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House Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday that Americans are rejecting the Democrats' knee-jerk opposition to President Trump and boldly predicted that Americans would reward Republicans in 2018 for following through on a healthcare agenda that, for now, is deeply unpopular.

In an impromptu interview to discuss the Republicans' four special election victories, including last week's crucial win in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Ryan said the liberal strategy for dealing with Trump has been discredited. So, too, the speaker added, would doubters of his party's legislation to partially repeal Obamacare.

"The Democrats are in disarray. All they're doing is suggesting they're going to come and fight and resist, and I don't think that's what voters want," the Wisconsin Republican told the Washington Examiner. "We just saw four victories for tackling problems and addressing issues, and four defeats for just simple resistance and that was the basis of their campaign."

The "resistance" is a slogan used by many of Trump's opponents on the Left.

Just days away from a critical Senate vote for companion legislation to the House-passed American Health Care Act, Ryan's happy talk on healthcare struck a familiar tone.

Back in 2009 and 2010, as President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were closing in on final passage the extremely unpopular Affordable Care Act, they vowed that Americans would embrace Obamacare once it was implemented and they experienced the benefits.

It never happened, and Democrats paid a heavy price in dozens and dozens of lost seats in consecutive midterm elections. Until, that is, this year, when the Republicans' plans to replace the law got rolling. For the time in its existence, Obamacare has spent consecutive months more popular than not.

Republicans are pushing forward, but they're concerned about blowback in 2018, especially with Trump in the White House. They shouldn't be, Ryan insisted.

"Whether or not it's being perceived well, or understood fairly, is not the question so much as: Do we achieve the result? That means we have to pass our policies to achieve good results and let the results speak for themselves," Ryan said. "Whether or not we can communicate in the fog of the moment is not as important as: Do our policies make a difference and do they solve the problem? And, the answer is, yes.' And, that's why we have to see it through."

Ryan's bullishness isn't without some justification.

Georgia's suburban Atlanta 6th District is educated and upscale. It's been Republican for decades but barely chose Trump in November over Democrat Hillary Clinton. It's the type of seat Democrats needs to compete for to have any chance of winning back the House next year.

Democratic energy and money poured into the race from all over the country, and polls showed Democrat Jon Ossoff poised to pull an upset until the very end, when the race started to turn. It was the fourth victory in as many House specials that included narrower than expected wins in three other districts that are solidly conservative.

It also happened with Trump's job approval hovering around 40 percent, after the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election that could implicate the president.

It also happened during the debate, and after passage, of a health care overhaul in the House that, according to a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, only 16 percent of Americans think is a "good idea," with 48 percent saying it's a "bad idea."

Still, it was unusual to hear Ryan eschew the usual lines about caution and the danger of midterm elections for the party that controls the White House. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose majority appears more secure than Ryan's because of a favorable map, is warning his members that the winds can change quickly.

"Voters want us to do what we said we would do. They like what we said we would do, and we simply have to execute. And, so by executing our agenda, by keeping our momentum, we'll keep a virtuous cycle going," Ryan said. "We are on offense; we need to stay on offense."

Ryan dismissed questions about Trump's drag on his members, especially incumbents running for re-election in districts that Trump lost to Clinton last year despite their tradition of voting for Republicans.

The day that James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired under controversial circumstances, testified before a Senate committee, House Republicans repealed Dodd-Frank, Obama's signature financial reform law, the speaker said, as proof that the president's periodic distractions aren't really that distracting.

But Ryan's robust political operation, and his personal attention to fundraising, suggests that he understands what his party could be up against in 2018.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, and his affiliated super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, were the biggest players for the party in the specials. He is raising record amounts of cash for a speaker, and has already transferred $22 million to the NRCC.

Since January, Ryan has held 154 fundraisers and meetings across the country, traveling to 42 cities and 20 states, raising more than $30 million. The speaker has raised an additional $3.4 million for his colleagues by headlining their fundraisers.

So what's Ryan telling his members to keep them on track and discouraged by the heat, or the tweetstorm, of the moment? "Let's get our work done. We built out a timeline for this agenda for this term. Let's go execute it," he said.

