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Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said GOP members of the House should not "walk the plank" by approving the Republican health care bill, warning that it could cost the party the House majority and put the entire GOP agenda at risk.

"I would say to my friends in the House of Representatives with whom I serve, 'Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote," Cotton told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The Arkansas senator went further, saying on "This Week" Sunday that Republicans are in danger of losing their House majority if they approve the GOP health measure, called the American Health Care Act, proposed last week by House Republican leaders and endorsed by the White House.

Cotton has been critical of the legislation that congressional GOP leaders put forward to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

"Im worried it could make it worse in some ways, that insurance rates could go up and Americans could have even less control over their health care systems," Cotton told ABCs chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl Thursday.

On "This Week," Cotton said, "I just do not think that this bill can pass the Senate, and therefore I think the House should take a pause and try to get as close as we can to a good result before we send it to the Senate."

When pressed by Stephanopolous to clarify if he was suggesting that House Republicans who vote for the bill "are going to pay the price without getting any benefit," Cotton noted that Republicans have other agenda goals in addition to health care reform.

"We have majorities in the House and the Senate and the White House not only to repeal Obamacare and get health care reform right, but to reform our taxes and our regulations and build up our military and accomplish many other things," Cotton said. "And I don't want to see the House majority put at risk on a bill that is not going to pass the Senate."

"That's why I think we should take a pause, try to solve as many of the problems on both Medicaid and the individual insurance market in this bill in the House and then allow the Senate to take its work up," Cotton said. The bill probably can be fixed, but its going to take a lot of carpentry on that framework."

Read more from the original source:
Republican senator: GOP risks losing House majority if health bill approved - ABC News

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the go-to guy for mainstream media members who need a Republican voice in order to claim balance and non-bias in their stories, took to CNN over the weekend to offer up some criticisms of President Donald Trump.

Whatd he say?

McCain weighed in on the wiretapping allegations Trumps slung Barack Obamas way with typical Not a Friend of This President bodyslam.

First he told State of the Union host Jake Tapper he had no reason to believe Trumps charge was true. And then he said, in essence, Trump ought to put up or shut up.

I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute, McCain said, CNN reported. All he has to do is pick up the phone, call the director of the CIA, director of national intelligence and say, OK, what happened?

Maybe. And maybe Trump, like his Newsman CEO buddy Chris Ruddy previously explained, is confident he will be proven right about the wiretapping.

McCain also said during this same CNN interview: I do believe on issues such as this, accusing a former president of the United States of something which is not only illegal, but just unheard of, that requires corroboration. Ill let the American people be the judge, but this is serious stuff.

Time will tell, wont it?

In the meantime, though, itd be nice if members of Trumps own party could quit helping the left tear down his administration.

Oh, we know McCain has a grudge, maybe even a vendetta, against Trump. Back in July 2015, Trump said from Iowa that McCain was not a war hero. He then went on to add, I like people that werent captured. Hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people that werent captured. He was referring to the five years McCain spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, after his plane was shot down in 1967.

A red-faced McCain has never been able to get over that remark or, perhaps, over his own failed 2008 bid for the presidency and the fact Trump has been able to tread where he could not.

Either way, its time for McCain to come out of the Democratic shadows and put on his big-boy GOP pin.

Its getting tiresome seeing his name in headlines like this, just in from the Los Angeles Times: McCain joins Democrats in seeking proof of Trump wiretap claim.

Of course, McCains not the only Republican waiting for answers on the wiretap claims. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has joined in the call to get to the bottom of the matter, and Rep. Deven Nunes, R-Calif., has said the House was willing to investigate.

But McCains the face in the media, always willing to offer up the Democratic talking points against the president, under guise of being a Republican. As Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News, about the wiretap scandal: Well make a comment after [House and Senate] findings are complete.

If only McCain would agree to the same.

