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The top Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee said a bipartisan tax deal is impossible if Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin cant commit to an overhaul that avoids giving the highest-earning Americans a tax cut.

We will not get bipartisan tax reform when the Secretary of Treasury walks back a pledge to have no absolute tax cuts for the wealthy, Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said Tuesday during a Senate Budget committee hearing.

Democrats have signaled during previous hearings that they arent likely to cooperate with the GOPs tax plans -- and Senate Republican leaders have said theyre planning to pass legislation with only their own partys votes. The GOP controls 52 of the Senates 100 votes.

But using a partisan approach would mean that the White House and GOP lawmakers must either find ways to offset rate cuts for individuals and companies with revenue raisers or settle for only temporary changes. Under Senate rules that would allow for a party-line vote, any provisions in a tax bill that would increase the long-term deficit would have to be set to expire.

Last year, Mnuchin said during an interview on CNBC that Trumps tax plan would benefit the middle class and offer no absolute cut to the upper class -- because any rate cut for high earners would be offset by ending other tax breaks that they use often.

While tax experts have questioned whether thats possible, Wyden seized on the statement to coin the phrase the Mnuchin Rule. During a separate hearing Monday, Mnuchin said his comments about avoiding cuts for the wealthy were an objective -- not a firm rule.

I have walked it back from my CNBC interview, Mnuchin said Tuesday. The Treasury chief said he and the president are focused on reaching agreement with congressional leaders now.

Our focus is on getting tax reform done -- to get tax reform done its my job to figure out what meets the presidents objective, what meets the House and the Senate so that we can get something signed into law and there will be compromises along the way, Mnuchin said.

While Trump has yet to release full details of his tax plan, he pitched it during his campaign and since as a tax cut for the middle class. The plan calls for reducing the number of individual tax rates to three, and cutting the top rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent -- a change that would represent a major tax cut for the highest earners.

Under the plan, so-called pass-through businesses -- including partnerships and limited liability companies -- would pay the same 15 percent tax rate that Trump has proposed for corporations, which would financially benefit not only mom-and-pop shops but also big partnerships like law firms and business empires like his own.

Mnuchin said during the hearing that he would consider allowing a longer time horizon for tax cuts that would add to the deficit -- a change being pushed by Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican. Current rules require that cuts would have to expire if they add to the deficit beyond 10 years; Toomey has suggested expanding that to 20 or 30 years.

I am hopeful that we can still get some bipartisan support, Mnuchin said in response to a question from Toomey. But as you said, if we cant, reconciliation is an alternative and I look forward to working with you and the Senate on ideas such as a 20-year window as opposed to a 10-year window to explore that.

The Treasury secretary also said that the budget would be updated with revised projections once there are more tax plan details -- and the administration has no intention of double counting economic growth benefits twice.

The rest is here:
Mnuchin Reversal on Rich Tax Cuts Stirs Clash With Democrat - Bloomberg

In an effort to shave votes from the Republican Partys conservativesupport base, Florida gubernatorial candidate Chris King has self-identified as an evangelical, despite supporting Democratic policies that directly contradict traditional evangelical beliefs.

King, an elder ata Florida church, bills himself as a progressive evangelical. However, Kingtakes a typical Democratic stance on mostissues, supporting gun control, abortion, the legalization of marijuana, medical welfare, and bringing Syrian refugees to the U.S.,according toReligion News Service(RNS). In no issue, beyond stated Christian beliefs, do Kings policy stances actually align with those of evangelicals.

I am a progressive, King told the Orlando Sentinel. I am somebody who believes in the values of equality and justice and fairness and care for the neediest among us.

Rev. Jim Henry, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention,saidthat a Democratic candidate established as an evangelical could garner support from up to 30 percent of white evangelicals, especially those who are not ardent supporters of the GOP.

Founder of Sojourners Jim Wallis, who is also a self-proclaimed progressive evangelical, saidthat Kings claim as a man of faith is necessary for his campaigns victory. In close elections, being friendly to religion and religious people would change the outcomes, Wallis said. If you dont take the concerns of religious people seriously, you lose elections.

Democrats have earnestlysought ways to curry favor with evangelical voters ever since evangelical support for President Donald Trump helped him win the election. Some Democrats think that King may be the answer, but betweentraditional evangelicals skepticismof Kings party and his stance on abortion, and Kings own partys discomfort with evangelical ideology, that remains to be seen.

