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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell misleadingly claims that the Senate's health-care proposal won't lead to cuts in Medicaid. (Meg Kelly,Julio Negron/The Washington Post)

Republicans have made a big change to their health-care plan: Instead of increasing costs for the poor and sick to lower them for the rich and healthy, it would lower costs for the rich and healthy to increase them for the poor and sick.

See the difference? No? Well, you must not be a Republican senator then.

Now, all kidding aside, it is true that the Senate's latest health-care plan would depart from its earlier versions in a few key ways. Where it wouldn't, though, is in its results. Those would be the same as ever: insurance would become much more expensive for the sick, slightly more affordable for the healthy, and appreciably worse for everyone in the form of higher out-of-pocket costs. The other constant, of course, isthat Republicans would userepealing Obamacare as an excuse to eviscerate Medicaid. That doesn't get as much attention sinceit isn't "new" it's been the cornerstone of every Republican plan so far but it should. Those cuts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would make 15 million people lose their insurance over the next 10 years.

Indeed, the fact that the Senate would keep all the Medicaid cuts in its new plan that it had in its old one is maybe the most remarkable thing about it. They didn't even try to hide it like they did with their tax cuts for the rich. Republicans, you see, have not only been trying to get rid of Obamacare's rules protecting people with preexisting conditions, but also its taxes on wealthy investors. No surprise there. Tax cuts for thewealthy hasbeen the party'sraison d'trefor 40 years now. But it's also where their Medicaid cuts, which aren't even tangential to all this, come in: those are about offsetting the cost of those tax cuts. The problem, though, is that quite literally taking health-care from the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich isn't the most popular of ideas. Even a conservative like Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has said that he wants to "make sure we're not in a situation where we're cutting taxes for the wealthy and at the same time, basically, for lower-income citizens, passing a larger burden on to them." So Republicans decided to get rid of some of their tax cuts for the rich, and use that money to ... expand tax breaks for the rich?

Actually, yes. That, after all, is what health savings accounts are. They let people pay their out-of-pocket medical expenses with pre-tax dollars, which only helps them if they have enough money to be able to put some aside and are in a high enough tax bracket that it's even worth doing so. It's no wonder, then, that households making $100,000 or more make up 58 percent of all HSA accounts and 70 percent of the value of all HSA contributions. Which is to say that the Senate bill would take what's already a tax shelter for the well-off HSA moneycan be invested tax-free and turn it into even more of one by allowing people to use HSAs to pay for their health-care premiums in addition to their health-care expenses. In other words, Republicans would take from the rich with their right hand and give it back with their left.

But there's no legerdemain when it comes to Medicaid. There are just cuts, and more cuts. The Senate bill would start by undoing Obamacare's Medicaid expansion for poor adults, but then go much further than that. The important thing to understand is that right now Medicaid is an open-ended program that grows as need does. But, starting in 2020, the Senate bill would turn it into one that's capped on a per person basis and only grows at a certain rate of inflation; at first that would be by medical inflation (which is actually lower than Medicaid's projected growth), but then, in 2025, it'd be by the even lower overall rate of inflation. The result, according to the CBO, is that Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than it would otherwise be, and 35 percent lower in 2036.

Republicans, for their part, have responded to this in what can only be called Orwellian fashion. President Trump has argued that these cuts aren't really cuts because Medicaid spending would still grow, just not as much. Vice President Pence has said that reducing Medicaid spending by$772 billion the next decade would "strengthen and secure Medicaid for the neediest in our society." And Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has outright claimed that "there are no cuts to the Medicaid program" since states would be given "greater flexibility" to find efficiencies. That might be convincing to some Republicans, but not, as the New York Times' Margot Sanger-Katz points out, to the 40 percent of low-incomeadults, 60 percent of kids with disabilities, and 64 percent of nursing home residents who are covered by Medicaid. These are poor and sick people who can't afford any other care. Whether giving less money to Medicaid than we said we would is taking money away from Medicaid and it is is a semantic game that doesn't change the fact that there will be far less money for them.

Health care is complicated, but the Senate bill isn't. The non-Medicaid parts would make things as bad as they were before Obamacare, and the Medicaid parts would make them even worse than that. People are focused on the first half of that because Senate Republicans have come up with new and more far-reaching ways to undermine Obamacare's protections for people with preexisting conditions to the point of meaningless insurers and actuaries agree on that but the second half of it is no better. It would transform Medicaid from a program that makes sure the most vulnerable people in society can get care into one that might let them get care.

