Health law war

Is real news, Donald

In the morning on Sunday, the President was up early and tweeting from his golf course in New Jersey, clearly thinking once again that on weekends, idle hands on social media are the devil’s workshop. Here was one of his tweets: “With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, ?#Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!” Well, somebody is sure doing that these days. But there were no unnamed sources relevant to the recent reporting about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians, nothing slanted in the legitimate questions raised about a meeting that apparently had enough Russians attending to form a pickup basketball team; nothing fraudulent about the facts of this particular story. So with this story, nothing was distorted, certainly not democracy.

But there is democracy at work in this country. It is the kind that is still supposed to inspire us all. It is the kind that is supposed to give us the standing with the rest of the world that we’ve always had, and not just because of a proud, free press acting like a free press even under unprecedented attack, from a President who believes he’s the one under attack, and with good reason.

You want to see and hear our democracy? All you have to do is watch the current fight against the Republican Party’s shameful attack on Medicaid with its bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and all the falsehoods fronting that bill, starting with the ones told this past week by Vice President Pence. These people continue to act as if being able to declare victory in health care matters and that serving their own agenda is more important than the people they were elected to serve.

These are the “Pretty Little Liars” of American governance, just not pretty or little. Just all grown up, and very much in power.

Here is what Pence said the other day, with a straight face, as he addressed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health care bill, once again put on hold, this time because of Sen. John McCain’s surgery:

“Let me be clear: President Trump and I believe the Senate health care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society.”

Pence must believe that the 80% of Republicans who continue to blindly support everything this administration does and everything its representatives say really are rank suckers. Even he can’t possibly believe that this Senate’s health care bill “strengthens and secures” Medicaid for this country’s most at-risk citizens. Not only is what Pence said untrue, it’s demonstrably untrue.

But you know how this goes: These people think they can say anything, in broad daylight, and get away with it, at least in their America, the one where people believe what they want to believe. Don’t believe the Congressional Budget Office, that is the pushback coming out of the White House. Don’t believe all the American governors who have stood up and spoken out against this bill. Believe us.

You appropriately keep returning to the Marx Brothers for wisdom on subjects like these. Consider the movie “Duck Soup,” in which Chico Marx’s character Chicolini says, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

No one, not at any point in this process, has suggested that the ACA doesn’t need improvements. No one in his or her right mind would suggest that the costs of Medicaid in this country aren’t a runaway fiscal train. But it’s another demonstrable Republican lie that Barack Obama’s vision for affordable health care in America has been a failure. No. It is McConnell’s plan that is a failure, even before it comes to a vote. Now career hacks like Sen. Ted Cruz actually try to make it worse. It’s why big insurance companies called out Cruz last week, and showed more courage in the process than the majority of a Republican Senate.

Somehow, though, you’re supposed to think it’s the Congressional Budget Office that is more fake news. Why? Because the CBO offers inconvenient truths, righteously and honestly projecting that this Senate bill will cut Medicaid by 25% over the next 10 years, and more than that over the next 20, and leave 20 million or more without health care if it becomes law.

It is not just governors who call out McConnell’s bill for the clear and present danger that it is, by the way. It is a great senator out of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, who fights tirelessly against this bill on the floor of the Senate and everywhere else. Murphy is as much the voice of democracy as anybody we have. Not distorting democracy. Ennobling it.

“In the most powerful, affluent country in the world, no one should die or go bankrupt because they got sick,” Murphy told me Saturday. “The Republican health care plan threatens to do both — I’m fighting this bill with every ounce I’ve got.”

Don’t believe guys who think they’re running Duck Soup America. Don’t believe them. Believe Chris Murphy.