Beer Pong and Trumpcare

Trumpcare and Kegs: As peculiar as it sounds, House Majority Leader Paul Ryan’s dreams of slashing Medicaid go back to his days at Washington DC college keg parties so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the House version of Trumpcare slashed the Obamacare Medicaid extension.  There is no indication that Senate Majority Leader McConnell ever mastered beer pong but he is a legislative whiz and his version of Trumpcare goes even further.  He didn’t stop at the Medicaid extension, he went after the whole Medicaid safety net, his plan will turn the program into a block grant and subject it to further reductions over time, despite Kellyanne Conway’s weekend alternative truth that Trumpcare has no Medicaid cuts.  Later today the Office of Management and Budget is expected to release its Scoring Report, the report won’t be good, the Republicans will attack its accuracy and  McConnell will press forward, trying to put Trumpcare to a vote by the end of the week.  He will do this without the support of the conservative Koch brothers.  They hate Obamacare but are confounded by the Trumpcare legislation, they just want the whole program dismantled.   

Dissenters to Watch:  Trump spent the weekend golfing, attending Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s third wedding and alternatively threatening and cajoling his good friends in the Senate to vote for Trumpcare.  Mean or not, he wants Trumpcare passed because he needs a success.  Vice President Pence also called around his support for Trumpcare  in between officiating at the Mnuchin wedding.  Despite the pressure, a few Republican governors from states that benefit from the Medicaid expansion, including Ohio Governor Kasich and Nevada Governor Sandoval, are on record opposing the Trumpcare plan.  Nevada Senator Heller has already put his head on the chopping block by voicing opposition and though Kasich says that he won’t tell Ohio Senator Portman how to vote, Portman knows what the very outspoken Kasich wants him to do. West Virginia Senator Moore Capito’s state has also benefited from the Medicaid expansion and, like Ohio has a huge opioid addiction problem, so she is another one to watch. Senators Murkowski and Collins are both on record saying that defunding of Planned Parenthood is a problem  but if the Senate Parliamentarian rules that Planned Parenthood cannot be defunded and the provision is dropped they could move into the yes column.  Pennsylvania Senator Sasse and Louisiana Senator Cassidy are also in the maybe column now because of their states’ dependence on Medicaid and opioid problems.  McConnell likely spent the weekend wrangling the two wings of his party with incentives he purposely left out of his “working draft.” To placate the right, even Senator Johnson whose NY Times op-ed critiques the Trumpcare plan for keeping too many taxes and being too much like Obamacare, he could cutback the remaining Obamacare subsidies.  To placate his moderates he could throw a little more money at opioid addiction programs and make promises to advance legislation for individual Senator’s pet projects. There are already provisions in the plan that specifically benefit Alaska to help Murkowski.  None of the changes will do much to advance constituent services or satisfy philosophical problems but it will give each of the dissenters enough ammunition to claim a victory and Trumpcare will advance.  Senate Minority leader Schumer says despite the challenge, McConnell has a 50% chance of success.  Democrats will propose amendments and try to slow the process but there is not much that they can do so the outcome of Trumpcare is in the hand of the Republicans.    

  

Supreme Court:  Today is the last day of the Supreme Court’s session.  SCOTUS is expected to respond to the administration’s request to halt the stay on the infamous travel ban.  The court could halt the stay on the travel ban, leave the stay in place pending review in the fall or deny the administration’s appeal.  Leaving the stay in place and keeping the ban on ice for now is the most likely outcome.  While most focus has been on the travel ban, rumors have been swirling that 81-year old Judge Anthony Kennedy may announce his retirement plans. A number of conservative pundits have been suggesting that an additional retirement was imminent and the rumor was further fueled when Kennedy moved a reunion of former clerks, planned for next year, to this weekend.  Kennedy is often the court’s swing vote on major issues.  His retirement would allow Trump to put another uber-conservative on the court leaving an imprint that will far outlast Trump’s presidency.  This in a nutshell is the reason that the righteous conservatives put up with Trump’s crap.   

The Russian Front:  Trump starts every day with an early morning call with his legal advisers.  They update him on all things related to the Russian investigation.  He vents, while they hope to diffuse him enough to prevent him from saying or tweeting stupid things during the day.  Trump’s current position is that the Russian incursion into the election process is one hundred percent Obama’s fault and possibly some, though far less than all probably is.  Ever since he was “tricked” into admitting to NBC’s Lester Hold that he fired former FBI Director Comey for refusing to drop the Russia investigation Trump has limited his interviews to Fox News correspondents as long as they aren’t named Chris Wallace.  This weekend in response to a Fox newsnik question about an article in the failing NY Times, he again said that he didn’t know anything about the Russian cyber-attack until he heard about it from the Washington Post because he didn’t realize he was supposed to pay attention during those super boring security briefings.