Meet the new Republican health-care plan, same as the old Republican health-care plan.

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Republicans' Obamacare repeal is starting to look like Medicaid repeal - Washington Post

Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) has hitched his political star to the campaign to repeal the gas tax a package of vehicle fees and fuel taxes that the Legislature passed earlier this year to raise $52 billion over 10 years for transportation projects. The little-known legislator from Orange County launched a citizens initiative to repeal the fuel taxes and fees in May. In June, he announced his candidacy for governor in 2018.

Meanwhile, in Orange County, the California Republican Party has been working intensely to recall first-term state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton). Whats their argument against him? That he voted for the gas tax.

Other Republican politicians also have jumped on the bandwagon, including former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, who is pushing the repeal idea on a radio show he hosts.

But dont be fooled. The campaign by Republicans to punish supporters of the gas tax is really just the latest tactic in their war to wipe out with the Democratic supermajority in the state Senate and revive their own declining influence in state government. After all, the gas tax package passed with the votes of 81 legislators only one of whom was a Republican.

If this strategy rings familiar thats because a similar campaign to stop the car tax contributed to the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 and boosted the political careers of several Republicans, including Arnold Schwarzenegger. Davis crime, in the eyes of voters, was that he had raised vehicle fees from $70 a year to about $210 to cover a hole in the state budget. The electricity crisis from few years earlier also played a role in the recall campaign, but in the end, the car tax in this car-loving state was a more powerful campaign slogan even than rolling blackouts.

Of course, theres nothing unusual about Republicans seeking to win elections by attacking tax hikes. But it is cynical and destructive for them to make stop the gas tax the centerpiece of their political campaigns in the 2018 election. The package of fuel taxes and fees passed earlier this year represents an overdue investment in the states crumbling infrastructure. Even most Republicans agree that the states transportation system is in sorry shape from years of inadequate construction and maintenance. And thats no wonder, considering that the gasoline tax hasnt been raised in nearly three decades not since a bipartisan deal in 1989 supported by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian as an important investment in the states economic future.

Whats more, Republicans are exaggerating the significance of this relatively minor tax hike in a state that faces much more significant problems. Politicians should be talking about income inequality, affordable housing and the dangers of Trumps anti-immigrant policies to California residents, for starters. Or the congressional healthcare proposal that will force millions of people to lose coverage. Or the constant threat to Californias natural resources its mountains, deserts, oceans, wildlife and air from the environmentally hostile federal government.

Its hard to imagine that the prospect of paying $10 more a month to finally fix the states roads and bridges, which are in observably bad shape, and build public transportation projects for future traffic relief, even ranks on the same outrage scale as these critical California issues.

Will the Republicans gas tax ploy work? Possibly not. The political landscape has changed a lot since 2003, when 35% of California voters were registered Republican and the GOP still wielded some power in Sacramento. Since then, Republican registration has dropped steadily by about 400,000 even as the states population has grown. Now, only about a quarter of the states voters are registered Republican, and the GOP holds not one statewide office. Historically, Republican enclaves such as Orange County and northern San Diego County have turned purple, and in 2018, Republicans are expected to face tough challenges to retain congressional seats.

The reason the party of Ronald Reagan is becoming increasingly irrelevant is because it continues to back the wrong issues and demonize the very people it needs to attract to remain relevant in California.

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Republicans are playing politics with the gas tax again. No wonder they have no power in California - Los Angeles Times

Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Donald Trumps Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.

Americas first Republican president reportedly said, Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a mans character, give him power. The current Republican president and the party he controls were granted monopoly power over Washington in November and already find themselves spectacularly failing Abraham Lincolns character exam.

It would take far more than a single column to detail Trumps failures in the months following his bleak inaugural address. But the Republican leaders who have subjugated themselves to the White Houses corrupting influence fell short of Lincolns standard long before their favorite reality-TV star brought his gaudy circus act to Washington.

When I left Congress in 2001, I praised my partys successful efforts to balance the budget for the first time in a generation and keep many of the promises that led to our takeover in 1994. I concluded my last speech on the House floor by foolishly predicting that Republicans would balance budgets and champion a restrained foreign policy for as long as they held power.