Original post:
Paul Ryan: Republicans will be vindicated in 2018 on healthcare - Washington Examiner

By Travis Fain

Raleigh, N.C. Republicans released a redraw of the state's judicial and prosecutorial districts Sunday evening, setting up a committee hearing Monday afternoon on a potential overhaul of the state's third branch of government.

Gov. Roy Cooper, during a budget press conference, said he needed to review the legislation but said it appears an attempt to "rig the courts" in favor of the GOP legislative majority.

"What I've heard simply tells me they're trying to rig the courts because they lost," Cooper said. "This is an attempt to threaten the judiciary and to rig the judiciary in their favor."

House Bill 717 is 21 pages of detailed precinct movements to rework judicial lines in the state. Maps tweeted Sunday night by state Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, the bill sponsor, show a number of changes from the status quo.

Peg Dorer, director of the Conference of District Attorneys, said the new districts would eliminate two district attorneys one covering Scotland and Hoke counties and another for Anson and Richmond ceding their area to other districts. It makes changes to seven prosecutorial districts overall, Dorer said.

"They're pairing some things up and moving some things around that is going to cause a lot of hardship," she said. "It's just a mess.

"And, if you want to get political about it, all of the losers are Democrats," Dorer said.

On Twitter, Democracy North Carolina called the bill a "gerrymander" that merges maps "for conservative control." State Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, said in a telephone interview that the bill seems to be part of "the same effort to bend the government of North Carolina toward the will of the Republican Party."

Martin said he received a "stat pack" with racial and partisan breakdowns of the changes at about 9:30 a.m. Monday and that he would review the crucial information in analyzing the changes. The timing a new map released in what may be the last week of this legislative session, by a GOP majority whose congressional and legislative maps have been found unconstitutional by the federal courts is disturbing, Martin said.

"Utter lack of transparency," he said.

View post:
NC Republicans seek to redraw judicial maps - WRAL.com

The Brezhnev Doctrine said that the Soviet empire could only expand and never give back its gains. A domestic version of the doctrine has long applied to the welfare state and never so brazenly as in the debate over the Republican health-care bill.

Its reforms to Medicaid are portrayed as provisions to all but forcibly expel the elderly from nursing homes and send poor children to the workhouse. Bernie Sanders has called the bill barbaric, a word that once was reserved for, say, chattel slavery or suttee, but is now considered appropriate for a change in the Medicaid funding formula.

The Republican health bills have two major elements on Medicaid, rolling back the enhanced funding for the Obama Medicaid expansion and over time instituting a new per-capita funding formula for the program. The horror.

The Democrats now make it sound as if the Obama expansion is part of the warp and woof of Medicaid. In fact, it was a departure from the norm in the program, which since its inception has been, quite reasonably, limited to poor children, pregnant women, the disabled and the ailing elderly. ObamaCare changed it to make a priority of covering able-bodied adults.

ObamaCare originally required states to enroll able-bodied adults with incomes less than 138 percent of the federal poverty line starting in 2014. The Supreme Court re-wrote the law to make the expansion voluntary, and 31 states and the District of Columbia took it up.

Traditionally, the federal government had paid more to poor than rich states, with a match ranging from 75 percent for the poorest state, Mississippi, to 50 percent for the rich states. ObamaCare created an entirely new formula for the Medicaid expansion population. It offered a 100 percent federal match for the new enrollees, gradually declining to a 90 percent match supposedly, forever.

So, perversely, ObamaCare had a larger federal match for the able-bodied enrollees in Medicaid than for its more vulnerable populations.

This higher federal matching rate, writes health-care analyst Doug Badger, allows states to leverage more federal money per state dollar spent on a non-disabled adult with $15,000 in earnings than on a part-time minimum-wage worker with developmental disabilities, who earns barely half that amount.

According to Badger, West Virginia received seven times as much federal money for spending $1 on an able-bodied adult than for spending $1 on a disabled person.

This obviously makes no sense, and the Senate health-care bill phases out the enhanced funding over four years. But it doesnt end the expanded Medicaid eligibility for the able-bodied. And a refundable tax credit will be available for low-income people that is meant to pick up any slack from Medicaid. This is hardly social Darwinism.

The other, longer-term change in the House and Senate bills is moving to a per-capita funding formula for Medicaid, with the Senate bill ratcheting the formula down to per-capita growth plus the inflation rate in 2026. Maybe this will prove too stringent, but it used to be a matter of bipartisan consensus that the current structure of Medicaid creates an incentive for heedless growth in the program.

