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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, (front left to right) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit on May 25, 2017 in Brussels, Belgium.Stefan Rousseau/Pool/Getty Images

When President Donald Trump took office, many expected him to usher in a new "independent" U.S. foreign policy, breaking the bridges forged by President Obama to multi-national organizations and significantly shifting the direction of American statecraft.

That hasnt happened.

This Independence Day, hardly anyone argues anymore that the new administration is seeking independence from international institutions or binding treaties. Indeed, the U.S. has been forward-leaning on the global stagereassuring NATO; broadly engaging in the Middle East; laying out new initiatives in Latin America; renegotiating, not scrapping NAFTA; talking tough on North Korea; sparring with China; embracing India; and redoubling efforts in Afghanistan.

Critics now complain that Trump is decoupling the U.S. from the post-World War II liberal order, the network of international institutions that fostered globalization. At least philosophically, there is no question that Trump and Obama come at foreign policy from opposite perspectives. Obama was a structuralist who believed that the keys to peace and prosperity are global institutions that normalize the behavior of states. Trump, on the other hand, is a realist. The sitting president holds that nation-states are the coin of the realm, the real power in the global order.

But in practice, the kid from Chicago and businessman from the Big Apple are less far apart than their rhetoric suggests.

For starters, the Constitution still binds the left and right. It still limits what presidents can do overseas, both through specified and imposed powers given to the executive branch, and the separation of powers that gives both the courts and Congress some say in what America does in the world.

In addition, regardless of their politics, presidents get elected to protect the nations interests. Those interests don't change dramatically unless the world dramatically changes. Thats why U.S. foreign policy always has more continuity than change from one administration to the next.

Further, presidents are hardly purists. Obama had a predilection for multi-nationalism, but he was perfectly willing to go his own way when he thought it suited U.S. policy. Likewise, Trump has no prohibitions against a multi-national approach. U.S. commitment to NATO is as strong as ever. Rather than pulling out of the United Nations, the U.S. has been proactive in its leadership role. Trump went to the G7, and hes going to the G20 and ASEAN summit.

There are still distinct differences between Trump and Obama. Some are mostly stylistic. The Paris climate accord is a case in point. Obama committed to it because it fit his politics, not because it really moved the ball on dealing with climate change. Trump pulled out because he didn't care about a symbolic commitment. Neither president's choice tells us much about the real exercise of American power in the world.

Other differences are more substantive. Obama's instinct was to make a deal and then use the deal and multi-national instruments to normalize the behavior of adversarial states. That was the plan with the Russian reset and New START treaty, chemical weapons accord with Assad, and Iran nuclear deal. Trump's instincts are to take action where there is a clear deliverable to U.S. interests on the front end, not trust the global order to tutor good behavior on the backside.

However, to portray these differences of statecraft as moving from interdependence to independencean unmooring of the U.S. from the liberal world orderis a profound oversimplification. In practice, Trump will be seen using different approaches to solving America and the world's problemssometimes acting unilaterally, but mostly working with friends and allies, and often through multi-national institutions.

Trump will certainly in the end have different policies. He may in the end produce different outcomes. But, in the final judgment, it may be far more difficult to differentiate between interdependent and independent foreign policies than the current raging controversy over Trumps international leadership suggests.

James Jay Carafano is vice president of the Heritage Foundation and directs the think tanks research on foreign relations and national security issues.

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Trump's America Isn't Any More Independent Than Obama's - Fortune

The congressional Republican leaderships almost-hysterical need to repeal Obamacare seems rooted in motives that have little to do with the health of millions of Americans who need it most, including some of their own constituents.

In what has become almost-obsessive behavior since the Affordable Care Act was adopted in 2010, GOP conservatives have made its demise the partys No. 1 political goal. This unreasonable determination comes even in the face of expert predictions that the House-passed and Senate-written versions of its replacement would ultimately leave more than 20 million of the nations poorest without insurance.

Clearly, President Donald Trumps failure to achieve his premier campaign promise has embarrassed him and divided the party.