In fact, Kings bid to garnersupport from a conservative voter base may backfire. Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Florida, saidthat the label of evangelical Democrat makes King contentious for both parties.

The Democratic Party is often perceived as anti-Christian, Jewett said. Some in the base of the Democratic Party are not anti-Christian, but are very uncomfortable with evangelical Christianity.

Im the case study of whether faith is a deal killer in the modern Democratic party, King said.

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Originally posted here:
Florida Candidate Runs As Democrat, Identifies As Evangelical - The Daily Caller

The fate of the American health-care system now rests with a group of allegedly moderate senators, who are getting ready to approve a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a repeal bill so monumental in its cruelty that they feel they have no choice but to draft it in secret, not let the public know what it does, hold not a single hearing or committee markup, slip it in a brown paper package to the Congressional Budget Office, then push it through to a vote before the July 4th recess before the inevitable backlash gets too loud.

We arent stupid, one GOP Senate aide told Caitlin Owens they know what would happen if they made their bill public. Even Republican senators who arent part of the 13-member working group crafting the bill havent been told exactly whats in it.

Today, we learned that in a break with long-standing precedent, Senate officials are cracking down on media access, informing reporters on Tuesday that they will no longer be allowed to film or record audio of interviews in the Senate side hallways of the Capitol without special permission. Everyone assumes that its so those senators can avoid having to appear on camera being asked uncomfortable questions about a bill that is as likely to be as popular as Ebola. As Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health Newstweetedabout the secrecy with which this bill is being advanced, I have covered every major health bill in Congress since 1986. Have NEVER seen anything like this.

This is how a party acts when it is ashamed of what it is about to do to the American people. Yet all it would take to stop this abomination is for three Republicans to stand up to their partys leaders and say, No I wont do this to my constituents. With only a 52-48 majority in the Senate, that would kill the bill. But right now, its looking as though this Coward Caucus is going to be unable to muster the necessary courage.

The Post's Libby Casey explains how television crews work in the Senate and how the rules are enforced. (Libby Casey,McKenna Ewen / The Washington Post)

To understand the magnitude of what theyre doing, lets focus on Medicaid, because it was supposed to be a sticking point on which some senators wouldnt budge, particularly those whose states accepted the ACAs expansion of the program. But according to various reports, the moderates have already caved.

Take Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a state where more than 175,000 people have gotten insurance thanks to the Medicaid expansion. For a while, Capito made noises about she wanted to preserve the expansion to protect her constituents. I mean, we cant just drop them off and wish them good luck, she said. But no more.

Last week The Hill reported that Capito now supports eliminating the expansion after all just doing it over seven years instead of the three years that the House bill required. The Charleston Gazette-Mail in Capitos home state noted that Capito had said she didnt want to drop all those West Virginians off a cliff, but Instead, she would drop them off a cliff on the installment plan around 25,000 per year for seven years.

President Trump on June 13 said Republican efforts to overhaul the U.S. health-care system will result in a "phenomenal bill" and "fantastic" outcome. Trump was hosting several Republican senators at the White House. (The Washington Post)

Or how about Ohio Sen. Rob Portman? In his state, 700,000 people gained insurance as a result of the Medicaid expansion. He drafted a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stating his opposition to the House bill because it didnt protect those who gained insurance from the expansion. Now Portman alsowants to phase out the expansion over seven years.

What about Sen. Susan Collins, supposedly the most moderate Republican in the Senate? While Maine hasnt accepted the expansion due to the resistance of Americas Worst Governor, Paul LePage, Collins has said that she would like to see her state accept the expansion (with some provisions that make it more uncomfortable for recipients, just so those poors dont get the idea that they should accept it without shame). But weve been through this dance with Collins before Democrats hope shell be a vote for moderation; she talks about how she wants to find a compromise; and in the end she votes with the GOP on every important bill.

Its important to know that the Medicaid question isnt just about the millions who would lose coverage if the expansion is eliminated. Paige Winfield Cunningham reports today that Senate Republicans are considering even deeper cuts to Medicaid than the $880 billion the House bill slashed out of the program. Theyd pay for the slower elimination of the expansion by cutting money out of the existing program, so they could get rid of all of the ACAs tax increases which mostly affected the wealthy. In other words, they want to cut Medicaid to give a tax break to rich people.

