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Washington is braced for the expected release as soon as Monday of a Congressional Budget Office analysis set to reveal the cost and projected reach -- and limits -- of coverage for the GOP's bill to repeal and replace major parts of Obamacare.

If, as expected, the report warns that millions of people currently insured thanks to the Affordable Care Act could lose that coverage, it could rock the debate over the bill -- already facing problems due to Republican infighting.

Democrats will be certain to frame attacks on the GOP bill, the American Health Care Act, as taking away health care from those who have it, putting the onus on Republicans to argue why people should back their efforts.

That could prove a millstone for Republican lawmakers -- including in blue-collar areas that President Donald Trump won on a promise to provide better and more affordable coverage than Obamacare -- in the run-up to midterm elections in 2018.

The White House and congressional Republicans argue that the CBO projections won't tell the full story, that people who have insurance under Obamacare are hammered by high deductibles and rising premiums and need relief. In such cases, they might have care, but it is hardly affordable, they say.

"The one thing I'm certain will happen is CBO will say, 'Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage.' You know why? Because this isn't a government mandate,'" House Speaker Paul Ryan said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Pressed to say how many people might lose coverage, Ryan said, "It's up to people."

"We're not going to make an American do what they don't want to do," Ryan said. "You get it if you want it."

Therefore, it's not surprising leading GOP figures are downplaying the CBO's assessment of their plan, which does away with the Obamacare mandate that everyone must have health insurance, offers tax breaks based mainly on age instead of income and cost of coverage, and rolls back an expansion of Medicaid.

"Nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through," Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.

"What we want to do is to put in place a system that will allow for folks to select the coverage that they want," Price said -- an answer Breitbart News labeled a possible "Lie of the year."

Not only does the CBO score miss the point, Republicans say, the agency itself often gets it wrong.

White House Chief Economic adviser Gary Cohn on Sunday argued that millions of people who now get health care through Obamacare would still have access under the GOP plan -- whatever the CBO says.

"In the past, the CBO score has really been meaningless," Cohn said on "Fox News Sunday." "They have said that many more people will be insured than are actually insured."

There is ammunition for both Democrats and Republicans in previous CBO assessments of Obamacare.

When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, the agency estimated 21 million would gain coverage through health care exchanges in 2016. Three years later, just before the exchanges opened, the agency upped the figure to 22 million.

For various reasons, the estimate was off: About 10.4 million were enrolled last year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

However, the CBO was closer on Obamacare's overall impact on coverage. In 2010, CBO said the insured rate for non-elderly adults would rise to 92% in 2016. It later revised its forecast to 89%. In the end, 89.7% of Americans under age 65 had insurance last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Any suggestion endorsed by a nonpartisan body like the CBO that millions could lose coverage could be uncomfortable reading for Trump, however, given the guarantees he offered during the campaign.

"I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now," Trump told "60 Minutes" in September 2015.

Democrats know from bitter experience during the first term of the Obama administration that taking on a project as vast and polarizing as health care reform can have painful political consequences. They are now increasingly convinced that Republicans will face a political backlash if millions of Americans lose health insurance or if the Trump-backed reform causes chaos in the insurance markets next year.

It's a reading of the situation that makes it less likely that sufficient Democrats will eventually agree to join Republicans to beat back a Senate filibuster in the final stage of the legislative drive to remake the health insurance industry -- on the replace component of the repeal and replace strategy.

They have their arguments ready for a CBO report that they believe could transform the debate.

"The reality is that Donald Trump promised voters that they would keep their coverage," said Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"And now we have estimates from this plan that he endorsed that 15 million people would lose it," she said.

"The reality is here, people relied on him, they voted for him for who've got the Affordable Care Act to saying they would keep their coverage and it would get better. And the Ryan plan is less coverage at a highest cost, worse all around."

The 15 million figure came from a Brookings Institution report on the likely CBO conclusions issued last week, which assesses the number of people expected to lose coverage under the 10-year scoring window for the bill.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- who has been critical of the bid to narrow the Medicaid expansion that he fears could impact 700,000 people in his state -- tried to refocus the debate on Sunday.

"All of this consumption with who gains politically. You know, life is short. And if all you focus in life is what's in it for me, you're a loser. You are a big-time loser," Kasich said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And this country better be careful we're not losing the soul of our country because we play politics and we forget people who are in need," he added.

The political tempest likely to be unleashed by the CBO report will further obscure the progress made by Republicans last week, when their bill passed two key House committees after marathon hearings.

It will also fuel the controversy over the pace with which GOP leaders are trying to ram the measure through Congress, which is opening fault lines inside the Republican Party.

