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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Yesterday stories appeared from The Washington Post and The Associated Press each describing new revelations about disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The two stories have slightly different emphases and appear to rely on slightly different sourcing. But the gist of the story is the same: During the Trump transition and indeed even before Flynn’s late December calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak which led to his forced resignation, Trump Transition officials were concerned about the extent of Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials. Read More
Now, this is quite interesting. In many respects, it simply confirms what Donald Trump Jr. told a group of real estate investors at a conference in 2008: that a ton of the money funding the Trump Organization came from Russia. Here it’s Eric Trump explaining back in 2014 that it didn’t matter that American banks wouldn’t loan Trump money. They had all the money they needed from Russia. Read More