Why Haven't Democratic Candidates Been Referring To Trump As "Deficit Don?"

The "Freedom Caucus" is screaming its collective head off about growing deficits again, threatening to Boehnerize GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and threatening to kill the budget deal agreed to by Trump, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer and McCarthy. The "Freedom Caucus" statement: "The House Freedom Caucus has grave concerns about this budget agreement and will oppose it on the House floor. Our country is undeniably headed down a path of fiscal insolvency and rapidly approaching $23 trillion in debt. This is completely unsustainable, and we owe taxpayers and future generations better. We should be working together on a bipartisan basis to cut spending and balance our budget-- or, at bare minimum, holding to the existing spending caps to prevent a significant problem from becoming even worse. All sides should go back to the drawing board and work around the clock, canceling recess if necessary, on a responsible budget agreement that serves American taxpayers better-- not a $323 billion spending frenzy with no serious offsets."

As you can easily see in the graph above. George W Bush left President Obama a humongous budget deficit which Trump worked for 8 years to bring down-- even at the expense of his own agenda for the country. He left Trump with a relatively modest deficit which Trump and the Republican Party are well on schedule to double, wiping out all the efforts of Obama in bringing it down. While bringing the deficit up, Trump has accomplished virtually nothing for the American people-- no infrastructure advances whatsoever, nothing to help in the fields of healthcare, education, or moderating economic inequality.

The new Morning Consult poll asked how important of a priority several issues should be for Congress? One was "reducing the federal budget deficit." Most registered voters think that is important. 46% said it should be a "top priority" and 34% said it should be important but a lower priority. Just 10% said it either was not too important or shouldn't be done at all.

This week, the Washington Post published a piece by Bob Costa and Mike DeBonis, 'We're Like Thelma And Louise': Republicans Shrug At Deficits Under Trump. "In 2011," they wrote, "with the nation still climbing back from the Great Recession, Republicans threatened global markets by refusing to raise the federal debt limit unless President Barack Obama and the Democrats agreed to steep across-the-board spending cuts for years to come. Eight years later-- and $7.7 trillion more in debt-- President Trump and GOP lawmakers have agreed this week to lift the debt ceiling again without a fuss, and with hundreds of billions in new spending on top of it."

The deal marks a significant capitulation to Trump after years of brinkmanship from Republicans claiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility, underscoring the president’s far-reaching hold over his party and a disregard for the budget-cutting and debt reduction that conservatives long claimed as priorities.

John Avlon, reporting for CNN.com, wrote, "It's official: Conservatives only care about deficits when a Democrat is president. Under Donald Trump the deficit is on a path to more than a trillion dollars per year and discretionary government spending is growing faster than it was under Barack Obama, when he was working to stimulate our way out of the Great Recession."

But what was angrily portrayed as generational theft and galloping socialism under President Obama is now accepted with all the outrage of a cow chewing its cud.

Everyone in Washington seems to suddenly accept the economic and political benefits of government spending, as the GOP hopes to keep the stock market goosed past Trump's reelection. While it's great that Washington appears to have avoided another truly stupid, self-inflicted government shutdown, Congress is whistling past the graveyard. That's because deficits are growing while the economy is booming-- up 23% in the first nine months of the fiscal year alone. That's not supposed to happen. And there will be hell to pay when the remorseless math of rapidly falling tax revenue kicks in during the next downturn.

That is very bad news for those of us who will be left to clean up the mess after Donald Trump has left DC. Because there is no way that Democrats are ever going to fall for the inevitable Lucy and the Football moment that will come when conservatives say that it's time to rein in spending.

No less than Rush Limbaugh just admitted the whole thing was a conservative con job, telling a caller: "All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it's been around."

That's quite a slap in the face after the Obama-era bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission tried to implement the warnings of fiscal conservatives with a balanced plan that was rejected by party leaders-- including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who called for its creation in no less than six floor speeches but then whipped votes against it when the rhetoric threatened to become reality.

In Trump's Washington, deficit hawks are an endangered species. The alleged fiscal principles of the Tea Party have been sold for scrap, leaving only its nativist impulses intact. And there's no obvious way out of the escalating deficits and debt that will compromise our fiscal independence in the next downturn.

