One of the false narratives peddled by establishment RINO squishes like Reince Priebus in order to get principled conservatives to act like liberal Democrats is to spew the phony premise, Dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Priebus said as much to FOX News Chris Wallace Sunday when he said, We cant be chasing the perfect all the time.
It was intended to be a slam against the House Freedom Caucus, which insisted that Republicans keep their promise of fully repealing Obamacare, something the failed American Health Care Act (AHCA) did not do and kept in place the entire Obamacare apparatus and many of the regulations that caused health insurance premiums and deductibles to unnecessarily skyrocket.
But as House Freedom Caucus founding member Jim Jordan told MSNBCs Morning Joe on Monday, House GOP leadership didnt come anywhere close to perfection when they crafted Paul Ryans health care bill behind closed doors, the bill dubbed Obamacare 2.0, Obamacare Lite, RINOCARE, or Swampcare. Far from seeking perfection, the bill wasnt even good.
Mr. Priebus was talking about dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Well, this wasnt even good.
When no one likes the legislation, you have to do it different, Jordan said. It wasnt going to bring down premiums it had a host of problems. And frankly, the key promise we made to the American people in the 2010, 2014, and 2016 election[s] was we would repeal Obamacare, this legislation didnt do that. And that was the fundamental flaw in this entire process. So lets get back to work and lets do what we said we would do.
Jordan went on to say that the House Freedom Caucus was completely united on the 2015 clean Obamacare repeal bill that was passed in both the House and Senate and was sent to Obamas desk.
But instead of starting with the perfect, Paul Ryan and his team of RINOs stupidly crafted a turd sandwich behind closed doors first and somehow thought it would pass muster with principled conservatives who were excluded from the writing of the legislation.
President Trump, as the author of Art of the Deal should know, this is exactly the opposite way a negotiation should have been constructed.
"was just so the GOP could deliver big tax cuts to the richest Americans (with a few tax cut scraps for middle-class Americans to go along with it)."
"... big tax cuts to the richest Americans?" You should change your screen name to Tooliberal".
They get the biggest tax cuts because they pay the biggest taxes. You want to scrap a bill because the middle class gets a tax cut, but it's not as big?
Me? I don't want any tax cuts until the national debt is paid down.
Neither should anyone else who actually gives a damn about the country.
OTOH, if you want to levy debts and taxes on children not even yet born to pay for your luxuries and your retirement, then I suppose you like it just fine.
That is because you somehow think everything is about your lord and savior, Donald Trump.
And Trump doesn't even care what is in the bill. "Forget about the little shit", is what he told the brave and wonderful Freedom Caucus when he went to the Hill to threaten them.
I was talking about Congress who is, after all, the only ones who can pass or repeal anything. Unlike you, I don't think Trump has read so much as a single page of RynoCare.
In your post #33, you said, "Cut government spending, not tax rates."
As a general principle, sure.
Naturally, there is no budget bill from Ryan so we have nothing to discuss yet. A president is required to propose one to indicate to Congress what he wants in the budget but Congress never pays that much attention. Well, unless the prez is insisting on massive new spending and expansion of federal power so they can dole out a lot of goodies and further control everyone's lives. This would be for major wars and such when they shift into high gear. LBJ and FDR and Lincoln would be prime examples.
I see. In the middle of a healthcare debate, you just decided to throw in overall government spending as a general principle? In case I forgot? In case you forgot?
Correct. But he's not required to propose one with the massive cuts that Trump proposed.
The only way that the proposed budget means much is if Trump is willing to veto one or more of the 11 major spending bills if they don't bend spending seriously in the direction his budget requested.
In the middle of a healthcare debate, you just decided to throw in overall government spending as a general principle?
The reason they went with specific measures in RyanCare was to drive the CBO score downward so they could have a bigger tax cut.
As it stood, it sounds like they started out wanting a $350-$400 billion tax cut but after the House worked its magic, the savings would have been down to $150-$200 billion. And that was before it headed over to the Senate to get porked up some more.
And for all that bait-and-switch to pretend that this is the repeal the GOP dangled in front of us for the last four elections, you want these tiny cost savings for a small tax cut (which would go to the richest people in America who happen to be overwhelmingly Dem donors and advocates). And the GOP would utterly own it. The libmedia would accurately call it GOPcare, RyanCare, or TrumpCare.
"As it stood, it sounds like they started out wanting a $350-$400 billion tax cut but after the House worked its magic, the savings would have been down to $150-$200 billion."
The CBO scored it as a $337 billion savings. That's the only CBO number that I've heard.
So, where did you get your $150-$200 billion number? From the Tooconservative magic calculator?
I'll be impressed if Trump is willing to start vetoing bills that are far out of line from his budget. Then it will actually mean something and he will have accomplished something.
I'm waiting to see whether the Ryan budget will give Trump even 50% of what he is asking for. And I'm pretty sure the Senate budget will be business-as-usual other than increased defense spending.
"for a small tax cut which would go to the richest people in America"
Do you prefer to be called Nancy or Chuck? You sound like them.
Trump hasn't even proposed tax reform but you already know what it's going to look like? Geez Louise. Cut the guy some slack. You'll have plenty of opportunity to nit-pick it to death later.