Just as critical, they want to end Medicaids status as an entitlement, meaning that the program wouldnt cover everyone whos eligible. States would get a chunk of money to spend, and if more people turned out to need coverage, tough luck for them. The states would be offered flexibility, which in practice would mean permission to kick people off the program and cut back on benefits. And dont think this is just about poor people over half of Medicaid dollars go to the elderly and disabled. That means that they arent just undoing the ACA; theyre making things substantially worse for tens of millions of Americas most vulnerable citizens than they were even before the ACA passed.

And theyre hoping they can do all this before anyone realizes what theyre up to, making this an act of both unconscionable heartlessness and epic cowardice. Their efforts to hide what theyre doing show that they are still capable of feeling some measure of shame. But it might not be enough to stop them.

Link:
How the Republican Coward Caucus is about to sell out its own constituents in secret - Washington Post (blog)

MSNBC

The scandalous secrecy surrounding the Republican health care gambit MSNBC Republican leaders are being so secretive about their health care overhaul that even other GOP senators have no idea what they'll soon be asked to pass. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said yesterday's he's curious ... BREAKING: CMS actuary predicts 13 million will lose coverage under Republican repeal billModernHealthcare.com all 66 news articles »

Link:
The scandalous secrecy surrounding the Republican health care gambit - MSNBC

Bangup job guys.

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When the House was busy negotiating its Obamacare repeal bill this spring, conservative Republicans said they had oneand pretty much only onegoal for the legislation: It had to bring down insurance premiums. Period.

Jordan Weissmann is Slates senior business and economics correspondent.

I can tell you that there is one score that the American people will pay attention to, Mark Meadows, chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, said in March, after the first draft of the law emerged. And that is, does it really lower their health care costs and their premiums? Thats the only score that really matters. And if this doesnt do it, then we need to make sure that we find something that does do it.

Meadows and the Freedom Caucus of course threw their support behind the American Health Care Act in May, after negotiating a number of concessions they said would lower the cost of insurance. Actually, it drives down premiums," the North Carolina representative said on Morning Joe, adding that, "The first bill that came out actually had an increase in premiums in the short term. In fact, there wasn't any obvious way Meadows could have known what the bill would do at the time, since the Congressional Budget Office hadn't scored it yet. But the CBO's forecast eventually bore out his point: Though some people, particularly older Americans, would see the cost of insurance rise astronomically, the office concluded that by 2026, average premiums would fall across the states.

So, mission accomplished?

Nope. Not at all. It seems the CBO report left out something important: the value of government subsidies. Today, Obamacare provides tax credits to lower- and middle-income families in order to make coverage more affordable. The House bill provides tax credits, too, but they would be less generous for many households, because they're based on age rather than income. Because the CBO only tried to forecast premiums before tax credits in its analysis, it didn't actually tell us whether families would be paying more or less on average for their insurance.

Turns out they might be paying more. On Tuesday, the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its own score of the House bill. It finds that gross premiumsthat is, before tax credits kick inwould fall 13 percent by 2026. Howevernet premiumsthat is, after tax creditswould rise 5 percent, because the law's subsidies would simply be worth less. What's more, average out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and co-pays would skyrocket 61 percent, in large part because the law ends the Obamacare rules that limit those expenses for poorer families. Overall, people will simply be paying more for their coverage and care ($162 a month more, on average, to be precise).

Of course, the actuary's estimates rely on a number of assumptions. For instance, it guesses that only a quarter of states will choose to waive Obamacare's insurance market regulations, such as the requirements that insurers cover certain essential medical services, as the American Health Care Act would allow them to. It's very possible that more states would take that opportunity, which could drop premiums lower.

These are also only average effects. In the end, the House bill will mean different things for different Americans. Premiums before subsidies will go down for younger, healthy customers and way up for people in their sixties, because the AHCA increases the amount insurers can charge older enrollees compared to people in their twenties. If states waive the Essential Health Benefits rules, people who need more services (like women who want childbirth coverage) will pay a lot more for them. Some upper-middle-class households that were never eligible for Obamacare's subsidies could come out ahead, meanwhile, because they would qualify for the House bill's tax credits.

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Finally, it's very likely that the Senate will change the House bill's subsidy structure, and possibly make it more generousthough that would take more money.

But don't let that obscure the greater point. Conservatives said their bill would bring down the cost of insurance for families. This estimate says it's entirely possible that, overall, it won't. If that's the case, the ACHA fails at its one and only job.

More here:
The Republican Health Care Bill Would Actually Raise Insurance Premiums, Says a New Government Report - Slate Magazine (blog)