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised to eliminate America's then-$19 trillion-dollar debt in eight years. Anyone who believed that fell for the Don's Con-- after all, this was the self-styled "King of Debt" talking. Under Trump, the national debt just passed $22 trillion for the first time in history.

The danger is that the political benefit of breezy lies seems to have been codified. And it's too much to expect that yet another Democratic president is going to be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans who constantly talk about fiscal discipline and then deliver increased deficits and debt.

It's a story we've seen repeatedly since Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was famously the last president to preside over a budget surplus and by 2014 Barack Obama had gotten our deficits to half of what they are today under Donald Trump, despite the Great Recession. Because of the sequestration deal that was just taken off the books in this latest budget deal, Obama presided over a reduction in discretionary government spending of nearly 2% per year in his second term.

During the last Republican presidency of George W. Bush, a group of conservatives bitterly criticized its drift on deficits and debt. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence slammed the "profound loss of credibility on issues of fiscal discipline," saying that "big government conservatism is a failed experiment." Now that he is Vice President, Pence has been not so much muted as neutered on the issue. But no doubt, he'll find a way to blame Democrats when we reap the whirlwind for the actions taken in his administration's name.

Remember, when Trump was a candidate, he promised he would completely end the budget deficit. Now Trump is running the finances of the country as though deficits don't matter, perhaps hearing the first part of a Stephanie Kelton lecture on MMT but nodding off and missing the second part-- the part talking about how deficit-inducing spending needs to be spent (to benefit the general good, something the Trump Regime hasn't done).

Who Is The Worst Democrat In Congress-- And The Best Republican?

Seriously-- would YOU shake hands with Trump without a glove on?

Arizona Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema is no longer the worst Democrat in the House. Thanks to Chuck Schumer's always screwed-up recruiting agenda, she's now the worst Democrat in the Senate. Actually her crucial vote score (38.46%) is tied with Jo Manchin, so... to be fair, she's tied for worst. But that leaves the important slot in the House open.

Who's the worst Democrat-- at least so far-- in the House? Well, according to ProgressivePunch-- and their explanation of how they arrive at their scores is here-- there is a 3-way tied between 3 especially reactionary Blue Dog freshmen: Joe Cunningham (SC), Ben McAdams (UT) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ). Each scores a 30.0%. Two Republicans-- Justin Amash (MI) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)-- are voting more progressively than they are. There's a simple case for breaking the tie and declaring Van Drew the winner (the loser). Cunningham's district has a PVI of R+10 and Trump beat Hillary there 53.5% to 40.4%. McAdam's districts even worse-- R+13 and Hillary only managed to win 32.4%. Van Drew's district, on the other had, isn't deep red, but a normal swing district. The PVI is R+1, the least red of the 5 New Jersey swing districts occupied by Democrats. Obama lost both times he ran in McAdam's district and in Cunningham's district, but Obama won both times in Van Drew's district-- and with slightly over 53% both times. Trump beat Hillary 50.6% to 46.0%, a much less drastic loss than in McAdam's and Cunningham's districts.

In other words, NJ-02 is a place that will vote for someone with a progressive message. Van Drew is going in the opposite direction-- pure GOP-lite. He even votes with Republicans other silly game-playing procedural roll calls meant to do nothing but embarrass Democrats. Van Drew-- a dentist but absolutely not a brain surgeon-- is one of the only freshmen still falling for it.

Late last week, the editorial board of the South Jersey Times took a look at his voting record so far, noting what a kiss up he is to Trump.

The media in New Jersey made a big deal about the lengths to which U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, the freshman South Jersey Democrat, went to make sure that he was seen shaking hands with President Donald Trump at last month’s State of the Union address.

It looked at times as if Van Drew had aced a course in Advanced Photobombing 101. NJTV reported that Van Drew tugged at the president’s coat sleeves three times until he got Trump’s attention.

“I shook his hand going in and coming out,” Van Drew told columnist Paul Mulshine later. “The president of the United States occupies the highest office in the land. It’s traditional to greet him.”

One can argue that a president who seems to disrespect everyone else doesn’t command respect from opposite-party members of Congress. But to Van Drew, who represents the 2nd District, a hand-clasp with Trump is the ultimate symbol of bipartisanship.