See original here:
John McCain, will you ever be Republican? - Washington Times

Late on Friday, a federal district court finally issued its long-awaited ruling in the lawsuit over Texas Republican-drawn congressional map shown at the top of this post (see here for a larger version). The court delivered a major victory for voting rights when it struck down several districts for violating the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protections Clause, holding that several districts were illegal racial gerrymanders. This ruling could result in a new map being used in the 2018 elections that would contain additional districts where Latino voters could elect their candidate preference, and Democrats could consequently gain seats.

The courtstruck down several districts where Republicans had either diluted Latino voting strength so that Anglo candidates could win, or where Republicans had packed Latino votersto prevent them from electing their candidate choice in neighboring seats. A redrawn map could consequently see considerable changes to the invalidated 23rd District, which spans from El Paso to San Antonio, the 27th, which covers Corpus Christiand Victoria, and the 35th, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio, along with neighboring seats. Such adjustmentscould subsequently see a Latino Democrat oust Republican incumbents in the 23rd and 27th.

The judges additionally faulted Republicans for abusing race when drawing districts in the greater Dallas area, butdid not specifically indicate that theywould require Republican legislators to draw a new district to elect a Latino candidate. Plaintiffs will undoubtedly press the court to impose such a requirement when they argue for the appropriate remedy. Indeed, Daily Kos Elections itself has previously demonstrated how Republicans could have drawn another seat that would elect Latino voters candidate choice in Dallas at the expense of an Anglo Republican, in addition to making the aforementioned GOP-held 23rd and 27th heavily Latino.

Read more from the original source:
Huge: Court strikes down Texas' Republican-drawn congressional map for illegal racial gerrymandering - Daily Kos

After weeks of demonstrations outside of his office in California, longtime Republican congressman Darrell Issa faced a crowded auditorium of angry voters Saturday, marking his first town hall appearance since the election in November.

The nine-term congressman caved to demands from his constituents to hold a town hall event, bringing him face to face with an auditorium of more than 500 largely Democratic voters troubled by the Trump administration.

Issa held two separate town halls at Junior Seau Recreation Center in Oceanside, California, to accommodate the large number of voters and protesters who gathered to challenge their representative. Audience members booed and jeered throughout the meetings as the congressman answered questions for more than three hours.

At one point, the auditorium was so rowdy Issa quipped, "I don't mind that things are contentious. I just don't want things to end like the play 'Hamilton.'"

But his voters were largely not amused.

They pressed Issa on how he plans to challenge the proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act, calls to defund Planned Parenthood, and President Trump's stance on immigration and refugees.

Voters also refused to let the congressman sidestep questions about Trump's alleged ties to Russia, repeatedly questioning how he personally plans to investigate the country's interference in the 2016 election.

Related: Republicans Tamp Down Sessions Criticism While Democrats Ramp it Up

Issa said his past statements with regard to Russia have been "clearly out of step" with his fellow Republicans in Congress and that he has, instead, pressed lawmakers to investigate the claims.

Demonstrators protest over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare outside the offices of Republican congressman Darrell Issa in Vista, California. MIKE BLAKE / Reuters

"When you elect a member of Congress you elect him to worry about global security and our security," he said. "Are we going to investigate Russia to the very nth degree on interfering in our election? Yes."

Issa ended his first town hall after a tense exchange with a Democratic challenger for his congressional seat. On Wednesday, a prominent local Democrat, Mike Levin, announced he would run against the congressman in 2018, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Related:

In a preview of their upcoming showdown, Levin and Issa had a tense exchange over the environment before the congressman cut him off.

"If you're fortunate enough to go to Congress, you're going to discover that dialogue is possible," Issa said, to renewed boos and jeers.

See the original post:
Darrell Issa, Republican Congressman, Faces Tough Crowd at Town Hall - NBCNews.com

A pair of conservative Republican senators are accusing their own party of hypocrisy for rushing throughits replacement of Obamacare.And they've got a point thoughperhaps not forthe most obvious reason.