I would be proved wrong immediately.

As the new century began, Republicans gained control of the federal government. George W. Bush and the GOP Congress responded by turning a $155 billion surplus into a $1 trillion deficit and doubling the national debt, passing a $7 trillion unfunded entitlement program and promoting a foreign policy so utopian it would have made Woodrow Wilson blush. Voters made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House in 2006 and Barack Obama president in 2008.

After their well-deserved drubbing, Republicans swore that if voters ever entrusted them with running Washington again, they would prove themselves worthy. Trumps party was given a second chance this year, but it has spent almost every day since then making the majority of Americans regret it.

The GOP president questioned Americas constitutional system of checks and balances. Republican leaders said nothing. He echoed Stalin and Mao by calling the free press the enemy of the people. Republican leaders were silent. And as the commander in chief insulted allies while embracing autocratic thugs, Republicans who spent a decade supporting wars of choice remained quiet. Meanwhile, their budget-busting proposals demonstrate a fiscal recklessness very much in line with the Bush years.

Last weeks Russia revelations show just how shamelessly Republican lawmakers will stand by a longtime Democrat who switched parties after the promotion of a racist theory about Barack Obama gave him standing in Lincolns once-proud party. Neither Lincoln, William Buckley nor Ronald Reagan would recognize this movement.

It is a dying party that I can no longer defend.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham has long predicted that the 150-year duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats will end. The signs seem obvious enough. When my Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994, it was the first time the GOP had won the House in a generation. The two parties have been in a state of turmoil ever since.

In 2004, Republican strategist Karl Rove anticipated a majority that would last a generation; two years later, Pelosi became the most liberal House speaker in history. Obama was swept into power by a supposedly unassailable Democratic coalition. In 2010, the Tea Party tide rolled in. Obamas re-election returned the momentum to the Democrats, but Republicans won a historic state-level landslide in 2014. Then last fall, Trump demolished both the Republican and Democratic establishments.

Political historians will one day view Trump as a historical anomaly. But the wreckage of this man will break the Republican Party into pieces and lead to the election of independent thinkers no longer tethered to the tired dogmas of the polarized past. When that day mercifully arrives, the two-party duopoly that has strangled American politics for almost two centuries will finally come to an end. And Washington just may begin to work again.

JoeScarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, hosts the MSNBC show Morning Joe.

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Donald Trump is killing the Republican Party - The Denver Post

OLEAN In an era of fake news accusations, a group of local progressives are hoping to separate fact from fiction with a film series about issues that cause plenty of debate in the American political landscape.

Citizens Action Network of Southwestern New York plans to show four documentaries this summer that delve into topics such as health care, the environment, voting rights and refugees. The local group, which formed in response to Donald Trumps presidential election victory, also plans to feature a panel of local experts for each film.

I think all the issues being addressed in the films are topics in which a lot of people strongly have either positive or negative feelings and where often the conversations are based on inadequate or entirely false information, said Chris Stanley, a Citizens Action Network organizer and St. Bonaventure University theology professor. And so the idea is to have films where experts who are involved in the issues are presenting facts and data in order to perhaps promote more intelligent conversations and more informed political actions on the issues.

The first film, Now Is the Time, which explains a single-payer health care system and why some feel it is the cheapest and most effective way to deliver medical care in the U.S., will be presented at 7 p.m. July 20 at the African American Center for Cultural Development.

A single-payer health care system is a system in which a public agency like the federal government provides financing for health care, but the care is still provided by private agencies, and all residents receive coverage regardless of income, occupation or health status.

After the film, Upper Allegheny Health System President and CEO Tim Finan, Olean Medical Group CEO Dan Strauch and Athena Godet-Calogeras, chairperson of the Health Care Access Coalition, will speak briefly about a single-payer system and answer questions from the audience.

Wed like to hope that people ... will attend the film and ask the actual medical professionals about what they think is going to work best rather than simply listening to politicians, Stanley said.

Finan, Strauch and Godet-Calogeras participation on the panel doesnt necessarily mean they support a single-payer system, Stanley said, adding he didnt ask them for their opinions when inviting them to the screening.

Were intentionally trying to line up diverse respondents to our films, not necessarily people who will agree with everything thats being said in the films, so that we can promote some honest conversation about issues rather than simply promoting one point of view or one agenda, he said.