The long-term anger among Republicans over the ACA seemingly stems from a dark place, the stubborn racism in the partys Southern base the one it inherited from the old Democratic solid South. How else could one explain the palatable dislike approaching hatred of the first black president among those on the GOP right, evident from the very beginning of Barack Obamas tenure?

Wiping out Obamas most important achievement, whatever the cost, would go a long way toward diminishing his presidency. Never mind that his successor openly admitted in a sort of gee-whiz statement that health care is a lot more complex than he imagined. But then most things required in running the country are above Trumps understanding. He has a long record of telling people what ought to be done without the background, experience or knowledge needed to accomplish it.

He does know that the ACA replacement is mean but thats OK because it also delivers a tax cut for the wealthiest of us. Clearing the decks of Obamacare would allow him to go on national television with pen in hand (probably in the Rose Garden) to proclaim to the faithful that he is good as his word on abolishing a series of Obama administration regulations. Halleluiah!

So, here comes the Senate Republican majority leader, whose state of Kentucky is one of the neediest in health care and has benefited the most from it, determined at whatever cost to eliminate Obamas health act.

Is Mitch McConnell crazy? Or is he so afraid of losing his job by angering his conservative base and his president (who seems to think at times he is an idiot) that he will move forward despite the consequences to his own constituents? By the way, Kentucky voters reportedly still back Trump while conceding the risk to their well-being. Incredible!

All this has brought the Republicans near the brink of intraparty warfare and even has McConnell and the White House gang uttering the dreaded C-word, compromise.

In some ways, the Democrats are to blame here, and that includes Obama, for not working hard enough to include a bipartisan approach to health care reform in the first place. The 2,700-page bill was oversold by the then-Democratic majority and passed on a single party vote. It was difficult to understand and to implement and it cost the party dearly in the 2010 midterm election, boosting tea party influence and returning House control to the Republicans.

But that was nearly seven years ago, a long time in a political realm in which things are given and then taken away in regular cycles.

What is obviously needed now are some adjustments to the act not tearing it up and beginning again. Hopefully, if radical-right lawmakers can put aside their dislike of Obama and the new president learns that bipartisanship isnt a dirty concept, this is what will happen.

But what will it take to bring some statesmanship back into the process? Your guess is as good as mine.

But what would help is for right-wing politicians to realize that detesting Barrack Obama for his race or his aloofness or any other social reason is not a legitimate way to perform ones obligations as a member of the government of the people. Nor is just trying to convince the world you belong on the job by fulfilling a skeptical campaign promise at the expense of voters who dont understand the ramifications.

If Trump wishes to show that he is at all presidential, he should call in the leadership of both parties and urge them to put their heads together, not apart, and do so without calling them names.

Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers. Readers may send him email at: thomassondan@aol.com.

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Former President Barack Obama is reportedly stepping up his efforts to help Democrats after the party's string of election losses.

According to The Hill, Obama has had regular phone conversations with DNC Chair Tom Perez and has also met with some lawmakers on a"by-request basis."

The report states:

The conversations between Obama and the lawmakers and party leaders are said to vary.

With Perez, the men discussed the outlines of the party's future. With others, he has discussed policy.

The 44th president still reportedly prefers to be behind the scenes and not be "out front" as the party looks for a winning message in the 2018 midterm elections.

Dagen McDowell disagreed with that approach though, arguing that Obama's greatest political gift was his ability to connect with voters.

"His greatest asset is him as a messenger, not the actual message. ... He can craft the best message on planet Earth but if you have someone delivering it who squawks at you like apterodactyl, nobody is going to listen. ... That's a remark about female candidates and some male candidates as well," she said.

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Originally posted here:
Report: Obama Ramping Up Efforts to Help Dems, Meeting With Lawmakers - Fox News Insider

Robert Farley, FactCheck.org Published 1:23 p.m. ET June 28, 2017 | Updated 5:21 p.m. ET June 28, 2017

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll shows low support among Americans for the GOP healthcare bill. Susan Page, USA TODAY Washington bureau chief, explains the findings. USA TODAY

Sen. Rand Paul speaks to the media about the Senate Republican health care bill on June 22, 2017 in Washington.(Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)

Sen. Rand Paul, who opposes the Republican Senate health care bill, says subsidies are actually greater under the Republican bill than they are under the current Obamacare law. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the average subsidy under the bill would be significantly lower than the average subsidy under current law.

