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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The seven-year Republican quest to scrap Obamacare, a major campaign vow by President Donald Trump, lay in ruins on Friday after the Senate failed to dismantle the healthcare law, with congressional leaders now planning to move on to other matters.

John McCain, the maverick 80-year-old senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, cast the deciding vote in the dramatic early-morning showdown on the Senate floor as a bill to repeal key elements of Obamacare was defeated, 51-49, dealing Trump a crushing political setback.

McCain, who flew from Arizona this week after being diagnosed with brain cancer and was heading back for further treatment starting on Monday, joined fellow Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in voting with Senate Democrats unified against the legislation.

"It's time to move on," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose reputation as a master strategist was diminished, said on the Senate floor after the vote at roughly 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT).

While House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said fellow Republicans should not give up on healthcare, he cited other pressing issues that needed attention, including major tax-cut legislation sought by Trump.

"We have so much work still to do," Ryan said in a statement.

The Senate's healthcare failure called into question the Republican Party's ability to govern even as it controls the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump has not had a major legislative victory after more than six months in office, and his administration is mired in investigations into contacts between his election campaign and Russia and high-level White House staff infighting. He had promised to get major healthcare legislation, tax cuts and a boost in infrastructure spending through Congress in short order.

Also on the legislative agenda are spending bills for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown and raising the U.S. debt limit.

Speaking in Brentwood, New York, on Long Island, Trump expressed dismay at the bill's failure, saying, "I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode and then do it (pass legislation). I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode."

Trump, who earlier on Twitter said the three Republicans who voted no "let America down," again took aim at lawmakers in his own party. "Boy, oh boy, they've been working on that one for seven years," he said in Brentwood. "Can you believe that? The swamp. But we'll get it done."

Some lawmakers urged a bipartisan effort to buttress the existing healthcare system. With the partisan divide as wide as ever in Washington, it remained to be seen if a bipartisan approach can get off the ground.

McCain said the defeated bill did not offer meaningful reform and that its defeat presents "an opportunity to start fresh" on legislation crafted by lawmakers in both parties.

"I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to trust each other, stop the political gamesmanship and put the healthcare needs of the American people first," McCain said.

Top congressional Democrats urged a bipartisan effort to fix problems in the Obamacare law without repealing it. "Change it, improve it, but don't just take a knife and try to destroy it and put nothing in its place," top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said he was working with Republican Collins on a bipartisan effort on healthcare.

While Ryan was able to secure House passage of a comprehensive bill to gut Obamacare in May, McConnell earlier in the week was unable to win passage of similarly broad healthcare legislation amid intraparty squabbling and competing demands by hard-line conservatives and moderates. On Friday morning, he failed to get even a stripped-down, so-called skinny bill over the finish line.

Killing the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement dubbed Obamacare, has been a passion for Republicans since its 2010 enactment over their unified opposition, and was a key campaign promise by Trump last year.

Republicans lawmakers, some of whom have been gleeful about razing Obama's presidential legacy, now fear a backlash from their conservative political base that could affect the 2018 congressional elections.

For the moment, the Affordable Care Act, which extended health insurance to 20 million people and drove the percentage of uninsured people to historic lows, remains in place and must be overseen by an administration that is hostile to it.

This leaves health insurers unsure of how long the administration will continue to make billions of dollars in Obamacare payments that help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income Americans.

Schumer warned against any efforts to sabotage the law.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which represents insurers across the country, said it would work to ensure a smooth open enrollment period from Nov. 1-Dec. 15 and stabilize the individual insurance market under Obamacare for the long term.

Shares of health insurers, which had fought against the bill's proposed repeal of the mandate that Americans obtain insurance, were up. Aetna Inc rose 0.9 percent, Anthem Inc gained 2.3 percent and Humana Inc edged up 0.2 percent.

