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WASHINGTON Three years ago when he was starting to run for president, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke with then-California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris about his proposals to reduce the rates at which convicted criminals commit new crimes and return to jail. Now that theyre both in the Senate, Paul and Harris are teaming up on another criminal justice reform idea they know is popular back home and believe can find bipartisan support: providing aid to people who cant afford bail.

It literally is about do you have cash sitting at home that you can afford to write the check to get out versus, you dont, youre barely making ends meet every month, Harris, D-Calif., said.

Associated Press

But bills co-written by Democrats and Republicans barely move past the first round of headlines and news conferences these days even if its backed by an unlikely pair. Just ask Paul, who earned attention in 2014 for partnering with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., to try changing the nations sentencing laws and drug control policy. The combination of a short, mop-topped ophthalmologist from rural Kentucky and the tall, bald former big-city mayor was too good to be ignored. Their plans went nowhere.

And yet, Paul is trying again.

He and Harris argue that the requirement that defendants provide some cash to get bail and earn their release keeps hundreds of thousands of defendants behind bars awaiting trial on minor charges because they cant afford to get out. They call it one of the most inequitable aspects of the criminal justice system.

I think theres a majority there might even be 60 votes for some of these things on criminal justice reform, Paul said in a joint interview with Harris on Tuesday. We have to push forward.

Harris agreed.

A lot of what were talking about is disparities in terms of how Americans are treated in the criminal justice because of their wealth or not, she said. Poor people, working people are treated differently, particularly on this issue of bail.

Paul and Harris Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act is a modest proposal that would set aside $10 million in federal grant money to begin encouraging more states to drop or curtail cash bail systems and consider other factors when sorting out if a defendant should be kept behind bars before trial.

Nationwide, roughly 47 percent of felony defendants with bonds remain jailed before their cases are heard because they cannot make bail. Harriss office said the problem affects more than 450,000 people nationwide.

But a growing number of large jurisdictions are changing their policy both to ease prison populations and to account for a defendants financial situation. For years, Washington, D.C. has released suspects awaiting trial without requiring them to leave behind any money on a promise that they will return to court and meet conditions such as checking in with a pretrial officer or submit to drug tests.

And last week, Chicago became the largest city in the nation to allow judges to consider whether people do not have enough money to pay for their release, an important victory for bail reform advocates. Under the new rules, judges can no longer set bail so high that defendants cant afford to pay for their release. The decision followed a Chicago Tribune investigation that found as many as 300 prisoners sat in the Cook County Jail because they couldnt pay $100 to post bail.

Its not just about race its about poverty, Paul said, noting that support for reforming the criminal justice system cuts across states, parties and ideology.

In Kentucky, state lawmakers are debating whether to expand a felony expungement law that would allow people convicted of minor drug offenses to clear their records after 10 years. That comes after the Republican governor signed a bill last year that allows people convicted of nonviolent felonies to apply to expunge their records if they stay out of trouble for five years and pay a $500 fee.

Paul said he supports such bills because, You cant work if you have this glaring criminal record out there that prevents you from finding work.

Three years ago this summer as buzz about a potential presidential campaign hit a fever pitch, Paul traveled to Guatemala to perform free eye surgeries for hundreds of impoverished people. The stage-managed political voyage helped reveal a rarely seen side of the senator and helped stoke speculation ahead of an ultimately unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

Harris, just seven months into her first Senate term, is already enduring fevered speculation about her political future. In recent weeks, she has met with top-dollar Democratic donors who backed Hillary Clintons presidential campaign and has consented to carefully-chosen interviews with niche outlets, including a live-audience tapping of Pod Save America, a podcast popular with young progressives, and the release of a Spotify music playlist to Blavity, a website popular with Black millennials, timed to coincide with African American Music Month.

In their only joint interview to tout their new bill, Paul indirectly encouraged Harris to explore a presidential bid but didnt endorse her. After all, he hasnt ruled another presidential campaign some day.

I think on the Democrat side theres a huge opening for lots and lots of people to rise up to be that person, Paul said.

Harris dismissed speculation about the presidency but didnt deny an interest. Asked why she thinks people are talking about her as a presidential candidate, she said, I think people like to gossip.

I came to D.C. hoping to have impact on real human beings and their lives. And sharing with this incredible body of people these smart, powerful people the views and the voices of folks that might not otherwise be seen or heard, she added.

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Why are Rand Paul and Kamala Harris teaming up on a bill? The ... - The Denver Post

But after six months of repeated failures to pass any meaningful legislation during what is traditionally the most productive time for a party with unified control of both the White House and Congress, it is Republicans who are clearly flailing.

The Senate has rejected a scaled-down Republican plan to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. The 49-to-51 vote was a humiliating setback for the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Once architects of conservative policy, the party appears short of fresh ideas, left to try to find often incoherent compromises between the hard right flank that helped bring it to power and the populist notions that fueled President Trumps victory last year. Republicans talked incessantly about patient-centered health care, but it was a slogan that never had much meaning. Their only coherent argument for excising the health care law was because they said they would for seven years.