In all, CBO estimates the government will save $424 billion over 10 years (compared with current law) due mainly to reductions in government subsidies.

Pauls comment came on ABCs This Weekon June 25, as he argued that the current version of the Senate health care bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, looks just like Obamacare and still doesnt fix the fundamental flaw of Obamacare.

Paul, June 25: "But realize that this just one second realize that the Obamacare subsidies in this bill are actually greater under the Republican bill than they are under the current Obamacare law. That is not anywhere close to repeal."

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, subsidizes health insurance in two main ways: tax credits to cover a portion of the premiums for individuals who buy their own insurance, and cost-sharing subsidies paid to insurance companies to reduce out-of-pocket payments required under insurance policies.

Tax credits to help people buy insurance would remain at the same levels as under the ACA until 2020. But over the long-term, the Senate plan would be less generous with tax credits than the ACA.

Under the Senate bill, the premium tax credits would be smaller in most cases than under current law, the CBO says.

The ACA provides tax credits to those earning between 100%and 400% of the federal poverty level. Under the Senate plan, tax credits would go to those earning from 0% to 350% of the poverty level.

Also, the tax credit under the ACA is designed to cap what an individual would have to pay toward premiums, based on the cost of a benchmark plan. The Senate GOP bill would use a less expensive plan as the benchmark and adjust what individuals would pay out-of-pocket for premiums based on age for those earning above 150% of the federal poverty level.

Someone earning between 300% and 350% of the federal poverty level, for example, would pay 6.4 percent of income for an insurance policy if he or she is 29 years old or younger. The required contributions then go up with age: 8.9% for 30- to 39-year-olds; 12.5% for 40- to 49-year-olds; 15.8% for 50- to 59-year-olds; and 16.2% for those over age 59. (Under the ACA, those at the poverty level contribute 2.4% of income in 2020, and those earning 400% of the poverty level would contribute 10.2%, according to projections from the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

As for the cost-sharing subsidies available now under the ACA which can lower out-of-pocket costs for copays and other expenses for those earning between 100% and 250% of the federal poverty level those would be eliminated under the Senate bill in 2020.

According to CBO, while individual cases would vary, the average subsidy per subsidized enrollee under this legislation would be significantly lower than the average subsidy under current law.

CBO, June 26:"According to CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxations] estimates, the average subsidy per subsidized enrollee under this legislation would be significantly lower than the average subsidy under current law, starting in calendar year 2020. Nevertheless, some people would be eligible for larger subsidies than those under current law, whereas others would be eligible for smaller ones."

In all, CBO estimates the government will save $424 billion over 10 years (compared with current law) due mainly to reductions in tax credits for premium assistance starting in 2020 and from eliminating cost-sharing subsidies. Those savings would be partially offset, CBO says, by an increase in spending of $107 billion for short-term assistance to insurers to address disrupted coverage and access and to provide support for states through the Long-Term State Stability and Innovation Program.

Indeed, the amount of subsidies provided in the Senate bill is less than what was proposed in the Republican health care bill that passed in the House.

CBO, June 26:"The structure of subsidies for coverage in the nongroup market differs in the two versions of the legislation and would have substantially different effects by income and by age. The overall spending on such subsidies under this legislation would be $134 billion lower than under the House-passed legislation."

So why does Paul say that subsidies are actually greater under the Republican bill than they are under the current Obamacare law?

Pauls reasoning hinges on a legal debate over the cost-sharing payments currently being paid to insurers to offset the costs for millions of low-income Americans. The subsidies are critical to the success of the Affordable Care Act, as insurers have threatened to pull out of the ACA marketplaces or dramatically increase rates if the subsidies are cut off.

A lawsuit filed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in November 2014 contended that funding for cost-sharing subsidies was never appropriated by Congress, and that government payment of those subsidies violated the Constitution and amounted to unlawful transfer of funds, as TheNew York Times put it.

A federal district court judge last year sided with the House. But the judge stayed her decision to allow the government to appeal. In May, the Trump administration asked for a three-month delay in the appeal case, leaving the issue in limbo.