On Wall Street, shares of hospitals were mostly higher because of the dwindling prospects for big cuts in the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and disabled. Community Health Systems Inc rose 2.2 percent, HCA Healthcare Inc gained 0.6 percent and Tenet Healthcare Corp edged up 0.1 percent. Republicans have long denounced Obamacare - which expanded Medicaid and created online marketplaces for individuals to obtain coverage - as an intrusion by government on people's healthcare decisions.

Veteran House Republican Tom Cole said he thought there were "a number" of other Republican senators who were uncomfortable with the Senate's healthcare legislation but were able to vote "yes" knowing McCain's vote would kill it.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close friend of McCain, met on Friday with Trump to discuss Graham's proposal to take tax money raised by Obamacare and send it back to the states in the form of healthcare block grants, the senator's office said.

The skinny bill, released just three hours before voting began, would have retroactively repealed Obamacare's penalty on individuals who do not obtain health insurance, repealed for eight years a penalty on certain businesses that do not provide employees with insurance and repealed a tax on medical devices until 2020.

Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Roberta Rampton, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Rodrigo Campos, Amanda Becker, David Morgan and Eric Walsh; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry and Jonathan Oatis

Link:
Republicans try to pick up the pieces after healthcare defeat - Reuters

Were not big fans of citizen initiatives. They are end runs around what, in a perfect world, should be a legislative process carried out byelected representatives in a deliberative and bipartisan fashion.

But its not a perfect world far from it, as John McCain so eloquently pointed out Thursday on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He then put his money where his mouth was by casting the deciding Republican vote against yet another repeal/replace bill on Obamacare.

McCain and the Senate dont have to worry about citizen initiatives unless enough states agree to call a Constitutional Convention. Faced with gridlock within their own party, Republicans inside the Beltway will now have to sit down with Democrats, craft bipartisan health reform, then hold hearings and floor debates. It might be messier than Mitch McConnells My way or the highway dictum, but were pretty certain its what most voters expect of Congress even if they dont agree with the ultimate results.

In Arizona, where the citizen initiative is baked into the state constitution, the entrenched interests have not been able to fend off grassroots reform of what had become a closed, self-perpetuating system. Citizens have endorsed public financing for statewide and legislative candidates, an independent commission to redraw legislative and congressional districts rather than politicians, and a statewide minimum wage. They even passed a law prohibiting lawmakers from undoing citizen initiatives by legislative fiat.

Its this last initiative that has given legislative leaders fits, even though the courts have said any initiative must come with its own funding source. Voters,the leaderssay, are too easily swayed by special interests mounting self-serving campaigns for things like medical marijuana and casino gaming. If you want mob rule, why not do away with the Legislature altogether, they ask?

We might have been more sympathetic to this argument before Citizens United unleashed a torrent of campaign cash on behalf of hardline primary candidates who adopt the same tunnel vision as their funders. In Arizona,the mantrais no new taxes even if it starves the schools, as little regulation of the free market as possible and tighter voting rules that fall hardest on minorities and the poor the very groups least likely to vote for entrenched interests. Redistricting even by a citizen commission ran afoul of federal civil rights protections for minorities that concentrated Democrats in too few competitive districts, and public campaign financing has been overwhelmed by independent spending committees that use wedge issues to drive out substance. Even in the U.S. Senate, the filibuster is the tactic not of last resort but everyday strategy, so polarized have the sides become.

And now, the Republicans have decided that if they cant undo citizen initiatives in the Legislature, they will just deny petitioners access to the ballot altogether. The majority passed and the governor signed bills outlawing paying initiative and referendum petition circulators by the signature (too much temptation to forge signatures, they said) and holding petitions to a strict compliance standard every name and address must match the voter rolls exactly and conform precisely to the petition form.

As we noted above, were not enamored of citizen petitions. But when political inequality on the campaign trail, at the polling place and in the Legislature has become so tilted, we can see why an end run around representative democracy and an appeal to the grassroots seems like the only course left. The alternative, as several commentators have noted, is a vote for someone like Trump, who plays upon the unfairness of the new economy and its job insecurity, wage stagnation and wealth gap to appeal not to more open voting and representation but closed borders, withdrawing from trade agreements and restricting security alliances. The bad guys are not the captains of industry and finance seeking economic advantage through self-serving donations but the little guys immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and journalists who historically are easy prey for demagogues.