"I'll be impressed if Trump is willing to start vetoing bills that are far out of line from his budget. Then it will actually mean something and he will have accomplished something."
And I'll be impressed when we put astronauts on Mars. In the meantime, it looks as though we'll both have to wait.
So, where did you get your $150-$200 billion number?
I think it was an article someone else posted here. Or maybe it was another news site. I don't recall.
I still think its dead. McConnell has declared it dead until 0care goes off the cliff, probably because he knows that Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Tom Cotton are three hard no votes. Add in Sasse and some others who like the 0care Medicaid gravy train to continue forever and you have a miserable and divisive defeat in the Senate.
No matter what the House does, McConnell will not move on any House healthcare bill until Gorsuch is confirmed. And I tend to doubt he will want to even then. I think he wants to wait for the fall and the next round of bad news for 0care: spiraling premiums, more companies pulling out of the market, counties or even entire states where no insurance company will offer a policy through the exchanges.
"McConnell has declared it dead until 0care goes off the cliff"
And what to people do when they're riding something that's going off a cliff? They scream. Probably loud enough to be heard in Washington, DC. Even loud enough to be heard by Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Tom Cotton and every Democrat running for reelection in 2018.
And what to people do when they're riding something that's going off a cliff? They scream. Probably loud enough to be heard in Washington, DC. Even loud enough to be heard by Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Tom Cotton and every Democrat running for reelection in 2018.
We'll see.
McConnell is still riding the wave of admiration for refusing to move on Merrick Garland. They won't get McConnell to move again any time soon.
Since Kentucky is the state that CBO projects will lose the most from RyanCare because they have so many working poor in the 55-65 range, McConnell probably never wanted to do this to begin with. Toss in stiff opposition from Rand, Cotton, Lee, Sasse (none up for re-election in 2018) and even opposition from Cruz and Collins and Murkowski (both representing states that would lose under RyanCare) and it's just unwinnable for McConnell.
So Mitch the Bitch plays the waiting game and hope it pays off a second time. In the meantime, he doesn't want any new fights (like 0care "repeal") to show up until he gets Gorsuch confirmed and a good start on the new budget, the wall, defense increases, infrastructure, and tax cuts. To McConnell, this would look like way too much for the Senate to pass anyway.
Would you really be that much happier if RyanCare had failed in the Senate instead of the House?
"Since Kentucky is the state that CBO projects will lose the most from RyanCare"
Trump got 63% of the Kentucky popular vote based on Obamacare repeal and replace. If Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell want to tell their constituents that they have to live with Obamacare, that's up to them.
If Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell want to tell their constituents that they have to live with Obamacare, that's up to them.
They have a lot of voters in KY who are currently in the Medicaid expansion as working poor, partially subsidized. RyanCare (supposedly) will see them going from, on average, around $3500/year to over $10K/year. Anyway, those are the figures thrown around and KY seems to be identified as the state where the most people will take a big hit to the pocketbook.
Neither McConnell (up in 2020) nor Paul (up in 2022) has any great incentive to vote for something that would hit these people that hard.
So in other states where Trump's healthcare bill will help the people, those Democrat Senators will vote for it.
Since Dem senators already know they will control the budget, they have no incentive to vote for anything and a lot of incentive to vote against everything.
If you're powerless, obstructionism is quite often the way to go. Look what McConnell did in 2009-2010 and beyond. Schumer did notice it.
Sure they do. You said "All politics is local". So if Trump's plan helps their constituents, surely the Democrats will vote for it.
I think the senators of a lot of states have reasons to vote for and against a lot of these RyanCare policy ideas. And there is a small core of no votes in the Senate that looks hard to crack.
Don't you think they'll do their best to bottle it up in the House again?
Trump has a lot of wild spending ideas, so there's lots of opportunities to negotiate. Although the Freedom Caucus doesn't have the juice on their own, they might pick up a good bit of support from fiscal conservatives, etc, and maybe a few Dems. So they could become more influential than they look.
On the other hand, I may be suffering from that ol' Greenspan bugaboo, "irrational exuberance".
The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
"I think the senators of a lot of states have reasons to vote for and against a lot of these RyanCare policy ideas."
I thought you already knew that every Dem senator will vote against (and filibuster) any changes to 0care.
Apparently I should have said: "I think the Republican senators of a lot of states have reasons to vote both for and against a lot of these RyanCare policy ideas."
Go ahead and nitpick that sentence if it makes you feel good.
The point I was driving at was that, just as in the House, the liberal GOP senators and the conservative GOP senators would both have had incentive to vote against RynoCare. I think you knew that was what I meant all along.
You could argue that politics was more local back when Tipp O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were cutting deals.
The phrase, "all politics is local" is a common phrase in U.S. politics.[1] The former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill is most closely associated with this phrase.[2]
Andrew Gelman argues that the "local" refers to "need[ing] local skills to win the primary election that gets them into their safe seat, and they need backroom political skills in the state legislature to keep their safe seats every 10 years." Gelman also argues, citing data for elections since 1968, that politics is "less local than it used to be".[3]