In theory, President Trump could drop the appeal and stop making the subsidy payments. In fact, he has said he could end them anytime I want. But so far, he hasnt. The payments have continued as the case is under appeal.

So are those subsidy payments part of the Affordable Care Act? Paul argues they are not. And since the Republican bill would specifically sunset those payments at the end of 2019, Pauls argument is that the Republican plan amounts to additional funding beyond what is contained in the Affordable Care Act.

The proposed new bill funds a piece of Obamacare that is currently not funded, the cost sharing subsidies which got blocked by a court, Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul told us via email.

Gor further points out that according to CBO, the ACA tax credits will cost $156 billion in 2017, 2018, 2019. We do not make any changes to these credits in the first 3 years.

On this point, Paul is taking a short-term (three-year) view and ignoring the long-term implications of the Senate bill, which would cut tax credits after three years.

Pauls comment suggests subsidies would be more generous under the Senate health care plan than those currently offered by the Affordable Care Act. That assumes that the cost-sharing subsidies, which have been regularly paid, are not a part of the ACA. On the tax credit side, it is a short-term comment that ignores that tax credits will be reduced significantly after the first three years.

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Fact check: Rand Paul's subsidies twist - USA TODAY

Today these places are no longer frontier towns, but many of them still exist on the same knifes edge between traditionalist order and extreme dissolution.

For example, I have a friend who is an avid Trump admirer. He supports himself as a part-time bartender and a part-time home contractor, and by doing various odd jobs on the side. A good chunk of his income is off the books. He has built up a decent savings account, but he has done it on his own, hustling, scrapping his way, without any long-term security. His income can vary sharply from week to week. He doesnt have much trust in the institutions around him. He has worked on government construction projects but sees himself, rightly, as a small-business man.

This isnt too different from the hard, independent life on the frontier. Many people in these places tend to see their communities the way foreign policy realists see the world: as an unvarnished struggle for resources as a tough world, a no-illusions world, a world where conflict is built into the fabric of reality.

The virtues most admired in such places, then and now, are what Shirley Robin Letwin once called the vigorous virtues: upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent minded, loyal to friends and robust against foes.

The sins that can cause the most trouble are not the social sins injustice, incivility, etc. They are the personal sins laziness, self-indulgence, drinking, sleeping around.

Then as now, chaos is always washing up against the door. Very few people actually live up to the code of self-discipline that they preach. A single night of gambling or whatever can produce life-altering bad choices. Moreover, the forces of social disruption are visible on every street: the slackers taking advantage of the disability programs, the people popping out babies, the drug users, the spouse abusers.

Voters in these places could use some help. But these Americans, like most Americans, vote on the basis of their vision of what makes a great nation. These voters, like most voters, believe that the values of the people are the health of the nation.

In their view, government doesnt reinforce the vigorous virtues. On the contrary, it undermines them by fostering initiative-sucking dependency, by letting people get away with their mistakes so they can make more of them and by getting in the way of moral formation.

The only way you build up self-reliant virtues, in this view, is through struggle. Yet faraway government experts want to cushion people from the hardships that are the schools of self-reliance. Compassionate government threatens to turn people into snowflakes.

In her book Strangers in Their Own Land, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild quotes a woman from Louisiana complaining about the childproof lids on medicine and the mandatory seatbelt laws. We let them throw lawn darts, smoked alongside them, the woman says of her children. And they survived. Now its like your kid needs a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads to go down the kiddy slide.

Hochschilds humble and important book is a meditation on why working-class conservatives vote against more government programs for themselves. She emphasizes that they perceive government as a corrupt arm used against the little guy. She argues that these voters may vote against their economic interests, but they vote for their emotional interests, for candidates who share their emotions about problems and groups.

Id say they believe that big government support would provide short-term assistance, but that it would be a long-term poison to the values that are at the core of prosperity. You and I might disagree with that theory. But its a plausible theory. Anybody who wants to design policies to help the working class has to make sure they go along the grain of the vigorous virtues, not against them.

David Leonhardt is off today.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 4, 2017, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Whats the Matter With Republicans?.

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What's the Matter With Republicans? - New York Times