Last week, Van Drew noted that he’d been named co-chair of the National Security Task Force of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats named for their historic origins as a response to “yellow-dog Democrats” who would vote the party line even if its candidate was a yellow dog.

Although another newly elected New Jersey House Democrat, Mikie Sherill of the 11th District, has also joined the Blue Dogs, she hasn’t embraced the designation the way Van Drew has.

Broadly, Van Drew has refused to take any of numerous opportunities to attack Trump’s call for a greatly extended border wall. Congress’ failure to provide the president with $5.7 billion for the wall prompted the recent, but unsuccessful, Trump-engineered government shutdown. Further, Van Drew’s statement about his Blue Dog leadership states that he’s “looking forward to proactively engage on issues that promote a strong and smart national security for the United States.”

Van Drew was the same kind of fake Democrat in the New Jersey state Senate before the DCCC recruited him to run for the open NJ-02 seat. In the legislature, he was considered the worst Democrat, always the one most likely to betray the party and back the GOP. That he was, was the whole reason the DCCC recruited him. Those are always the kinds of Democrats the DC establishment tries to bring into Congress. It's so self-defeating and self-loathing. (It was the same with Schumer's design to recruit Sinema.)

Justin Amash is an odd duck. He's a popular Grand Rapids libertarian who tends to vote with the GOP less than any of his GOP colleagues. Until he passed away last month, Walter Jones (R-NC) sometimes beat Amash voting more progressively and these days, super-vulnerable swing district Pennsylvanian Brian Fitzpatrick sometimes votes more progressively. But, generally speaking... well, let's put it like this: if I could trade Van Drew for any Republican, it would be Amash... hands down.



In 2012, the Democrats once ran some shithead, Steve Pestka, against him from the right! An anti-Choice homophobic piece of crap "Democrat"... and I enjoyed watching Amash wipe the floor with him. Yesterday, CNN dubbed Amash the loneliest Republican in Congress, after an interview with Jake Tapper. Haley Byrd wrote that Amash's "firm libertarian stances on foreign policy, surveillance and federal spending put him in an awkward position with many in his own party. And two years into Donald Trump's presidency, Amash appears lonelier than ever. His closest allies-- conservatives who routinely sparred with the GOP establishment in the past-- have coalesced behind Trump even as his political and legal woes have mounted, with Republican lawmakers now marching in lock-step behind the President even on issues they historically haven't supported, like shutting down the government. But that's not Amash's style."

Some have suggested Amash run for president in 2020 as a Libertarian. He told Tapper he "would never rule anything out" but it's not on his radar. I don't see him doing anything like that. He's important in Congress and he knows it.

The divide was clearer than ever during a February oversight hearing with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. While most Republicans on the panel stuck to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan's strategy of attacking Cohen's character and playing defense for the President, Amash asked sharp questions designed to draw out information.

..."From the time the President was elected, I was urging them to remain independent and to be willing to push back against the President where they thought he was wrong," said Amash. "They've decided to stick with the President time and again, even where they disagree with him privately."

Amash was the sole member of the caucus to vote against Trump's use of emergency powers to seize funds for his long-desired wall along the southern border, even though the Freedom Caucus was known for lambasting President Barack Obama's executive maneuvering to get around Congress.

"In some sense you've delegitimized objections to the President," Amash said of his peers. "You've built up such credibility for him that you just can't challenge him anymore."

Asked if he'd thought about leaving the Freedom Caucus in recent months, the congressman admitted he has been "disenchanted" enough to consider it at times. But he said having close partners to work with on issues he cares about has kept him from calling it quits.

Still, the relationship has evolved.

Leading up to the 2018 election, Amash started to feel like the group wasn't going to turn around. Since then, he hasn't been attending all of the meetings like he used to, going only "infrequently," he told CNN.

"I came to a meeting and really gave them a dramatic speech about what my concerns were and what we needed to do as a group and how we were losing sight of our purpose and our principles," Amash recalled. "And that was sort of it."

