Medicaid

Trump speedbump to Senate repeal of ‘Obamacare’

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Last month President Trump hosted a kegger party in the White House Rose Garden to cheer the passage of the American Health Care Act with House members.

Trump said “What we have is something that is very, very, incredibly well-crafted.”

The president also promised to get it through the Senate.

“It’s going to be an unbelievable victory when we get it through the Senate, and there’s so much spirit there,” Trump said.

That was then, this is now. Yesterday, Trump calls House health bill that he celebrated in the Rose Garden ‘mean’:

President Trump told Republican senators Tuesday that the House GOP health-care bill was “mean” and he expects the Senate to “improve” the legislation considerably, according to several Republicans familiar with the gathering.

The meeting came as Senate Republicans were struggling to build support for their health-care rewrite among conservatives who are concerned that the legislation is drifting too far to the left.

Trump’s labeling of the House bill as “mean” was a significant shift of tone that followed months of private and public negotiations, during which he called the bill “great” and urged GOP lawmakers to vote for it. Following the House vote, Trump hosted an event in the Rose Garden to celebrate its passage.

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Trump’s budget due on Tuesday: a war on the poor to pay for tax cuts for Plutocrats

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Back in March the Washington Post ran this story: If you’re a poor person in America, Trump’s budget is not for you:

If you’re a poor person in America, President Trump’s budget proposal is not for you.

Trump has unveiled a budget that would slash or abolish programs that have provided low-income Americans with help on virtually all fronts, including affordable housing, banking, weatherizing homes, job training, paying home heating oil bills, and obtaining legal counsel in civil matters.

During the presidential campaign last year, Trump vowed that the solution to poverty was giving poor people incentives to work. But most of the proposed cuts in his budget target programs designed to help the working poor, as well as those who are jobless, cope.

“This is a budget that pulled the rug out from working families and hurts the very people who President Trump promised to stand up for in rural America and in small towns,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president of the poverty to prosperity program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington.

The White House budget cuts will fall hardest on the rural and small town communities that Trump won, where 1 in 3 people are living paycheck to paycheck — a rate that is 24 percent higher than in urban counties, according to a new analysis by the center.

President Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2018 will be released on Tuesday, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget announced last week.

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Trump to take health insurance hostage – by sabotaging ‘Obamacare’ – unless he gets his way

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When I posted about this the other day, Obamacare subsides to continue while House v. Price remains in limbo, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post was so hopeful that he wrote In the battle over Obamacare’s future, Trump just blinked. Bigly.

That was then, this is now.

Just two days later Greg Sargent now writes, Trump has a strange new plan to threaten Democrats. It’s a sick joke.

President Trump likes headlines that portray him as a man of action, so he’s probably pleased with the barrage of Thursday headlines about his latest move on health care. ABC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and many others all inform us that Trump is “threatening” to sabotage the Affordable Care Act to force Democrats to make a deal with him on its future. “Threaten” is a verb that is laden with action, purpose, and intimations of concealed leverage and power. Awesome!

Americans whose health, and for some whose life, depends upon Obamacare health insurance are a mere afterthought, they are simply collateral damage in “the art of the deal.” People must die so “Dear Leader” can claim his “victory.”

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Kansas is a cautionary tale for Arizona: pigs do fly – again!

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Back in February I posted about something truly remarkable that happened in the state legislature of Brownbackistan fna Kansas: it passed an income tax increase to begin repairing the fiscal damage to the state caused by Governor Sam Brownback and Tea-Publicans’ religious experiment in creating a faith based supply-side “trickle down” utopia in America’s heartland. Kansas is a cautionary tale for Arizona: pigs do fly!

Of course, trickle-down high priest Sam Brownback vetoed the income tax increase, and his veto was sustained by just enough Tea-publican trickle-down acolytes. Kansas Lawmakers Uphold Governor’s Veto of Tax Increases. Brownbackistan continues to circle the drain.

This week, something truly remarkable happened again in the state legislature of Brownbackistan fna Kansas: The Kansas Senate voted 25-14 to send a Medicaid expansion bill to Gov. Sam Brownback about a month after the Kansas House passed the same measure 81-44. Holy shit, pigs do fly! After five years, KanCare expansion advocates celebrate. Once again, the bill faces a certain veto from trickle-down high priest Sam Brownback.

Over the last five years, Sheldon Weisgrau has given more than a hundred presentations in dozens of Kansas counties urging support for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

He was told often that he and other advocates were wasting their time — that expansion would never get the votes in the Legislature. Not in a red state like Kansas.

Then, on Tuesday, it did.

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The art of the tantrum: Trump gives do or die ultimatum to House Tea-Publicans for ‘Obamacare’ repeal

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Donald Trump has a long history of fabricating his own myths about his ability of negotiating deals.

This political novice has no experience and no skills in legislating, and more importantly, no capital with those whom he is negotiating — he attacks Tea-publicans in Congress as easily as Democrats. He attacks anyone who does not immediately satisfy his petulant demands or dares to disagree with him.

What we have is a 70 year old man with a three year old’s child-like mentality, a man who throws tantrums to get his way, whether it is an early morning Twitter rage, or his latest tantrum: “Let me win or I will take my ball and go home!” Trump delivers ultimatum to House Republicans: Pass health-care measure on Friday or he’ll move on:

President Trump delivered an ultimatum to House Republicans on Thursday night: Vote to approve the measure to overhaul the nation’s health-care system on the House floor Friday, or reject it and the president will move on to his other legislative priorities.

The president, through his aides in a closed-door meeting, signaled that the time for negotiations was over with rank-and-file Republicans who were meeting late at night on Capitol Hill to try to find common ground on the embattled package crafted by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

The move was a high-risk gamble for the president and the speaker, who have invested significant political capital in passing legislation that would replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act. For Trump, who campaigned as a skilled negotiator capable of forging a good deal on behalf of Americans, it could either vindicate or undercut one of his signature claims.

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