House conservatives are balking at what they see as the slow rollback of the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, which the bill would complete by 2020.

Confusion over the President's position may also be exacerbating the tumult in Republican ranks. Last week, Trump publicly backed the Ryan bill. Yet in a meeting with conservative critics of the legislation, he appeared to signal he was willing to be flexible about the pace of the Medicaid expansion rollback.

That position might reflect Trump's desire to come across as the ultimate deal maker, and it could help bring conservatives on board in the House. But it might also alienate more moderate Republicans in the Senate, and disrupt the delicate political equation needed to pilot the bill toward Trump's desk.

On Friday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the President did not, in fact, support speeding up the timeline for rolling back the Medicaid expansion.

"Right now, the date that's in the bill is what the President supports," he said.

But conflicting signals from Trump are giving Republican critics of the bill an opening to undermine Ryan's effort to build quick momentum to get the bill -- the first stage of a GOP process to repeal and replace Obamacare -- through Congress before it attracts prohibitive opposition.

"You know what I hear from Paul Ryan? 'It's a binary choice, young man,'" Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on CBS "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "But what does a binary choice mean? His way or the highway."

CNNMoney's Tami Luhby contributed to this report.

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Republicans brace for CBO report of health care coverage - CNN

Republicans in Congress are learning to tune out President Trump's controversial Twitter rants.

Trump's explosive tweetstorm alleging that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his business and campaign organizations is the sort of event that would have consumed House and Senate Republicans in the past. Instead, the intelligence committees announced they would include the charges in their investigations, and then most caucus members simply moved on.

Having grown accustomed to his unorthodox style, the bar has been raised for tweets that merit a GOP freak-out, especially with higher priorities at hand, such as healthcare reform.

As Republicans departed Washington for the weekend, they were aware that it might bring a Trump Twitter tirade, just as last weekend did. No matter, many just shrugged.

"It's part of the new normal," Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said in an interview. "The president's allowed to make pronouncements on anything he likes; we really need to do our work."

Trump's use of Twitter has broken the rules of presidential communication. The president has used the social medium to attack political enemies, threaten foreign countries, goad private corporations and make statements either disproven or unsupported by facts.

Each time, congressional Republicans are bombarded with questions. Do they agree with what Trump said? Do they agree that he said it at all?

They were initially rattled by the president's actions, as well as that they were expected to answer for them. But over time, Republicans have learned not to get distracted from legislative business. They've also grown a thicker skin when it comes to refusing to answer questions about statements and behavior they can't necessarily explain, anyway.

"What Trump's outbursts are actually doing for the conference is honing our ability to weed out and stop responding to things that don't matter," a senior Republican House aide said, requesting anonymity in order to speak candidly. "It has made us more disciplined."

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A second senior Republican aide referred to Trump's unfounded allegations that Obama "wiretapped" him, made last weekend in multiple Twitter posts, as "errant tweets" that wouldn't impact the party's legislative agenda. Indeed, healthcare arguably dominated the week.

To the extent that Republicans are still concerned about Trump's Twitter habit, that anxiety resides in the Senate. And, particularly, Republican senators worry about the president's habit of spreading obviously false information over the medium.

In interviews with the Washington Examiner, Republican senators focused on the issue of credibility.

They accepted, in some cases grudgingly, in others, admiringly, the reach Trump has via Twitter. Through a single, clunkily-worded tweet, often posted without consulting, or even alerting, his White House communications team, Trump often drives public opinion and the news cycle.

But they're still uncomfortable with the president's habit of being cavalier with the truth.

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"Anytime you're saying or tweeting something that's factually incorrect, that hurts your credibility. And at some point in time, your credibility isn't where it needs to be," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis, said. "I'm always concerned about that, the president ought to be concerned about that."

The White House has defended Trump's controversial tweets. Sometimes, that has meant rejecting critics' charges that Trump misled on the facts. Other times, that defense has taken the form of a suggestion that the president was making a broader argument that is, overall, accurate.

Trump's supporters often say that journalists are making the mistake of taking Trump "literally," rather than paying attention to the larger point he is making on a particular topic.

Some Republicans say that might have been acceptable for a presidential candidate, but it is dangerous for a president, given the scrutiny paid to his words, both domestically and around the world.

"He's got a way of doing business that's different from anybody I've met; it seems to work for him. But the difference from being a candidate and being president is pretty real," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "When you make a statement as president, regardless of the medium, people tend to take you literally."

