Trump Continues Alienating Congressional Republicans With His Heavy-Handed Manner

Yesterday, Haley Byrd published what many observers in Washington have been noticing, namely that Trump— and his third rate Regime— is screwing up the smooth functioning of the Republican majorities in Congress. Yesterday the imbecile started ranting about and government shutdown and how the Senate should nuke the filibuster entirely. McConnell basically told him to mind his own business and stop interfering in Turtle World. Trump and Bannon have made Ryan’s life a living hell but he’s too scared of Trump to tell him off the way McConnell (a dn even Cornyn) did.

Meanwhile rank-and-file Republicans are starting to complain more frequently and more loudly and many claim that Trump is his own— and his (and their) agenda’s— worst enemy. His clumsy interference is doing more harm than good— much more. “The White House,” wrote Byrd, “consistently has pushed for an unrealistic timeline for the health care bill. Administration officials have ignored whip counts that show the bill doesn't have enough votes to pass, and they expect members to cave to pressure from President Donald Trump. So far, those members haven't relented.”

“The White House needs to let the Congress do its job,” a House Republican staffer said. “So many of our problems are coming from things being rushed.”

Recall that the first attempt to pass the bill failed in March when Trump pressured House Speaker Paul Ryan to hold a vote even though it was clear there wouldn't be enough GOP support for a victory.

The GOP leadership promptly changed course thereafter and took a hands-off approach, leaving members to work out their policy differences. The White House worked through the two-week April recess alongside House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and moderate Tuesday Group co-chair Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) to get a compromise amendment drafted.

That yielded a small but partial victory. The Meadows-led Freedom Caucus then decided to support the bill. Moderates, though, still haven't embraced it, and there still aren't enough votes in the Republican conference to kick it to the Senate.

Nevertheless, the administration tried to push the House to vote early again. Officials tried to move it before the president's 100th day in office in order to tout a symbolic legislative victory. And again, lawmakers didn't bite, wary of these arbitrary deadlines.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) split with the Trump administration on Friday because he thinks the process should slow down, telling IJR:

“I think it's just so complicated, and people wanted to get it done real quickly-- it's OK to want to do that-- but it's just a complicated issue. I think everybody's looking at it right now and saying, 'Really, this is much more difficult than we thought it was going to be.’”

Drawing on some of the president's own realizations, he summed up: “This is too complicated to do in a hurry.”

With members of Congress departing for another recess next week, there is even more renewed pressure to move toward a vote this week.

And it's not just the March of Dimes, AARP and the American Medical Association who are calling TrumpCare a sure catastrophe for the healthcare system. Republicans in districts that aren't ethnically cleansed to make them 20 points red don't like being on the other side from trusted organizations like these. But how about Consumer Reports? In the new issue, there aren't just comparisons between various home improvement tools but a powerful piece entitled How the Affordable Care Act Drove Down Personal Bankruptcy. The warning to congressional Republicans isn't muted:

As legislators and the executive branch renew their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, they might want to keep in mind a little-known financial consequence of the ACA: Since its adoption, far fewer Americans have taken the extreme step of filing for personal bankruptcy.

Filings have dropped about 50 percent, from 1,536,799 in 2010 to 770,846 in 2016. Those years also represent the time frame when the ACA took effect. Although courts never ask people to declare why they’re filing, many bankruptcy and legal experts agree that medical bills had been a leading cause of personal bankruptcy before public healthcare coverage expanded under the ACA. Unlike other causes of debt, medical bills are often unexpected, involuntary, and large.

...Some of the most important financial protections of the ACA apply to all consumers, whether they get their coverage through ACA exchanges or the private insurance marketplace. These provisions include mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions and, on most covered benefits, an end to annual and lifetime coverage caps. Aspects of the law, including provisions for young people to be covered by a family policy until age 26, went into effect in 2010 and 2011, before the full rollout of the ACA in 2014.

...[I]nsurance is also about peace of mind. And judging from the consumers who have shared their stories with Consumer Reports, that certainty is in short supply as the fate of the ACA is decided. People are wondering what comes next: Repeal? Replace? Improve? Retain and neglect? No one really knows the answer. Americans are concerned about how the future of healthcare will affect them and their families.