Republicans
June 20, 2017 — Scott Johnson
CBS News anchor Scott Pelley — make that former CBS News anchor Scott Pelley — is the face of sanctimonious liberalism. The attempted assassination of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and his GOP colleagues on the baseball field in Alexandria last week somehow prompted Pelley’s comment on the day after: “It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress, yesterday, was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree,
»
May 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll decries A RACKET WRIT LARGE. She writes: A book that had a profound effect on me as a teenager was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Francie, the young protagonist, was, like me, a READER who discovers the library and it changes her life. Unlike Francie, however, we were middle-middle class, living in small towns in South Dakota and Minnesota, and Francie was starvation-level poor, living
»
May 6, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
CNN and other liberal media outlets are pointing out that the group of Republican Senators working together on the matter of Obamacare replacement contains no females. CNN’s Erin Burnett slammed Republicans for this fact. Here are the members of the group: Mitch McConnell John Cornyn John Thune John Barrasso Lamar Alexander Mike Enzi Orrin Hatch Ted Cruz Mike Lee Tom Cotton Cory Gardner Rob Portman Pat Toomey The first four
»
May 3, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Two key moderate Republicans say they will support a Republican plan to “replace” Obamacare. I put the word replace in quotation marks because I think the word improve better describes what the proposal does. The two Republicans are Reps. Fred Upton (Michigan) and Billy Long (Missouri). They were won over after a visit to the White House by the addition to the existing proposal of $8 billion in funds over
»
May 3, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The House today voted to approve a spending bill that, if approved by the Senate, will keep the federal government up and running through September. The vote was 309-118 (NOTE: or 310-117, according to other reports I’ve seen). It had majority support from both Democrats and Republicans. More than 90 percent of Democrats supported it. Republicans were much more closely divided, with only about 55 percent of the caucus backing
»
April 27, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
From a conservative perspective, I think it’s clear that the new House Obamacare legislation — the MacArthur Amendment — is an improvement over the original bill concocted by Speaker Ryan. But how much of one? Yuval Levin makes the case that the core concept of the new legislation — state waivers from Obamacare insurance regulations — represents a significant improvement, in terms of both substance and political pragmatism. He writes:
»
April 26, 2017 — John Hinderaker
For good political news, you can’t do better than South Dakota, my home state. The Democrats haven’t yet ceased to exist, but they are on a death watch. The events of this week are classic. The Democrats are holding their big annual event, the McGovern Day dinner, next weekend at the Ramkota in Sioux Falls. They invited Minnesota’s Keith Ellison to be their featured speaker. But then they got cold
»
April 26, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The House Freedom Caucus, which helped block Paul Ryan’s original Obamacare repeal and replacement legislation, has agreed to support a revised bill. The Washington Post describes, in general terms, the new approach. If the new incarnation gains sufficient support from moderate House Republicans, it will pass. This might happen quickly. For me, the key question in evaluating Obamacare replacement legislation is the impact on premiums. Not having studied the new
»
April 24, 2017 — John Hinderaker
News coverage these days is schizoid, as reflected in today’s daily “Morning Score” email from Politico. On the one hand, Politico describes a Republican Party in turmoil, if not outright panic: Republicans say President Donald Trump needs to turn things around fast – or the GOP could pay dearly in 2018. With the party preparing to defend its congressional majorities in next year’s midterms, senior Republicans are expressing early concern
»
April 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In a terrific post called “The Power of Silence,” Scott noted that Samantha Power, once the leading advocate of military intervention to combat genocidal practices, had nothing to say in favor of President Trump’s use of force to combat Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal use of chemical weapons. Such partisan hypocrisy was not confined to the left, though. Sen. Marco Rubio led the justified praise of Trump’s one-time missile attack. However, when
»
March 25, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Republicans have campaigned against Obamacare roughly since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. After the failure yesterday in the House, however, they’re going to get back to us on that. Or the check is in the mail. Or something like that. Tim Alberta looks “Inside the GOP’s health care debacle.” Philip Klein offers a gimlet-eyed assessment of what just happened in “GOP cave on Obamacare repeal is
»
March 24, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
for a few weeks. Then, something happens and perception changes. I agree with John that the failure of the House to pass Obamacare replacement legislation this week doesn’t necessarily mean GOP House members won’t be able to pass important legislation on other fronts. Health care legislation represents a special challenge because it is so complex, because the stakes are so high, and because Obamacare screwed things up so badly. However,
»
March 22, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Politico reports that “a group of Senate Democrats is beginning to explore trying to extract concessions from Republicans in return for allowing Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed.” What concessions? The deal Democrats would be most likely to pursue. . .would be to allow confirmation of Gorsuch in exchange for a commitment from Republicans not to kill the filibuster for a subsequent vacancy during President Donald Trump’s term.
»
March 21, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Sen. Tom Cotton announced today that he will not vote for the American Health Care Act in its present form. He released the following statement: Despite the proposed amendments, I still cannot support the House health-care bill, nor would it pass the Senate. The amendments improve the Medicaid reforms in the original bill, but do little to address the core problem of Obamacare: rising premiums and deductibles, which are making
»
March 16, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Can an entitlement program be killed? That seems to me the question implicit in the unfolding drama over the repeal of Obamacare. With their majorities in Congress and Obama in the White House, Democrats forced the passage of Obamacare without a single Republican vote. The party discipline they displayed was impressive to observe. In the style of the Roman captives paying their respects to the emperor Claudius, the Democrats who
»
March 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has issued its cost and coverage estimates for the House Republican Obamacare replacement legislation. CBO estimates that the bill would raise the number of people without health insurance by 24 million within a decade, but would trim $337 billion from the federal deficit over that time. The report is here. This passage (at page 3) jumped out at me: Starting in 2020, the increase in
»
March 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about how congressional Republicans are subscribing to the view that key parts of Obamacare cannot be repealed through “reconciliation” — i.e., without 60 votes. This view holds that the GOP cannot repeal the price-hiking, competition-destroying regulations that form the core of Obamacare because the parliamentarian, pursuant to the Byrd Rule, won’t allow such repeal through the budget reconciliation process. I took issue with that view. First, the
»