This is what you get when you have a president with no fixed principles, indifferent to policy and ignorant of the legislative process, said Charlie Sykes, a veteran Republican operative and former radio host. He added, Theres a difference between whiteboards and legislating in the real world. Its hard to take away benefits once conferred.

Many of the party leaders appear to remain out of step with their own voters, who took seriously Mr. Trumps warm embrace of some government entitlement programs, even as he abandoned those notions in recent months. While some conservative pundits attacked their failure to repeal the health care law this spring, scant protests rose up from the right to counter the thousands of Affordable Care Act supporters who appealed to lawmakers for months to maintain much of the law.

Congressional Republicans, especially in the House, are hamstrung by their lack of legislative experience. Many of them have never served under a president of their own party or passed major policy reforms that require at least token bipartisan support, and remain in chin-out oppositional mode.

Most of the health care bills they have passed were largely symbolic gestures that they knew would be vetoed by President Obama. But those bills, including a root-to-branch repeal vote in 2015, came back to haunt them, creating expectations with the partys base that they were unwilling to revisit once in power.

The Republicans were never really forced in their years of opposition to come up with a coherent alternative, said Peter Wehner, a director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush. There was no human cost in those artificial votes, and that did not force them to come up with a real governing alternative. He added, As the years went by the Affordable Care Acts roots grew and it became entwined in the health care system. It was an extremely complicated legislative task to undo it.

Republicans built no coalition around their bill, choosing instead to alienate the sorts of groups they said were simply paid off by Democrats when they passed the Affordable Care Act, in particular insurance companies. Absent that coalition, Republicans needed one another to counter the voices of doctors, hospitals, disease groups, the AARP and others who attacked their efforts. But even as the bill was about to be voted on, after Democrats came to the floor to give passionate speeches urging its failure, few Republicans came to its defense.

In the end, Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was reduced to running out the clock as he read some notions about health care from a podium, refusing to take questions from heckling Democrats.

The most consistent voice on the bill was that of Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, but her voice was raised in perpetual opposition to both the process involved in drafting the bill and its substance. Ms. Collins, no fan of the current law, still gave persistent voice to a repeals most likely losers, who also happen to greatly populate her home state the old, the poor and those living in rural areas.

But most Republicans believe that their path to repealing the law would have likely succeeded had it not been for Mr. Trump, whose comments about other topics and inconsistent support for their work he celebrated a House-passed bill in a Rose Garden ceremony only to denounce it as mean weeks later undermined their efforts.

I think this is in good measure Trumps fault, Mr. Wehner said, echoing what many Republicans said privately and increasingly in public. He has no knowledge of public policy and is indifferent to it. To try and get massive reform through Congress, even if you have control of Congress, you need the president to be an asset. He isnt only not an asset, he is an active adversary. He is dead weight for Republicans.

Members of both parties said that the only path forward for health care and indeed any legislation would now have to be a product of bipartisan efforts.

I believe we have an opportunity now to have discussions on durable, sustainable reforms, said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania who opposed the House efforts this year to repeal the law. I think moderate voices will be important in health care just as they already have been on budgets, appropriations bills and anything else that needs to be enacted into law.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on July 29, 2017, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: After Health Failure, G.O.P. Is Floundering.

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On Health, Republicans Find They Cannot Beat Something With Nothing - New York Times

This has been quite a week in Washington, a week full of terror, intrigue, suspense, backstabbing and outright chaos. While we might not have been able to predict the particular contours of the catastrophe that complete GOP rule has been, we should have known it would turn out something like this.

Guess what, America: This is what you get when you elect Republicans.

It goes much further than their repugnant and disastrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but all the contemporary GOPs pathologies could be seen there: their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing. It was the perfect Republican spectacle.

Its remarkable to consider that there was a time not too long ago when the Grand Old Party was known for being serious, sober, a little boring, but above all, responsible. They were conservative in the traditional sense: wanting to conserve what they thought was good and fearful of rapid change. You might not have agreed with them, but there were limits to the damage they could do. The devolution from that Republican Party to the one we see today took a couple of decades and had many sources, but its fullest expression was reached with the lifting up of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, this contemptible buffoon who may have been literally the single worst prominent American they could have chosen to be their standard-bearer. I mean that seriously. Can you think of a single person who might have run for president who is more ignorant, more impulsive, more vindictive and more generally dangerous than Donald Trump? And yet they rallied around him with near-unanimity, a worried shake of the head to his endless stream of atrocious statements and actions the strongest dissent most of them could muster.

With their repeal effort dead for now, Republicans still need to make some difficult health insurance decisions. The Post's Paige W. Cunningham explains what comes next. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

So now we see the results of putting this party and this president in charge. Lets take a little tour around the news and see whats going on, shall we?

I could go on and delve into the presidents plan to blow up the Iran nuclear deal, or the climate-denial initiative at the Environmental Protection Agency, or all the fossil-fuel lobbyists now staffing the Interior Department, or any of a hundred abominable policies and programs. But the point is, were getting just what we should have expected. Donald Trump isnt an aberration, hes the apotheosis of contemporary Republicanism.

