"I know that we're all going to make a deal on health care — that's such an easy one," @realDonaldTrump tells senators at WH tonight.
— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) March 28, 2017
So Trump has an approval rating in the low 30s w/ independents & below 10% with Dems. But Dems should work w/ him? How does that make sense?
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) March 29, 2017
The NYTimes:
House Republican leaders and the White House, under extreme pressure from conservative activists, have restarted negotiations on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with House leaders declaring that Democrats were celebrating the law’s survival prematurely.
Just days after President Trump said he was moving on to other issues, senior White House officials are now saying they have hope that they can still score the kind of big legislative victory that has so far eluded Mr. Trump. Vice President Mike Pence was dispatched to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for lunchtime talks.
“We’re not going to retrench into our corners or put up dividing lines,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said after a meeting of House Republicans that was dominated by a discussion of how to restart the health negotiations. “There’s too much at stake to get bogged down in all of that.”…
Mr. Ryan declined to say what might be in the next version of the Republicans’ repeal bill, nor would he sketch any schedule for action. But he said Congress needed to act because insurers were developing the premiums and benefit packages for health plans they would offer in 2018, with review by federal and state officials beginning soon.
The new talks, which have been going on quietly this week, involve Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and members of the two Republican factions that helped sink the bill last week, the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more centrist Tuesday Group.
Any deal would require overcoming significant differences about how to rework a law that covers about one-fifth of the American economy, differences that were so sharp they led Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan to pull the bill from consideration just as the House was scheduled to vote on Friday…
No talk of moving on to tax reform or infrastructure at House GOP mtg – member after member got up and pushed to finish health care bill
— Deirdre Walsh (@deirdrewalshcnn) March 28, 2017
WH, House leadership, hardline conservative reps coming out today to announce others pushes on healthcare all resoundingly scream "C.Y.A."
— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) March 28, 2017
Meanwhile, per Politico:
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a letter to her caucus Tuesday, requesting members send their ideas to strengthen the law as soon as possible. Pelosi and ranking members of the committees with health care jurisdiction will discuss the proposals in a meeting Wednesday morning.
“After the collapse of TrumpCare, we must ensure that the Trump Administration does not sabotage the ACA out of spite,” Pelosi wrote. “Then, we can work to improve and update the Affordable Care Act and the health security it provides tens of millions of Americans.”
Pelosi ended the letter by calling last week’s repeal collapse, which stemmed from dwindling Republican support and unified Democratic opposition, a “thrilling success.” Democrats aren’t planning to introduce a full-scale alternative or even a comprehensive overhaul but are looking at specific areas within the 2010 health care law to target for improvement…
NEWS: WH quietly reached out to moderate Dems, trying to set meeting. WH denies outreach https://t.co/lz6Lo3tsSb pic.twitter.com/K5rCq6b6I7
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) March 28, 2017
Someone on the other side of Congress knows how to count, though…
Mcconnell making clear Obamacare repeal efforts dead. "We have the existing law in place and we'll just have to see how that works out."
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) March 28, 2017
WH leg dir Marc Short: Trump would sign health bill, but "there are other things that we have on our priority list that we're moving on to."
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) March 28, 2017
And the rats are abandoning a sinking House…
Really big deal: Top House Republicans don’t seem to keen to continue their cost-sharing reduction lawsuit. https://t.co/RBcuIQj7z1
— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) March 28, 2017
Rs will eventually return to healthcare like Trump will eventually release his taxes. It's what you way when you don't want to say "never."
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 28, 2017
quitting remains an option, @PressSec https://t.co/0ffW0U9jV1 pic.twitter.com/eObuvkq3H1
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) March 28, 2017
Arclite
Love Harry Enten and the whole 538 podcast crew. Good stuff.
jl
[Trump] “learned a lot about loyalty…. it’s certain individuals….I’m not going to get into naming names, but I think the President learned a lot through this process.”
I like the sound of that. Bearing grudges does so much for successful coalition building in politics. Hope they move on to other, even more spectacular, legislative failures.
amk
Ezra Klein: Senate Republicans not ready to give up on Obamacare repeal.
Don’t trust these scumbags. They never give up.
amk
wignutz saying trump digs coal. They think it’s clevah. No morons, twitler won’t, you dig and die in those hellholes.
Raoul
The self-beatings will continue till GOP morale improves.
But seriously, they control the House, the Senate and the WH and can’t figure out what their agenda is, much less how to draft bills. Their brains – such as any members ever had any – have atrophied. At least in the House.
McConnell can read a POUTS poll (record breaking 36%, baby!) and knows what he’s doing. Which I rather hate him for, but he’s been where he is for that long for a reason…
seaboogie
We still have blue dog Dems? Whatever….
We need to keep pushing positive reforms to the ACA and publicize them – get it out there Yuuge…Trump will take a win wherever he can get it, and we need to give this to him, at the expense of the extreme GOP. Midterms, baby… Even (and perhaps most especially) the Trumpetinas are onside with this….
TriassicSands
“
Trump would never do something so petty.