The way it works now is that Mississippi, for instance, gets nearly $3 from the federal government for every $1 it spends. Why ever economize? In the 1990s, the Clinton administration advanced what it portrayed as an unobjectionable proposal to make Medicaid more efficient while preserving the programs core function namely, a per-capita funding formula.

The presidents per-capita proposal, the liberal lion Henry Waxman enthused at the time, responds to the pleas of those who want more cost discipline in Medicaid without terminating the guarantee of basic health and long-term care to 36 million Americans.

But that was before ObamaCare lurched the program in the other direction. The Brezhnev Doctrine dictates that what once was common sense must now be unimaginable cruelty.

Read the original here:
Relax, Republicans' Medicaid changes aren't that big of a deal - New York Post

First Read is your briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

For Republicans, its a make-or-break week on health care either they pass their Senate legislation (which then would be on easy street to become law), or they dont (which likely would stop their reform efforts for good). Its that simple, with Senate Republicans hoping to hold a vote by the end of this week before lawmakers go on their July 4 recess. To succeed, they will have to overcome four challenges. Call them the Four Ps:

Five Senate Republicans oppose the current bill: To pass the Senate, Republicans can afford only two defections, assuming that no Democrats support the legislation. And according to NBCs whip count, five GOPers oppose the current legislation:

And there are other undecided/unannounced GOP senators beyond these five, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Rob Portman (R-OH). Do remember: Because someone says they oppose the current legislation doesnt mean they wont support it after some changes. So we will update this list as things change.

As NBCs Kristen Welker reported on Today, President Trump has criticized Barack Obama for not acting more decisively to stop Russias interference in the 2016 election a significant change from Trumps previous indifference on the issue. Well, I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it. But nobody wants to talk about that, Trump told Fox News. The president also tweeted, Obama Administration official said they choked when it came to acting on Russian meddling of election. They didn't want to hurt Hillary? But with Trump blasting Obama on Russia, its worth pointing out all of the times on the campaign trail that Trump USED Russias information to help him defeat Clinton.

In addition, dont miss this piece from NBCs Ken Dilanian, Hallie Jackson, and others: The Trump administration has taken little meaningful action to prevent Russian hacking, leaking and disruption in the next national election in 2018, despite warnings from intelligence officials that it will happen again, officials and experts told NBC News ... According to recent Congressional testimony, Trump has shown no interest in the question of how to prevent future election interference by Russia or another foreign power. Former FBI Director James Comey told senators that Trump never asked him about how to stop a future Russian election cyber attack, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who sits on the National Security Council, testified that he has not received a classified briefing on Russian election interference. Dozens of state officials told NBC News they have received little direction from Washington about election security.

The U.S. Supreme Court heads into Monday, its last day of the current term, with two important questions so far unanswered: What's to become of President Donald Trump's travel ban and will 80-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy retire? NBCs Pete Williams reports. Politicos Eliana Johnson tweets, No Kennedy retirement announcement at clerk reunion, I'm told, leading to dimming WH hopes he'll step down this year.

More here:
Republicans Face Climactic Week for Health Care - NBCNews.com

THE TAKE with ABC News' Rick Klein

"Forget about votes; this has nothing to do with votes," President Trump declared in one of his recent Fox News interviews. The president is right but also very wrong. Of course, it's all about the votes in the Senate, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell trying to orchestrate a kabuki dance with a limited number of moves. When it comes to the president's involvement, "We're trying to hold him back a little bit," Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters, with a smile, on Sunday. (Maybe that's because the president is calling the House bill he once celebrated "mean," even while his super PAC allies go to war with one of the "very fine senators" who might say the same about the current bill.) Yet as the focus turns to deal-making, this is not really about handouts or kickbacks. This bill is deadly serious policy; it could be law by the end of the week, with the House poised to capitalize on any Senate momentum. This is where political muscle is measured, in influencing this week on actual votes, not at vague points in the run-up to 2018. The human consequences will jostle for attention with the political ones in the coming quite interesting days.