Tension built as Amash regularly argued for the group to return to a focus on opening up the legislative process. In recent years, it has become harder and harder for rank-and-file members to have a say in lawmaking. Leaders in both parties opt for a top-down approach, rejecting the idea of allowing a robust amendments process. When the Senate was debating the GOP health care bill, only a small handful of senators actually knew what would be included in the bill-- even up until the final hours before the vote. And the House recently experienced its most closed session in history under now-retired House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The question of whether to prioritize process or policy has plagued the Freedom Caucus since its inception, and divisions have only heightened in the Trump age. It hasn't helped that Amash has lost key allies like Raul Labrador, the Idaho lawmaker who left Congress last year to run unsuccessfully for governor of his state, and Mark Sanford, who lost his South Carolina primary to a more Trump-friendly opponent in 2018.

Yet Amash reiterated his Freedom Caucus colleagues remain some of his closest friends in Congress.

"They are good, kind people," he said. "I may have my disagreements with some of the current approach, but I'd still take them over pretty much anyone in Congress."

And members who differ with Amash's stance say he still brings a helpful perspective.

"Justin, like all of us, is just looking for a way to be the most effective and efficient he can be," Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs said. "When we're debating, he engages in debate and offers a ton of valuable comments and I think that's invaluable for all of us."

Amash has the rhetorical style of someone who really enjoys arguing for the sake of arguing but also benefits from fiercely believing what he says. He also has a wry sense of humor.

Soon after inauguration day in early 2017, Trump signed a travel ban targeting six majority Muslim countries. Amash-- whose mother is a Syrian immigrant and whose father came to America as a Palestinian refugee in 1956-- opposed the executive order. In the immediate aftermath of the ban, protestors flocked to airports, where travelers were stranded.

At the height of the outcry, Amash excused his lateness to a Freedom Caucus meeting one night with a joke at the administration's expense, according to one attendee who told CNN about the incident at the time. "Hey guys. Sorry I'm late," he said. "The travel ban got me held up at the airport-- they're screening all the Syrians."

Half of the room was amused by the quip. The other half-- not so much. It was memorable enough that a lawmaker who also attended the meeting still recalled the episode more than two years later.

To his closest friends in Congress, Amash's ability to call out his own side is part of his charm.

"Justin Amash is probably one of the most, if not the most consistent and honorable members of Congress that I met in the eight years I was there," Labrador, the former Idaho representative, said. "He always outlined what he believes in, why he believes in the things that he does and why he makes the decisions that he makes."

It's not clear what's next for Amash, whether another term in the House or something new. He admits he's thought about everything from breaking away from the GOP to launching a presidential bid.

"I never stop thinking about these sorts of things," he told CNN. "It's not because I have any immediate plans or anything like that, but I never stop thinking about those things because there is a big problem with the current two-party system we have, and someone has to shake it up."

"Now, is it possible for anyone to shake it up and make a difference?" he added. "I don't know."

Right-WIng Crackpot Jim Jordan Wants To Get His Hands On The Speakership Before The GOP Loses The Majority

A senior GOP staffer: "They’re not legislators, they’re just assholes. These guys have such a minority mindset that the prospect of getting something done just scares them away, or pisses them off."

Friday morning the Washington Post referred to Jim Jordan as "a prominent and polarizing conservative leader" and noted that he "is strongly considering a run for House speaker in a bid that could upend the race to succeed Paul D. Ryan." The Ohio Republican has been plotting Ryan's downfall for months, even reaching out for help from Democrats! He's been pretending to be whipping votes for Mark Meadows while secretly harboring his own (somewhat absurd) ambitions on the speakership.

A little background: Like Denny Hastert, Jordan was a wrestling coach. A career politician, he was in the state legislature from 1994 'til 2006 when he wormed his way into Congress, representing a deep red, poorly educated, nearly 90% white district (PVI is R+14) with no cities. McCain won the district with 54.4%. Romney took it with 56% but Trump crushed Hillary 64.3% to 30.7%. Jordan was one of the founders of the extremist House Freedom Caucus and in 2017 John Boehner summed up his career in politics very simply: "Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate… A terrorist. A legislative terrorist."

CNN reported he's being "encouraged to consider a run for House speaker." Its his own ego that's doing the encouragement-- and his insane ideology. He's made it clear that he hates Ryan as much as he hated Boehner. "A House member, asking for anonymity, told CNN that Jordan informed him that he was considering running for the top job." He's been surreptitiously encouraging Democrats to move in for the kill and force Ryan to retire early.