We dont know what the cure is nationally for the growing closed system as long as Citizens United stands. But in Arizona, we already have term limits and public funding of campaigns the latter, however, needs more money, not less. And why not try open primaries, as have the states of Washington and California, in the interest of more middle-ground candidates? Lawmakers who devalue the constitutional right to the initiative arent likely to be convinced to change their minds at a legislative or court hearing. They need to be replaced and the initiative protections restored.

Ideally, those rights would need to be used only sparingly. But knowing theyhave been restored wouldmean that we are back on the road to a political equality that is the only way to begin to address widening economic inequality. Given how wide that gap has already become, its a process that cant start too soon.

Link:
Our View: Protect direct democracy amid closed politics - Arizona Daily Sun

Whether Netanyahu intends to instate the death sentence for terrorists, or whether he's lying to placate his constituency, he's unworthy of leading a democracy

Its obvious to any sensible person what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is up to these days. To blur what is perceived by many of his supporters as a national humiliation at the Temple Mount, hes trumpeting right-wing and patriotic expressions: a heros reception for the security officer at the Israeli Embassy in Amman, support for the Jerusalem and nation-state bills, a suggestion to transfer the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm to the Palestinians, calls for the death penalty on the murderer at the settlement of Halamish.

The death sentence is cold-blooded murder perpetrated by civil society; the hangmans hood is the mask behind which both the people and cowardly politicians hide. But Netanyahu who assumes his electoral base is an aggressive guard dog to be tempted by racist and violent statements bombards the public with ultra-nationalist declarations every time he advances a policy thats somewhat moderate.

He thereby puts opponents of his policies in a bind. Should they play the part of the scapegoat he gives them in the show he stages for his voters, decrying the undoing of Israeli democracy as required of them in this play? Or should they ignore his declarations as long as these statements arent backed by actions?

Should we be dragged yet again into debates over the nation-state bill and ignore his wink and nod over his voters' heads, while he drags out the vote on this bill from one Knesset session to the next? Its already established that he votes for bills he objects to in the knowledge that the High Court of Justice will strike them down, as he did with the bill that permits the expropriation of private Palestinian land.

Netanyahu hurls his poisoned darts at the heart of Israeli democracy along with instructions to neutralize their effects. The death sentence for terrorists is something that should be implemented in heinous cases. Its enshrined in the law. You need to have the judges reach unanimity, but they also want to know the governments position. My position as prime minister, in such a case of a murderer as lowly as this, is that he must be put to death, he consoled the Salomon family in their grief.

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This is a classic Netanyahu move. The public, hurting and clamoring for revenge, gets its pound of flesh. Sane people get the antidote thats embedded in the statement: the need for the judges unanimity.

Netanyahus opponents can take comfort in the fact that compared to some of his wildest statements, even his harsh policies sometime seem moderate. This is, however, small comfort, and in the long run it doesnt matter. Residue from the poison lingers, and the body of democracy continues to weaken. Whether Netanyahu intends to instate the death sentence for terrorists, or whether hes lying as a way to placate his constituency, hes unworthy of standing at the head of a democracy.

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Excerpt from:
A death sentence for democracy - Haaretz Editorial - Israel News ... - Haaretz

Tracey Tapp | special to the Daily News

While being interviewed by the Daily News for the article "Taking it to the Streets" (July 20 edition), I was asked if we were afraid to protest. I was taken aback by the question. Why should we be afraid to carry out our responsibility to participate in our democracy?

Ive reflected a lot on that question since the interview. The fact is, some Progressives Northwest Florida members are afraid to be vocal about their views because it could hurt their business or negatively impact their children in school. And to be honest, we do think about our physical safety. Let that sink in. What has our country come to when you cant express political views without fear for your physical safety?