THE IMPACT ON MEDICAID

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., would not commit to voting one way or another on the health care bill over the weekend. He called the legislation less "repeal-and-replace" and more Medicaid reform. Under the Senate bill, funding for those covered under the Obamacare Medicaid expansion would dry up in 2024, depending on the state. Those are people who earn between $12,000 and $16,000 a year (slightly more if pregnant or in a nursing home), and after that the government would increase Medicaid funding at rates significantly lower than the actual growth rate of medical costs. The U.S. population is aging rapidly and already, under current law, the program covers over 6 million low-income elders. Almost 2 million Americans rely on Medicaid for nursing home or other long-term care costs. About 35 million children depend on the program as well. If the federal government stops providing funds, cash-strapped states will either have to cut folks off their Medicaid rolls or fix their balance sheets another way. Republican lawmakers have talked for decades about shrinking and adjusting programs like Medicaid but they are finding even Republican governors pushing back, having come to rely on the federal dollars to cover the poorest in their states, ABC News' MaryAlice Parks writes.

WHAT TO WATCH TODAY

President Trump hosts India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House today and the two will give a joint statement tonight.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"These are not cuts to Medicaid, George. This slows the rate for the future and it allows governors more flexibility with Medicaid dollars because they're closest to the people in need," Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway on the Senate health care bill on ABC News' "This Week"

NEED TO READ with ABC News' Adam Kelsey

Trump: "I think we are going to get there" on health care. As five Republicans have come out in opposition to the current GOP health care bill, President Trump, in an interview with Fox News Sunday, expressed optimism that the Senate will pass the plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. "I don't think they're that far off -- you know, famous last words -- but I think we are going to get there," the president said. http://abcn.ws/2tJ4HCk

WH "paying very close attention" to SCOTUS' last decisions of term: Conway. Amid speculation that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy may announce his retirement, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway declined to say whether President Trump or the White House has heard from the justice about his plans. "I will never reveal a conversation between a sitting justice and the president or the White House," Conway told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday. http://abcn.ws/2s541u0

GOP Sens. Susan Collins, Rand Paul express doubts about Senate health care bill. Sen. Rand Paul, one of the key Republican senators in the ongoing health care battle, said Sunday that his party has "promised too much" in trying to fix the health care system and assuring that the cost of premiums will be lowered. "They've promised too much. They say they're going to fix health care and premiums are going to go down," Paul said on ABC News' "This Week." http://abcn.ws/2tJGUlK

Democrats "better stand for something," says party's Senate leader. "Here's the number one lesson from Georgia Sixth," Sen. Chuck Schumer said on ABC News' "This Week" of the recent congressional race in suburban Atlanta. "Democrats need a strong, bold, sharp-edged and commonsense economic agenda -- policy, platform, message that appeal to the middle class ... and unite Democrats." http://abcn.ws/2t58E6v

Koch brothers plan stepped-up spending: "More optimistic now about what we can accomplish." The Koch brothers' political network plans to pick up the pace of spending in the run-up to 2018, despite major policy disagreements with the Trump administration that include skepticism of the health care bill now being debated in the Senate. http://abcn.ws/2t7Wev5

No Ramadan celebration at White House, though Trump said during campaign he was open to it. For the first time in over two decades, the White House did not host an Iftar, or Eid, celebration dinner to mark the month of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month when Muslims fast during daylight hours. Last year, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told ABC News' Jonathan Karl in an interview that he would be open to continuing the tradition of hosting an Iftar dinner. http://abcn.ws/2sHfsXg

WHO'S TWEETING?

@Acosta: WH says Monday briefing will be off-camera. #democracyindarkness

@yashar: NEW: Kushner firm's $285 million Deutsche Bank loan came just before Election Day@PostKranish reports http://wapo.st/2s7tyCK

@JordynPhelps: Trump returns to attacking @SenWarren, calling her a "highly overrated voice": "I call her Pocahontas and that's an insult to Pocahontas"

@mviser: My look Jared Kushner's stint in Somerville real estate while at Harvard. Angry tenants. Big profits. A $50k mistake http://bit.ly/2tLH4sM

@evanmcmurry: NEW: Sen. Ben Sasse uncommitted on Senate GOP health care bill, he says at Koch brothers conference in Colorado Springs. - @rickklein

@realDonaldTrump: Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!

The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.

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The Note: Can Republicans stanch the bleeding on health bill? - ABC News