The House Freedom Caucus is viewed among rank-and-file members as a trouble-causing faction within the House GOP. The chances of Jordan running and successfully winning would be slim, but if he were to enter the race it could make the job tougher for someone else to unite the conference and win the votes.

So far, the often-cited candidates for the job continue to be the No. 2 House Republican, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and the No. 3 House Republican, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, but the effort to encourage Jordan reveals that a bitter leadership race may yet still unfold within the fractured GOP conference. Scalise has said he does not plan to run directly against McCarthy, but a leadership source told CNN earlier in the week that Scalise plans to be ready in case McCarthy declines to run for the job or struggles to find the votes as he did in 2015.

Paul Ryan Is Still Blocking Action On DACA

Yesterday, House Democrats demanded an instant vote on the DREAM Act. Ryan laughed at them-- and laughed at every Latino in America. He said NO. Why? Well... Ryan's in a pickle (en un aprieto). Wednesday evening, Robert Costa reported that the Freedom Caucus, egged on by Bannon, called him out on the carpet to bitch at him about his poor leadership skills. Three neo-fascists, Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA) and, of course, Caucus chair and Bannon crony Mark Meadows (R-NC), chastized Ryan "and warned Ryan that they and others in the House Republican conference could desert him in the coming months if the leadership fails to enact conservative policies." But the big news in DC out of all this is that...

Several people close to Bannon and Meadows said on Wednesday that the two men, who met on Monday on Capitol Hill, have begun to discuss who could replace Ryan as speaker, should conservatives rebel against him. But they stressed that those discussions remain speculative and informal, with no plan yet for action.

...[A] conservative lawmaker who is close to the Freedom Caucus did provide a statement to the Washington Post.

“I’ve talked to countless Americans who are fed up with Congress’s inability to get anything done. They see Mitch McConnell and Speaker Ryan as the biggest impediments to enacting President Trump’s agenda,” wrote the lawmaker, who requested anonymity due to sensitivity about directly speaking out against Ryan. “If things don’t change-- and fast-- the American people will demand new leadership in Congress.”

Now that Nancy and Chuck are best friends with Señor Trumpanzee and he's all pro-DREAMer, he appears prepared to see if forcing Ryan and McConnell to work with the Democrats will do anything to move his-- or at least an-- agenda along in Congress. Just a couple of hours ago Trump forced the Turtle to work with Schumer to pass a Harvey aid package that included the Democrats' version of extending the debt ceiling. Only 17 Republicans voted against it-- including many Trump-haters, like Jeff Flake, John McCain, Bob Corker, Ben Sasse, Jerry Moran, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee. Last time there was a vote on the DREAM Act it was killed because 5 racist conservative Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP. What Democrats would do that?

• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Mac Baucus (MT)
• Jon Tester (MT)-- still in the Senate; will he screw us again?
• Ben Nelson (NE)
• Kay Hagan (NC)

The 3 Republicans who crossed the aisle in the other direction and voted for it-- Robert Bennett (UT), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Richard Lugar (IN)-- were as chastised by their party as the Democrats who voted against were by their party. Murkowski, though, is known for having far more political courage on her worst day than Jon Tester does on his best-- and they were the only two aisle-crossers who will be voting on the DREAMers' fate this time... at least in the Senate. (Gutless Blue Dog Joe Donnelly, now an Indiana senator up for reelection next year, was in the House last time the DREAM Act was voted on and he voted with the GOP against it.)

The disastrous election of 2010 had just destroyed the Democrats but Pelosi was still calling the shots in the lame duck session and on Dec,ever 8, 2010, the House, passed it 216-19810. There were 38 Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans against the DREAMers. I've bolded the ones who had just been defeated for reelection the month before and had little to fear by voted their consciences, their hearts, their souls-- by crossing the aisle and backing the racists and xenophobes:

• Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)
• Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY)
• Brian Baird (New Dem-WA)- one of his last votes before retirement
• John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
• John Boccieri (Blue Dog-OH)
• Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
• Rick Boucher (VA)
• Bobby Bight (Blue Dog-AL)
• Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)
• Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)
• Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS)
• Jerry Costello (IL)
• Mark Critz (PA)
• Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA)
• Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)
• Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN)
• Brain Higgins (NY)
• Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)
• Paul Kanjorski (PA)
• Marcy Kaptur (OH)
• Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)
• Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-PA)
• Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)
• Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)
• Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH)
• Bart Stupak (MI)- one of his last votes before retirement
• Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS)
• Pete Visclosky (IN)
• Charlie Wilson (Blue Dog-OH)

The only Democrat who ducked out of voting that day-- and who is still in Congress today-- was then-Blue Dog/now New Dem Adam Schiff (CA), who is eager to rewrite his out of step conservative history as he gets ready to run for Feinstein's Senate seat as the TV news anti-Trump.

