GOP Senate shelves vote

‘Obamacare’ repeal teeters

WASHINGTON, June 28, (AP): The Republican Party’s long-promised repeal of “Obamacare” stands in limbo after Sente GOP leaders, short of support, abruptly shelved a vote on legislation to fulfill the promise.

The surprise development leaves the legislation’s fate uncertain while raising new doubts about whether President Donald Trump will ever make good on his many promises to erase his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement.

Sente Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced the delay Tuesday after it became clear the votes weren’t there to advance the legislation past key procedural hurdles. Trump immediately invited Sente Republicans to the White House, but the message he delivered to them before reporters were ushered out of the room was not entirely hopeful.

“This will be great if we get it done, and if we don’t get it done it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like, and that’s OK and I understand that very well,” he told the senators, who surrounded him at tables arranged in a giant square in the East Room. Most wore grim expressions.

In the private meeting that followed, said Sen Marco Rubio of Florida, the president spoke of “the costs of failure, what it would mean to not get it done — the view that we would wind up in a situation where the markets will collapse and Republicans will be blamed for it and then potentially have to fight off an effort to expand to single payer at some point.”

The bill has many critics and few outspoken fans on Capitol Hill, and prospects for changing that are uncertain. McConnell promised to revisit the legislation after Congress’ July 4 recess.

“It’s a big complicated subject, we’ve got a lot discussions going on, and we’re still optimistic we’re going to get there,” the Kentucky lawmaker

resilience. She says what helped her most after the election were walks in the woods, an occasional glass of Chardonnay and losing herself in books. (AP)

Clinton campaign chair testifies:

said. But adjustments to placate conservatives, who want the legislation to be more stringent, only push away moderates who think its current limits — on Medicaid for example — are too strong.

In the folksy analysis of John Cornyn of Texas, the Sente GOP votecounter: “Every time you get one bullfrog in the wheelbarrow, another one jumps out.”

McConnell can lose only two senators from his 52-member caucus and still pass the bill, with Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote. Democrats are opposed, as are most medical groups and the AARP, though the US Chamber of Commerce supports the bill.

Oppose

A number of GOP governors oppose the legislation, especially in states that have expanded the Medicaid program for the poor under former president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Opposition from Nevada’s popular Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval helped push GOP Sen Dean Heller, who is vulnerable in next year’s midterms, to denounce the legislation last Friday; Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich held an event at the National Press Club Tuesday to criticize it.

The House went through its own struggles with its version of the bill, pulling it from the floor short of votes before reviving it and narrowly passing it in May. So it’s quite possible that the Sente Republicans can rise from this week’s setback.

But McConnell is finding it difficult to satisfy demands from his diverse caucus. Conservatives like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah argue that the legislation doesn’t go far enough in repealing Obamacare. But moderates like Heller and Susan Collins of Maine criticize the bill as overly punitive in throwing people off insurance roles and limiting benefits paid

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, on Tuesday appeared before the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which has begun interviewing witnesses in its probe of how Russia may have influenced the 2016 election.

Committee members declined to comment by Medicaid, which has become the nation’s biggest health care program, covering nursing home care for seniors as well as care for many poor Americans.

GOP defections increased after the Congressional Budget Office said Monday the measure would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026 than Obama’s 2010 statute. McConnell told senators he wanted them to agree to a final version of the bill before the end of this week so they could seek a new analysis by the budget office. He said that would give lawmakers time to finish when they return to the Capitol for a three-week stretch in July before Congress’ summer break.

The 22 million extra uninsured Americans are just 1 million fewer than the number the budget office estimated would become uninsured under the House version. Trump has called the House bill “mean” and prodded senators to produce a package with more “heart.”

The Sente plan would end the tax penalty the law imposes on people who don’t buy insurance, in effect erasing Obama’s so-called individual mandate, and on larger businesses that don’t offer coverage to workers.

It would cut Medicaid, which provides health insurance to over 70 million poor and disabled people, by $772 billion through 2026 by capping its overall spending and phasing out Obama’s expansion of the program.

Across social media and on cable shows, Republican strategists denounced the intra-party battle as counterproductive. “More than political cannibalism, attack ads vs Heller are shortsighted, disrespectful to voters who sent him there to vote his conscience,” Republican political commentator Ana Navarro wrote on Twitter after making that same point on CNN late Tuesday.

But so far, the group makes no apologies for its aggressive strategy.

on the discussion to reporters as they left the panel’s secure hearing room. Podesta stopped and commented briefly.

“They asked me to come forward to give to the best of my knowledge what I knew about that, and I was happy to cooperate with the committee in their investigation of Russian interference with the democratic process in the United States,” he said.

Republican President Donald Trump, who defeated Clinton in the election, recently has accused former Democratic president Barack Obama of doing too little to address Russian cyber attacks while he was still in the White House.

On Monday, Trump demanded on Twitter that investigators apologize for looking to Russian interference and possible collusion with his campaign. He accused Obama of having “colluded or obstructed,” without providing evidence. Asked whether he thought Obama had done enough, Podesta said, “I think the president and the entire administration were dealing with an unprecedented incidence of the weaponization of the fruits of Russian cyber activity and making the best judgments they could on behalf of the American people.”

During the 2016 campaign, hackers penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s email server and separately stole emails from Podesta’s personal account. The emails were then posted online and used to embarrass Clinton, including by Trump, who frequently used their content as political ammunition. (RTRS)