Senate Republicans attempted to pass a "skinny repeal" bill that would undo some portions of the Affordable Care Act on July 28, but the bill failed after three GOP senators voted against it. (The Washington Post)

Republicans dont care about making an honest case for their priorities; Trump lies nearly every time he opens his mouth. Theyre unconcerned about the details of policy; he knows less about how government works than your average sixth-grader. Theyre indifferent to human suffering; he literally advocates destroying the individual health-care market so he can blame Barack Obama for the lives that wind up ruined. They advocate a mindless anti-government philosophy; he has so much contempt for governing that he puts his son-in-law in charge of everything from solving the opioid crisis to achieving Middle East peace. They whine endlessly about the liberal media; he spends hours every day watching Fox & Friends and takes advice from Sean Hannity. Trump is the essence of the GOP, distilled down to its depraved and odious core.

America was given a reprieve last night, saved from the Republicans cruelest plans by a Democratic Party that stood strong, thousands of activists and ordinary citizens who organized in opposition and the GOPs own incompetence. But this what you get when you give todays Republican Party complete control of the government. Have no doubt: There are more horrors to come.

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This is what you get when you elect Republicans - Washington Post

Sen. John McCain says defeat of the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act is a chance for a fresh start. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Sen. John McCain says defeat of the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act is a chance for a fresh start.

Updated at 3 p.m. ET

The day following the defeat of the latest attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act, Republicans predictably expressed disappointment, Democrats relief, and both sides uncertainty over what, exactly, comes next.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., issued a statement that pointedly reminded GOP voters that the House upheld its end of the deal and approved a bill repealing and replacing Obamacare.

"Unfortunately," Ryan said, "the Senate was unable to reach a consensus. I am disappointed and frustrated, but we should not give up. I encourage the Senate to continue working toward a real solution that keeps our promise."

Speaking to a audience of law enforcement officers on Long Island, N.Y., President Trump said, "They should have approved health care last night, but you can't have everything, boy oh boy." He added, "They've been working on that for seven years, can you believe that? The Swamp. But we'll get it done, we're going to get it done." Trump also stated that he "said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode and then do it. I turned out to be right, let Obamacare implode."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, though clearly pleased with the outcome of the vote early Friday morning, insisted it was "not a time for celebration, it's a time for relief." He praised Republican Sen. John McCain as a hero for his vote against the Senate GOP repeal plan, calling it it an "amazing moment" one he hopes will be "a turning point where the Senate turned back from it's partisanship and started to work together."

In his own statement, McCain said the failure of the GOP plan "presents the Senate with an opportunity to start fresh. It is now time to return to regular order with input from all of our members Republicans and Democrats and bring a bill to the floor of the Senate for amendment and debate."

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, another of the three Republicans to vote against the GOP plan (Alaska's Lisa Murkowski was the other), said she is pleased that Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., has said he will hold hearings on reform measures.

Schumer suggested the two sides could find consensus on measures aimed at shoring up Obamacare, saying, "Nobody has said Obamacare is perfect."

But whether there's much appetite among Republicans for merely tweaking the health insurance program remains to be seen.

Trump tweeted after the GOP plan was defeated that the next step should be "let Obamacare implode, then deal."

Schumer called that approach "sabotage," and said he hopes Republicans in the House and Senate "will turn a deaf ear on that."

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., was critical of Trump, saying, "He never really laid out core principles and didn't sell them to the American people."

Whether repeal of the Affordable Care Act is really, most sincerely dead, as the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz was pronounced, remains to be seen.

After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor, "I regret that our efforts were simply not enough at this time." He denounced Democrats' opposition to Republican efforts to "find a way to something better than Obamacare," adding, "It's time for our friends on the other side to tell us what they have in mind. And we'll see how the American people feel about their ideas."

He concluded his remarks by saying, "It's time to move on," naming the next legislation on the agenda for Friday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement that "cutting taxes for middle class families and fixing our broken tax code" is at the top of his list when Congress returns from its August recess.

At a House GOP conference Friday morning, Ryan reportedly recited the lyrics to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," a metaphor he suggested for the sinking of the GOP's seven-year journey to repeal Obamacare.

Traveling Friday afternoon, President Trump responded to questions about the health care vote by saying, "It's going to be fine."

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Congress Emerges From Another Health Care Failure Without A Clear Path Forward - NPR

BBC News

Republicans 'frustrated' after healthcare fiasco BBC News Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he is "disappointed and frustrated" by the Senate's failure to repeal the Obama-era healthcare act. He is among several lawmakers to express frustration after three Republican senators opposed a bill to scale ... Republicans wave the white flag on their last best chance to repeal ObamacareWashington Post Republicans try to pick up the pieces after healthcare defeatReuters 'Wait for the show': how John McCain helped torpedo the Republican health planThe Guardian Stuff.co.nz all 2,638 news articles »

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Republicans 'frustrated' after healthcare fiasco - BBC News