House Republicans passed their bill through a keycommittee in the wee hours of Thursday morning less than two and a half days after the bill was introduced and without any scoring from the independent Congressional Budget Office.

"This is exactly the type of backroom dealing and rushed process that we criticized Democrats for," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Tuesday.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), meanwhile, tweeted his own less-direct hypocrisy claim early Thursday morning:

But the two debates over Obamacare and now over its potential replacement aren't really analogous, and there has been some revisionist history going on when it comes to what happened back in 2009 and 2010 when Democrats passed Obamacare.

The big reason it's remembered as having been jammed through is that Democrats used an unusual maneuver the budget reconciliation process to attain final passage when they lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in the special election won by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). The reconciliation process is not subject to filibuster.

Yet the process, as Philip Bump noted Wednesday, was actually rather lengthy. Indeed, it seemed almost endless at the time. Topher Spiro of the left-leaning Center for American Progress crunched the numbers:

In the House, Democrats held a series of public hearings before introducing a public discussion draft in June 2009. The House then held more public hearings before introducing new legislative text in July. All three relevant committees held markups committee work sessions to amend the legislation and the full House vote on the amended legislation did not take place until November.

In the Senate, the HELP Committee held 14 bipartisan roundtables and 13 public hearings in 2008 and 2009. During the committees markup in June 2009, Democrats accepted more than 160 Republican amendments to the bill.

Beginning in May 2008 20 months before the Senate vote and six months before Barack Obama, who would later sign the bill into law, was even elected president the Senate Finance Committee held 17 public roundtables, summits and hearings. In 2009, Democrats met and negotiated with three Republicans for several months before the tea party protests caused the GOP to back away from negotiations. The Finance Committee held its markup in September, and the full Senate vote did not take place until December.

In both the House and the Senate, scores by the independent Congressional Budget Office were available before each vote at each stage of the process. These scores are estimates of the effects of legislation on the budget and on the number of people who would be covered by health insurance.

Part of the reason some Republicans have seized upon the idea that Obamacare was rushed is undoubtedly that infamous Nancy Pelosi quote. Pelosi (D-Calif.), then House speaker, said in March 2010 that Democrats needed to "pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what's in it." That sounded a lot like Democrats putting one over on the American public by ramming through legislation that people didn't fully understand.

But Pelosi's meaning seemed to be more that people would recognize the benefits once it was put into practice. And the bill had been in the public domain for months. The reconciliation process itself lasted for weeks about the same time period Republicans are giving their entire bill.

There actually aren't a whole lot of quotes from Republicans way back when accusing Democrats of passing Obamacare too quickly. Instead, there are lots of comments taking issue with the specific maneuver that Democrats used and the fact that the bill didn't get any Republican votes.

"They have sort of a Europeanized version of [health care reform] that they jammed through without a single Republican vote in the last Congress," then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in January 2011.

Then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) added around that same time:"We didn't have any open debate for both sides at all on the health care bill, the way it was jammed through."

So the speed of the legislation is one thing; the actual method of passageis what really irked Republicans. But that's also problematic for Republicans today, because they, too, are planning to use the budget reconciliation process. This allows them, again, to avoid a filibuster but could also limit what they can accomplish.

The other problem for Republicans in moving this along so quickly is that there is no CBO score. Republicans have for years accused Democrats of budget gimmicks and a lack of transparency in the legislation that they have passed. Republicans ran on the idea of postingbills online for everyone to see and understand.

They insist there will be a CBO score before final passage, but the fact that the bill is making real progress without lawmakers' knowing what experts estimate its impact will be is very difficult to square with GOP complaints about Pelosi's comment.That sounds a lot like Republicans passing the bill before they find out what's in it.

But when the rubber really hits the road and the GOP really opens itself up to charges of hypocrisy is if and when it tries to pass this bill through reconciliation and likely with no bipartisan support. Just like Republicans attacked Democrats for doing almost exactly seven years ago.

Read more from the original source:
Republicans are rushing right into charges of Obamacare hypocrisy - Washington Post