It's Crunch Time

Trumpcare Crunch Time:  Early yesterday, Majority Leader McConnell amended his version of Trumpcare to include a lock-out period intended to penalize people who have gaps in insurance coverage. The purpose of the change, which differs from the House version, was to increase the number of people covered.   Following the tweak, the Congressional Budget Office released the scoring report for Senate Trumpcare and, despite McConnell’s last minute fix, it isn’t pretty.  The report projects that 22 million people will lose their health insurance over the projection period with 15 million of those people losing their insurance by 2018, in time for the mid-term elections.  Premiums will go up substantially before eventually declining as people buy higher deductible policies that cover few health care services and conditions.  The American Medical Association came out against the bill, saying that it violates their “first do no harm” principle.  They were joined by a number of hospital associations and the Catholic Bishops.  Anthem, the insurance company, voiced support probably because providing stripped down policies will be very profitable. Senate Trumpcare results in $321 billion in savings, about $188 billion more than the House’s version, giving McConnell some wiggle room to offer additional funds to meet the concerns and fund the pet projects of individual on-the-fence Senators: money for opioid addiction treatment and a little more for Medicaid for Senators like Ohio’s Portman and West Virginia’s Moore Capito and funds for health savings accounts for Texas’ Cruz and Utah’s Lee.  The additional funding wouldn’t do much more than make those Senators look better to constituents but that may be enough.  The Senators would be able to brag about their keen negotiating skills as they climb on board the Trumpcare train. As part of the charm offensive, the “adorable” VP Pence will be taking a crowd of fence-sitting Senators out today and the ever sincere Trump is calling around.  So far McConnell is fighting an uphill battle, he may have already lost three votes, more than he can afford.  Last night for totally different reasons Kentucky Senator Paul and Maine Senator Collins both indicated that they are so against the bill that they will vote against bringing it to the floor today, and both say they will vote no if it makes it to a final vote. Assuming Nevada Senator Carson is still a no vote, McConnell is already one vote short of passage. That said, he still has that $188 billion to play with so it’s not over yet.     

SCOTUS Speaks:  Yesterday, before heading out of town for the summer, the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions and accepted a number of cases for review during its next session.  In a somewhat surprising decision, the Court provided Trump with a partial victory on his travel ban.  The Justices plan to review the entire ban during their next session but for now they partially lifted the lower court stay, allowing the Trump administration to proceed with plans to impose a ninety day ban on travel from the six disputed Muslim countries.  However, the Court said that the ban can’t be applied to anyone with a connection to the US so students, people with jobs, and family members will be allowed to enter.  Since few, if any people, from these countries travel to the US as tourists, the ban will primarily effect refugees without family members in the US and, since refugees already go through a rigorous two year vetting process, they are already substantially delayed.  Nevertheless, Trump jumped up and down with joy and bragged about finally getting his way.  By the time the ban goes to the full Court for review, it may be moot, sparing the Justices from having to make a ruling.  In the meantime, only Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch indicated their full support.  The Court also refused to hear a case that questioned California’s right to limit open carry of weapons and told Arkansas that married same sex couples have the right to put both their names on their children’s birth certificates.  The court did chip away at church state separation by ruling in favor of a church that was seeking funding from a local program set up to pay for school playground improvements and indicated for the first time that it would accept the case of the wedding cake baker who refused on religious grounds to make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.  Gorsuch has been exceeding everyone’s expectations, in all cases he has been on the side of the conservatives, to the right of Justice Thomas.  So far, to the relief of many, Justice Kennedy has not retired.

Kushner’s Criminal Lawyer:  Son-in-Law Jared has added a big time criminal defense lawyer to his team.  His new lawyer, Abbe Lowell, represented disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards and jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff and is currently representing New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez against corruption charges.  Kushner may need a skilled criminal lawyer because his disclosure form omissions keep adding up.  In addition to “forgetting” to mention his meeting with VEB bank, the sanctioned Russian bank that’s more a front for the Kremlin than a real bank, he also “forgot” to mention a $285 million loan that his real estate firm received from Deutsche Bank one month before the election.  Deutsche Bank, also one of the few banks that was willing to lend the Trump organization money, settled Russian money laundering charges in January.  While Kushner is lawyering up, Trump continued tweet shading Obama for his failure to act decisively against Putin once Russian meddling was discovered last summer.  He called Obama a colluding, obstructionist making full use of the words he only recently learned.  The verbal attack on Obama is the closest Trump has come to acknowledging that Russia interfered in the election.  As to Putin, Trump wants to have a one-on-one sit down with him at the upcoming G-20 summit.  His advisors are discouraging the meeting because they are afraid of what Trump might say or give away to his sometime bff, the wily Putin.  

Syria:  Last night, the administration issued a stern warning to Syria, threatening harsh retaliation if another chemical weapon attack takes place.  To the extent that Trump is to be believed, the warning is in response to intelligence that Syria has plans to proceed another attack.  If Syria goes forward despite the warning, expect a major escalation in the area and a possible proxy fight with Russia. Trump goes to war?