats for refusing to participate in his designs (even though there are no circumstances under which Democrats would join in an effort that would leave 22 million more uninsured). Trump tweeted his fury at Democrats for not helping him destroy the ACA just yesterday.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/06/28/how-mitch-mcconnell-is-blowing-up-one-of-trumps-biggest-lies/?utm_term=.94517ac6092e&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

June 28, 2017

Trump isn't getting away with ineptness, ignorance or anything else - By Jennifer Rubin

A popular refrain among media cynics and elected Democrats is that President Trump “gets away” with things no other president does. He insults allies and vilifies a free press. He knows little about what’s in the bills that he declares “great,” and he picks utterly unqualified people who predictably fail to perform well. But in what sense is he “getting away” with outrageous, inept and ignorant governance?

His major legislative promises have gone unfulfilled. His wall isn’t being built, his Muslim ban is partially on hold and his international image is toxic. A growing majority of the public disapproves — really disapproves — of his performance. In the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, his approval rating has plunged to 37 percent, while his disapproval rating is up to 51 percent:

<< Forty percent of those polled strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance, twice the 20 percent who strongly approved.

The most pronounced swing the poll found was among independents. . . . In February, 40 percent of independents said they approved of the job Trump was doing, with 51 percent disapproving. Four months later in June, just 31 percent say they approve of the president with 59 percent of independents disapproving — a 17 point net-negative drop. >>

In other words, his reservoir of support is getting down to the dead-enders who will never abandon him (just as a segment of the American electorate never gave up on Richard Nixon).

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/28/trump-isnt-getting-away-with-ineptness-ignorance-or-anything-else/?utm_term=.5230936d8071&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

June 28, 2017

Why the Russia investigation could be even bigger than you think

By Paul Waldman June 28 at 1:31 PM

Whenever he comments on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Russia scandal, President Trump seems consumed with refuting the accusation of “collusion” between himself or his campaign and the Russian government (if you can call “Nuh-uh, fake news!” a refutation). But while it would certainly be shocking to learn that Trump personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to coordinate the Russians’ efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton in 2016, collusion is only one sliver of the problem he could face.

There’s a good chance that there were many kinds of wrongdoing going on around Trump, and if there were, Mueller and his team will probably find them. Which is why this investigation could become much bigger than most people realize.

Over his career — before he ran for president but continuing once his campaign was underway — Trump managed to assemble around himself a group of shady characters worthy of the most notorious mob boss, and that has continued into his presidency. Today we learn this, courtesy of Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman:

<< A consulting firm led by Paul Manafort, who chaired Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for several months last year, retroactively filed forms Tuesday showing that his firm received $17.1 million over two years from a political party that dominated Ukraine before its leader fled to Russia in 2014. >>

You may recall that last year a ledger emerged in Ukraine showing huge cash payments from the party to Manafort. At the time he claimed it was a fabrication, but payments noted in the ledger were later confirmed to have taken place. And now — just as former national security adviser Michael Flynn did with regard to his work for Turkey — Manafort is retroactively registering as a foreign agent, which is the kind of thing you do when your lawyer tells you that you’re in serious trouble.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/06/28/why-the-russia-investigation-could-be-even-bigger-than-you-think/

June 28, 2017

Trump: 'I Think We're Going To Get At Least Very Close' To Passing Health Bill

By NICOLE LAFOND Published JUNE 28, 2017 12:43 PM

President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be completely confident Republicans will get enough GOP Senators on board to pass the Senate health care bill, according to comments he made during an energy roundtable discussion with governors on Wednesday.

The President said Obamacare is “essentially dead” and called it a “headache for everybody” and a “nightmare for many,” before praising Republicans’ latest Affordable Care Act repeal plan that he wasn’t fully confident would pass.

“So we have a plan that if we get it approved, it’s very tough. Every state is different, every senator is different. But I have to tell you, the Republican senators had a really impressive meeting yesterday at the White House. We had close to 50 of them, we have 52, but we need almost all of them. That’s never easy,” he said. “I think we’re going to get at least very close, and I think we’re going to get it over the line.”

He said the meeting of GOP senators at the White House Tuesday — after Republican leaders announced they were going to delay the vote on the new health care bill — had a “really great feeling” and said he thinks the bill has “a chance to be a great health care at a reasonable cost.”

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-think-were-going-get-at-least-close-passing-health-bill

June 28, 2017

Trump's lawyers fail to follow through on threats to Comey

Source: Yahoo News




Michael Isikoff
Chief Investigative Correspondent
Yahoo NewsJune 28, 2017

President Trump’s lawyers, after rethinking their legal strategy, have shelved plans for now to file complaints accusing former FBI director James Comey of leaking confidential information about his conversations with the president, according to two sources familiar with the lawyers’ plans.

The decision to back away from repeated public threats to launch an all out legal assault on Comey reflects a significant tactical retreat for Trump’s legal team. It was prompted by concerns that such a move might antagonize special counsel Robert Mueller as he gears up for his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump’s presidential campaign, the sources said.

The public attacks on Comey began after the ex-FBI director’s testimony on June 8 that he authorized a friend to share with reporters portions of a memo with his account of a White House meeting at which President Trump allegedly asked him to go easy on former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The next day, Marc E. Kasowitz, the president’s chief lawyer, accused the former FBI Director of “unilaterally and surreptitiously” making “unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president.”

“We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether these leaks should be investigated along with all the others being investigated,” Kasowitz said in a statement he read to the news media at the National Press Club.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-lawyers-fail-follow-threats-comey-165240367.html

June 28, 2017

McConnell Rattles His Ranks

June 28, 2017 at 7:11 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Playbook: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the steadiest and most reliable leaders and vote counters Washington has seen, did the unthinkable and rattled his ranks. The Kentucky Republican had told lawmakers there would be a vote this week on health care, but instead — just as Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to do three months ago — decided to delay voting on the package after it was clear that GOP opposition to the health care package was stronger than expected.”

“McConnell has been impervious to the types of problems Ryan faces on a weekly — and sometimes daily — basis. His decision to delay voting on a bill is a sign he couldn’t, or didn’t want to expend the political capital to get it done before the July 4th break. It’s unclear what he can do to change the calculus among the growing bloc of senators unwilling to vote for the bill.”

Mike Allen: “McConnell’s reputation for the inside game is such that Republicans assume he must have something up his sleeve. One top Republican alumnus put the bill’s chances of coming back at 15%. But then as he continued to muse, he doubled it to 30% just because of the McConnell factor.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/06/28/mcconnell-rattles-ranks/

June 28, 2017

Trump Loses Ground with Independent Voters

Source: Political Wire


June 28, 2017 at 8:29 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that just 37% of Americans approve of the job President Trump is doing, while 51% disapprove.

Key finding: “The most pronounced swing the poll found was among independents. Over the past four months, their approval of the president has dissipated. In February, 40% of independents said they approved of the job Trump was doing, with 51% disapproving. Four months later in June, just 31% say they approve of the president with 59% of independents disapproving — a 17 point net-negative drop.”

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Read more: https://politicalwire.com/2017/06/28/trump-loses-ground-independent-voters/

June 28, 2017

Despite Trump's Claims, Obamacare Isn't Collapsing

Source: Political Wire





June 28, 2017 at 8:42 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Congressional Budget Office: “Although premiums have been rising under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference between that percentage and the premiums for a reference plan… Nevertheless, a small number of people live in areas of the country that have limited participation by insurers in the nongroup market under current law.”

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Read more: https://politicalwire.com/2017/06/28/despite-trumps-claims-obamacare-isnt-collapsing/