This fear is not unfounded. Bikers for Trump provide security for Congressman Matt Gaetz. And there is evidence they roughed up an attendee at one of his town halls. He also invited a local militia to protect him. Let that sink in. Do you want to live in a country where elected officials use non-government, para-military forces to rough up constituents that dont agree with their positions?

We are mostly women. Ask any staffer at the Pensacola office of Senator Rubio or Congressman Gaetz. Weve met with them every Tuesday for the last six months to participate in our democracy. We are unarmed. We adhere to the principles of non-violent resistance. We are not dangerous. This is true across the country. Let this sink in. Non-violent women are leading the resistance.

Despite this, the National Rifle Association recently released a video depicting us as violent and essentially inviting people to take matters into their own hands. So yes, in this 2nd Amendment loving area, we think about our safety. Let that sink in. You are being told lies about who we are and what our aims are. You are being asked to incite violence against women exercising their civil liberties.

Add to this the fact that state legislatures across the country are advancing bills to criminalize public protests. The basic tenants of our democracy free speech and the right to assembly are under attack. Let that sink in. Do you want to live in a country where criticizing the government is a crime?

Progressives Northwest Florida appreciates it when city governments help us secure permits for our marches and vigils. We appreciate it when the police help us understand and abide by the laws that govern civil discourse and disobedience in our country. And we especially appreciate it when they keep us safe while exercising these rights.

We want you to know we are here. And even if we are sometimes afraid, we are not going away. Let that sink in.

This guest column was written by Tracey Tapp, who lives in Fort Walton Beach.

Visit link:
GUEST COLUMN: Is it dangerous to participate in democracy? - The Northwest Florida Daily News

On Friday, Lee claimed, By putting [General] John Kelly in charge, [President] Trump is militarizing the White House [and] putting our executive branch in the hands of an extremist.

Outgoing White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer condemned the remarks, describing it as wrong and offensive on multiple levels.

Communist magazine Peoples Weekly World reportedly listed Lee as a co-sponsor for a Communist Party USA (CPUSA)event in 1999.

In 2002, Lee also received the endorsement of the CPUSA for her Congressional race, alongside former Rep. Mike Honda. The partys national board wrote in a report:

The priority labor campaigns deserve our support. In addition our work will take us beyond these races to election districts where we have organization and where there are strong pro-labor candidates, African American, Mexican American and Latino candidates such as Rep. Mike Honda and Rep. Barbara Lee.

At a 2003 Peoples Weekly World fundraising luncheon, Each honoree received a special congressional certificate from Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, in whose district the banquet was held.

Following Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castros death last November, Lee said she was very sad for the Cuban people, claiming Castro led a revolution in Cuba that led social improvements for his people, ignoring his legacy of mass murder, totalitarianism, and widespread poverty. Lee used the death of Castro, who she met with eight times throughout her career, toattack then-President Elect Donald Trump.

In February this year, Lee also praised some participantsof the riot at UC Berkeley, which successfully canceled a talk from former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.She wrote in a press release:

Milo Yiannopoulos has made a career of inflaming racist, sexist and nativist sentiments. Berkeley has a proud history of dissent and students were fully within their rights to protest peacefully. I am disappointed by the unacceptable acts of violence by outside agitators which were counterproductive and dangerous.

Lee also accused Donald Trump of trying to bully [students] into silence after he threatened to cut federal funding if students at the university could not respect the first amendment.

President Donald Trump cannot bully our university into silence. Simply put, President Trumps empty threat to cut funding from UC Berkeley is an abuse of power. As a senior member of the education funding subcommittee, I will continue to stand up to President Trumps overreach and defend the rights of our students and faculty.

A prominent member of the Resist movement, Lee alsodevoted an entire town hall meeting in May to the question of whether, and how, President Donald Trump can be removed from office.

You can follow Ben Kewon Facebook, on Twitter at@ben_kew,oremail him at bkew@breitbart.com

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Democrat Who Claims Trump 'Militarizing' White House with 'Extremist' John Kelly Has Deep Links to Communism - Breitbart News