Major Major Major Major
Sorry for the downer, but I have news. My grandma is, after years of decline due to Alzheimer’s, finally on her last legs. She seems to be holding on until my mom can get there to tell her everybody will be safe if she goes to heaven, and that it’s OK to leave us. She can’t eat or drink, the hospice is giving her hourly morphine. She asked not to go this way, but she’s in Texas and they only let you kill the mentally ill if they’ve been wrongly convicted of murder. It’s barbaric. What horror. My poor mom.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Trump will return to 68 year old first wife he abandoned 30 years ago. That’s such an easy one.
marcion
Soooo…. tax cuts are next on the agenda. Maybe.
So they pass a big budget busting tax cut for the rich. Probably, maybe. Then what?
What can they get united on after that? They just going to twiddle their thumbs till the midterms?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Major Major Major Major:
Prayers for your family—fortitude, comfort and serenity at the end.
Major Major Major Major
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks.
CM
@marcion:
“Sooo…. tax cuts are next on the agenda. Maybe. So they pass a big budget busting tax cut for the rich.”
No Trump tax “reform” without Trump tax returns!
Chris T.
It’s not dead yet, it just smells that way.
(To be fair, so does everything Republican and/or Trumpey. The fetid stink of corruption permeates it all…)
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Very sorry, M4.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: Alzheimer’s is a bitch of a disease. Texas sucks too. Sorry you have to go through all this, and hope she lets go soon.
Jeffro
The reason Paul Ryan can’t let it go was because he needs huge Obamacare tax cuts in order to pave the way for huge income tax cuts… I can see them changing nothing about the system except cutting the taxes that fund it
jacy
@Major Major Major Major:
So sorry. These things are never easy. I’ll think good thoughts for peace for you family.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Hugs and love to your mom. You, too, of course, but it sounds like your mom really needs them.
SFAW
When the fuck is Shitgibbon (or Bannonazi) going to grow the fuck up? (I know, I know, “until the 12th of never.”)
“Waaah! I didn’t get my way! Waaah! I WANT IT I WANT IT!”
Of course, ZEGS is probably doing the same thing, in his own smirky way, with his baseball cap on backwards (you’re 47 years old, you childish, mooching, public-sector-teat-sucking fuck!), curling a 200-lb dumbbell.
OzarkHillbilly
@Major Major Major Major: It’s a tough way to go. Sorry to hear it.
TheMightyTrowel
Hey pacific nw I’m headed your way. I’m in the airline lounge waiting for a flight to vancouver. Aside from eat (sushi; ramen), go on a whale watch and go to the museums what shouldn’t i miss? I’ll be there 12 days so lots of time to
get rained onexplore….satby
@Major Major Major Major: Almost a full year since my mom went the same way. The hourly morphine will at least keep the worst at bay, and hopefully she’ll just slip away finally. Peace to her and your family at this time.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@amk: They’re also not going to give up on sneaking tax cuts and Planned Parenthood defunding into every random bill.
@SFAW:
I think you dropped a decimal point there and meant 2.0 lb.
Pete Downunder
@TheMightyTrowel: take a ferry to Victoria. Worth a day or two. In Vancouver walk around Stanley Park. UBC has a beautiful campus.
Aimai
@Major Major Major Major: i am so sorry! I know this pain.
rikyrah
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry for your family.??
Just one more canuck
@TheMightyTrowel: grew up in Victoria and spent a lot of time in in Vancouver. Second Pete’s suggestion for the ferry trip to Victoria – there’s lots of bus tours so no real need for a car. You should also go to Grouse Mountain-take the gondola to the top
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Sorry to hear that.
chris
@Major Major Major Major:
Been there, done that, except for the Texas part. It was hard but it was the end of a long hard decade when Nana finally found peace and the rest of us did too. I wish the same for you and yours.
JGabriel
@marcion:
If – by twiddling their thumbs – you mean spewing hate like the Niagara of hate rhetoric while simultaneously denying they’re doing that, and praying for terror attacks, then, yes, they’ll be twiddling their thumbs.
artem1s
@Major Major Major Major: Sorry about your grandmother. Hopefully your mom can take some comfort in knowing that her arrival will give her mother ‘permission’ to let go. It was the same for my father. He waited for my sister to arrive from SC before he would let go. Although he still ‘needed’ to wait for all us to be asleep and out of the room before he finally passed. Some people need privacy for that last moment.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: I’m so sorry. Prayers for you and your mom and grandmother, and everyone else. Hospice was very good to us and my mom when she was dying, and I hope they’re doing the same for your mom and grandmother.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m so sorry. I hope your grandmother’s passing is easy and pain-free.
@artem1s:
I had never heard of this phenomenon until my father-in-law died, but then I kept hearing story after story from other people.
No One You Know
@Major Major Major Major: I am so sorry. Prayer is all I can offer. But I’ll offer that.
LORD, thank you for bringing us to this day. Look down on your suffering people, both those that know you and those that do not, and bless their roads with peace. Tend the sick, soothe the suffering, and ease the dying, for your names’s sake, we pray. Uphold those stifling at the last, and bring them to rest in quiet and peace, for your name’s sake. Amen.
Kropadope
@amk:
Emblematic of Trump trying to raise economic zombies. Sorry, but coal is dying because there are cheaper sources of fuel more readily available. Even if you improve their fortunes a little bit, it will only be temporary and at the expense of the US as a whole.
Debbie(aussie)
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m so sorry. Love to you and your family, peace for your grandmother.