Richard Rubin is the U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, focusing on the intersection of taxes, politics and economics. Richard will be in The Hive Friday June 9th at 1 PM EST for a chat about taxes and Trump’s proposed budget plan. Submit your questions at any time or feel free to join us on Friday, June 9th! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
In Ivanka Trump’s new book, Women Who Work she uses a Toni Morrison quote about overcoming the psychic toll of slavery to illustrate a point about time management. Really. “Are you a slave to your time or the master of it?” Read More
I wanted to thank everyone who wrote in about my piece on the future of digital publishing, subscriptions and TPM. Obviously, we love it when people subscribe. If you haven’t, please sign up right now! But in addition to subscribing, it’s a great boon to me and our whole organization to hear from you about these issues that are so central to what we do, the kind of ever-evolving organization we’re trying to build. Read More
It was a big day yesterday. Against the expectations of many, House Republicans were able to come back from a demoralizing defeat in March and pass a slightly revised version of their “American Health Care Act.” That is to say, repeal Obamcare and replace it with Trumpcare. After passing it with 217 votes, they partied, bigly. Here’s a collection of photographs of the good times, annotated with the number of people who will lose their health care coverage in each representative’s district.
Click the “read more” link to see the full story where the photos are large enough to easily read the annotations.
Democrats on the House floor signing "Na-na-na, na-na-na, hey, hey, goodbye."
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 4, 2017
This is both an homage and a literal repetition of what Republicans did when the Clinton tax bill passed in the House in 1993. Same singing, same song. The bill paved the way for budget balancing over the course of the decade and (more arguably) played a role in creating the prosperity of that decade. It also came little more than a year before Democratic majorities in both Houses were annihilated in the 1994 midterm.
David has the basic overview below of what is coming today. I wanted to add a few more points about what to expect and just as, or perhaps more, importantly what you can do now.
First, this should remind us of what I’ve previously called the Iron Law of Republican Politics. That is, the ‘GOP moderates’ will always cave. I learned this law back in 1998-99 during the impeachment drama. Lots of Republicans thought impeachment was insanity. They warned against it. Said it shouldn’t happen. Said it would be a disaster. Every Republican in the House but four ended up voting for it.
That’s the Iron Law: the ‘GOP moderates’ will always cave. Read More
A new report estimates that the House GOP’s Obamacare replacement would help cover 110,000 of the 2.2 million people with pre-existing conditions in the individual marketplace.
That analysis accounts for the $8 billion in additional funding that the Upton amendment provides that helped win over so many moderates.
Have employer-based health insurance and not too worried personally about Obamacare repeal? Not so fast, friend.
Enough House GOP moderates, laboring with the pre-existing condition know as weak spines, have mostly come over in the last 24 hours to appear to give Paul Ryan and Donald Trump the votes they need to pass Obamacare repeal and replace and send their monstrosity of a bill over to the Senate, where it will be dramatically reworked one way or the other.
No CBO score and, as of a few minutes ago, no final complete text for the bill. But a vote is expected this afternoon, and as of right now there doesn’t appear to be the kind of wobbling from House GOPers that would imperil the bill. We’ll bring you all the latest as it happens.