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For Republicans, Trump's Twitter outbursts are becoming white noise - Washington Examiner

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2016 file photo, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. crosses his fingers while speaking at a campaign rally in Janesville, Wis. Less than twenty-four hours after Donald Trump won the White House, Ryan held a news conference in his hometown of Janesville, Wis. to triumphantly proclaim the start of a new era of Republican leadership that would hit the ground running. Six weeks into Trumps administration, Republicans are running, just in different directions. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) Less than twenty-four hours after Donald Trump had won the White House, House Speaker Paul Ryan triumphantly proclaimed the start of a new era of Republican leadership that would hit the ground running.

Six weeks into Trumps administration, Republicans are running just in different directions.

As congressional leaders move forward with efforts to undo former President Barack Obamas health care law, conservative activists and GOP lawmakers are slamming the proposal as Obamacare lite, Obamacare 2.0 and RINOcare RINO standing for Republicans In Name Only, a term of derision.

Swing state senators worry that their sickest and poorest constituents could lose access to health care. Republican governors fear that millions of people now covered by Medicaid could be dropped, a step the governors warn could hurt GOP candidates in their states.

Weve said all along, Work with the governors,' said Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nev. Well, they came out with their own bill, which doesnt include anything that the governors have talked about.

Republican leaders hoped unified control of Washington would unite the party around years of campaign promises to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, cut taxes and slash regulations.

Instead, the celebratory weeks that followed Trumps victory seem to have been little more than a temporary cease-fire in a yearslong GOP civil war.

There are people who havent adjusted to the fact that we have a Republican president, said Michael Steel, a former top adviser to onetime Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who frequently tangled with tea party-aligned lawmakers. These guys could wind up leading the cavalry charge straight into machine-gun fire.

The health care battle is probably the first of many intraparty clashes to come. Already, plans to overhaul tax laws have Republicans tied in knots, budget hawks are skeptical about Trumps $1 trillion infrastructure plan and senior GOP lawmakers have rejected major pieces of his upcoming budget proposal.

The White House realizes that it must win over many of the objectors. With Democratic voters demanding nothing short of complete resistance to Trump, congressional passage of the Republican agenda will depend largely on party-line votes. That leaves limited room for GOP defections.

In a Wednesday meeting with the leaders of conservative groups, Trump positioned himself as the good cop in the conflict, taking what one participant described as a series of veiled shots at Ryan. The president argued that his team was at least meeting with conservative activists, according to the participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

Trump also reminded the activists of his strong support among the conservative base and said he planned to campaign in states he won, in an effort to pressure their unsupportive lawmakers.

I want to be as helpful to the Trump administration as I can. Im very supportive of the president. I support him, I want to help him. But respect has to go up and down the street, its got to go both ways, said Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus.

At least one conservative group is already running digital ads against the GOP health care plan, arguing that the tax credits in the bill essentially replace one federal entitlement with another. Activists plan to swarm Capitol Hill to demand Congress pass a repeal bill that would completely erase all trace of Obamas signature domestic achievement.

This is not something that is easy for us to say, OK, well take half a loaf,' said Adam Brandon, head of the conservative activist group FreedomWorks. What Senate Leader Mitch McConnell promised when he was on the campaign trail was were going to repeal Obamacare root and branch. So what were asking him to do is repeal root and branch.

Republican leaders attribute some of the discord to inexperience. Just one-quarter of House Republicans ever served in the majority with a Republican president, meaning the vast majority of their members have spent their congressional careers focused solely on blocking a Democratic administrations agenda and fighting their own leadership.

During the Obama years, conservative lawmakers ousted incumbent Republicans, brought down a House speaker and pushed presidential candidates to the right.

When you have a president of another party you can freelance all you want to but now we have an actual chance to change the country, said McConnell, R-Ky., speaking at a breakfast hosted by Politico. We need to get into a governing mode and start thinking about actually achieving something rather than just sparring.

Shifting public opinion has also complicated the calculus for Republicans, increasing the political risk of giving into conservative demands for a total rollback of the health law.

Since Trumps election, polls show the law gaining in popularity. Over the congressional recess last month, GOP lawmakers faced raucous town halls and furious protesters demanding to keep their coverage.

If the GOP is unable to make good on seven years of election promises to repeal the law, they risk entering the 2018 elections without a tangible achievement and angering a Republican base that spent years fighting to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

But if millions lose access to health coverage as a result of the GOP bill, it could expose members in swing districts to fierce attacks.

Governing is tough, says Robert Blendon, an expert on public attitudes about health care at Harvard University. Some Republicans didnt think through the politics of taking away coverage for 21 million people who now have it.