The event is free, but audience members can contribute toward the screening costs if they wish. The screening is co-sponsored by the Health Care Access Coalition.

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The other three films, which will address the environment, voting rights and Syrian refugees, respectively, will be shown at two-week intervals after the first screening. Citizens Action Network of Southwestern New York will announce more details about the films at a later date.

The African American Center for Cultural Development is located at 1801 W. State St.

(Contact reporter Tom Dinki at tdinki@oleantimesherald.com. Follow him on Twitter, @tomdinki)

Originally posted here:
Olean progressives to hold film series - Olean Times Herald

Protesters gather outside Senator Jeff Flake's (R-Ariz.) office voicing their opposition to Republican plans to repeal and replace Obamacare on July 10, 2017. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Liberal activists fighting to save Obamacare are seeking to capitalize on an unexpected gift at least another week, if not more, before the Senate GOP will bring its repeal plan to the floor.

Progressive groups already had stocked this week with public protests against the Republican legislation, expecting a make-or-break vote. But Sen. John McCains absence from the Capitol following surgery for a blood clot handed the left a major opportunity to rally opposition and keep the spotlight on the GOPs struggle to even begin debate on a bill that polls dismally with the public.

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Activists are preparing protests well into next month aimed at keeping the pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) conference, particularly the half-dozen most closely watched moderate swing votes.

Every day the Senate doesnt repeal ACA and gut Medicaid is a day that makes it less likely theyll be able to, MoveOn.org Washington director Ben Wikler told reporters. "Every day this bill is dangling out there in public, it becomes more unpopular."

The fresh push kicked off on Monday. The Bernie Sanders-backed group Our Revolution staged sit-ins at a half-dozen Senate GOP offices throughout the day, while the upstart liberal organization Indivisible prepared for more than 100 separate demonstrations in 39 states on Tuesday. More activist groups returned to the Hill for a series of near-daily rallies against the bill, with appearances by Democratic senators.

The right mounted no similar flurry of public activity in defense of the bill, underscoring the mismatch in grassroots energy between liberals and conservatives who had pressed McConnell to embrace a more straightforward repeal strategy.

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And the harder McConnell pushes for a vote on uprooting the Affordable Care Act, the more his opponents relish his failure to notch that quick victory.

With only two public GOP no votes on taking up the bill -- Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul -- activists are expecting to see several Republicans hop off the fence at once. They acknowledge that the extra time provided by McCain's recuperation also gives McConnell time to cajole undecided Republicans one-on-one, but they're banking on the imminent Congressional Budget Office score of the bill and other looming negative headlines to make the majority leader's job even harder as the clock ticks toward August.

"Extra time matters a lot more when youre appealing to the general public that despises this bill than it does when youre playing an inside the Beltway game of trading buy-offs and favors with people who were listening anyway," Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist advising pro-Obamacare groups, said in an interview.

Rather than organize the sort of massive marches that anti-Trump groups favored earlier in the year, health care organizers are focusing on personal stories from constituents appealing directly to their senators. Capitol Police reported arresting 33 demonstrators in the Senate as of midday Monday during liberal groups' protest actions.

"The message weve been telling our groups, especially the ones in D.C., is to go to an office," said Indivisible policy director Angel Padilla. "You want to go rally and march? Great! But if you want to be effective at congressional advocacy, go to your member's offices and make sure they see you inside."

In that vein, Planned Parenthood is setting up a Wednesday event for supporters to share personal stories about how the seven-year-old health care law has helped them and call their senators, national organizing director Deirdre Schifeling told reporters. Another liberal group, UltraViolet, told reporters Monday that it had commissioned planes to fly in Ohio, Alaska, and West Virginia -- all swing states represented by moderate Republicans undecided on the repeal bill.

Ferguson also identified another benefit to anti-repeal activists from the delay in a Senate vote: The CBO may have time to release a nonpartisan score of a new addition to the legislation, authored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), that would allow insurers to sell plans not compliant with Obamacare. Republicans had suggested they might rely on a score of the Cruz proposal from the Trump administration if the CBO were not able to finish an independent assessment in time for a vote this week.

"They would have to rely on whatever sham analysis" the Department of Health and Human Services could produce, Ferguson said, "but now theyve lost that excuse."

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Liberals pounce on Obamacare vote delay - Politico