___

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

___

Associated Press writer Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report.

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Republicans still battle each other even after gaining power - WTOP

WASHINGTON Republican lawmakers are showing increasing resistance to President Donald Trumps trade agenda, worried that his plans could hurt exports from their states and undermine longstanding U.S. alliances.

The concerns indicate that the biggest threat to Trumps trade policy which emphasizes new bilateral deals and a tougher stance against countries blamed for violating trade rules is coming from his own party. The opposition from Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, stands to complicate Trumps efforts to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, and tackle alleged trade violations in China.

We want to support him on all those things; were not there yet, said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), whose state depends on aerospace and agricultural exports.

While many Democrats in Congress are interested in working with the Trump administration, Republicans who have long backed free trade many of them close to business groups are warning that imposing tariffs could lead to retaliation against U.S. goods. Lawmakers from farm states are upset that Trump in January pulled out of the unratified Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the 12-nation trade agreement that Barack Obama negotiated.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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Trump's trade agenda faces challenge in winning over Republicans ... - MarketWatch

Not much over the past couple of days has made the passage of the American Health Care Act seem more likely. One of the House bills chief Republican critics, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday that the proposal "as it's written todaycannot pass the Senate."

Cotton was harsh not only on the bill's prescription for Obamacare but on the political fallout for Republicans who support it. "I believe it would have adverse consequences for millions of Americans and it wouldn't deliver on our promises to reduce the cost of health insurance for Americans," he said. "So, 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."

Then Cotton went a step further: "I'm afraid that if they vote for this bill, they're going to put the House majority at risk next year." What does Trump think of Cotton's prediction, and how much does the president think about how to protect his Republican majority in the House? The White House is mum. "Contact the RNC," wrote press secretary Sean Spicer in a curt email.

Republicans Are Damned If They Do or Don't

Is Cotton's warning alarmist or shrewd? It's obviously too soon to tellthe House committees have voted the bill through but GOP leadership won't bring to a floor vote until after the Congressional Budget Office scores itbut Cotton's sentiments reflect a growing sense among some congressional Republicans that the party is not just squandering a great chance to implement a conservative health-care program. With this bill, the GOP may be sowing the seeds of their demise. Bad policy and bad optics, say Cotton and the various Republicans (from Freedom Caucus members in the House to Maine moderate Susan Collins) urging the House to start over, will make for bad politics.

House speaker Paul Ryan pushed back on this on CBS's Face the Nation, agreeing with President Trump's statement that without passing this particular Obamacare repeal, 2018 will be a "bloodbath." "Look, the most important thing for a person like myself, who runs for office and tells the people we are asking to hire us, this is what I will do if I get elected. And then, if you don't do that, you are breaking your word," Ryan said.

Both men have a point. So what's a conflicted Republican congressman to do?

Trump to Listen to Someone on Health Care

On the president's Monday schedule is a late-morning "listening session on healthcare" in the White House's Roosevelt Room. No word from Trump's staff who will be there for the president to listen tomembers of Congress? industry representatives? doctors? patients?but it's a sign Trump may be looking for ways to alter the bill he's already gotten behind.

The director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, said on Fox News Sunday that Trump was "willing to accept improvements to the bill."

"We've met with many groups over the last week, week and a half. We've talked with many different groups as we possibly could. And anyone that comes off with an improvement, we are more than happy to accept," Cohn said.

You're FiredAll 46 of You!

On Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions formally asked for the resignation of all 46 United States attorneys who were appointed by Barack Obama. This practice is pretty standard when a new party holds the White House. As former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy notes, Bill Clinton's attorney general Janet Reno fired 93 such attorneys in 1993.

But the routine request couldn't escape the constant drumbeat of drama in Trump's Washington. One of those attorneys, Manhattan's Preet Bharara, refused to resign on Friday (unlike his other colleagues, who issued public statements declaring. On Saturday, Bharara said he had been fired.

Why did Bharara not resign? Back in November, the hard-charging attorney had met with the president-elect at Trump Tower, where he said he had been asked by Trump and Sessions to stay in his post. But on Thursday, President Trump reportedly made a phone call to Bharara, who refused to accept the call, citing Justice Department protocols. It's unknown what Trump wanted to discuss, but the next day, Justice asked the U.S. attorneys to resign.

Not every U.S. attorney's resignation was accepted. Those of the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, and the nominated deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, were declined, according to a Justice Department spokesman.

Song of the Day

"Mama Told Me Not to Come," Three Dog Night.

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Could Trumpcare Sink Republicans in 2018? - The Weekly Standard