And that brings us to yesterday's parliamentary maneuvering by the Democrats on behalf of DACA. This was the memo all House Democrats got from the Democratic Whip operation in the morning:

SAMPLE VOTE RECOMMENDATION for PROCEDURAL VOTE TODAY:

VOTE NO TO SUPPORT THE DREAM ACT (Previous Question Vote Today!)

Today, the House will be taking a procedural vote on the Dream Act. If members vote yes, they will be voting to reject the Dream Act. If members vote NO, they will be voting to SUPPORT THE DREAM ACT. Please urge your Members of Congress to vote NO on the Previous Question to the Rule.

Sample vote recommendation below:

Dear Member of Congress, we urge you to vote NO today on the Previous Question to the Rule. Yesterday, President Trump and his Administration crossed a moral line in terminating the DACA program. DACA was a promise to 800,000 young immigrants that the American Dream is achievable. Over the last five years, DACA recipients have become parents, doctors, served in the military and as police officers, rescued Harvey flood victims, and taught our children in our schools. All DACA recipients have lived in the United States for at least 10 years and they have been paying working, studying and paying taxes. Six months from now, every day, 1,400 will lose their ability to work legally and stay in the United States. We call on Congress to support the Dream Act now. Business cannot wait, schools cannot and most of all, Dreamers shouldn't have to wait for Congress to act. Now is the time for Congress to prove it will protect and defend Dreamers. Vote No to the Previous Question to the Rule. Support the DREAM Act.

It came up for a vote late in the day and all 188 Democrats voted against it; they were joined by 3 libertarian-leaning Republicans, Justin Amash (R-MI), Walter Jones (R-NC) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). So it passed 230-191, putting 230 Republicans on the record in favor of deportations of the DREAMers.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren made a speech on DACA and the DREAM Act... worth watching as she puts it all into much needed context:

Is The Republican Party On A Congressional Kamikazee Mission?

The GOP is now like a college cafeteria food fight-- a free-for-all. Polling released yesterday shows Trump's ratings continuing to plummet and now shows that Paul Ryan is the single most unpopular politician in America-- even more disliked than Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and... Señor Trumpanzee.

PPP's newest national poll finds Donald Trump's approval rating falling to its lowest level yet in our polling.

...[The healthcare] issue has made Paul Ryan into the most unpopular politician in the country. At the start of the Trump administration he had a 33% approval rating, with 43% of voters disapproving of him. Now his approval has plunged to 21%, with his disapproval spiking all the way up to 61%. Ryan's particularly seen his image crater with Trump voters-- what was a 53/23 approval rating with them in mid-January is now negative at 35/41.

Thursday, Ryan told CBS This Morning that Trumpanzee was "very apologetic" for telling his Twitter followers to watch "Judge" Jeanine demand Ryan step down as Speaker. "He actually was very apologetic about it, in that he said, 'I had no idea that that’s what she was going to talk about... I thought she was going to talk about something else.' So really that was completely coincidental."

The Marist poll, also released yesterday, had even worse news for Trump.

Only 38 percent of registered voters said they approved of the job Trump is doing as president, compared with 51 percent who disapproved. That’s down 3 percentage points since mid-February, and is considerably lower than other presidents at comparable times in their presidencies.

Independents approve of the job Trump is doing by 34-52 percent, while Democrats approve by 9-84 percent. Republicans approve by 79-10 percent, which are strong numbers, though they have gone down 3 points since February.

Peter Sullivan at The Hill reported yesterday that mainstream conservatives in the House are now refusing to even talk with the Freedom Caucus. "The centrist Tuesday Group," he wrote, "affirmed at a meeting Wednesday that it will not meet with the conservative House Freedom Caucus to negotiate changes to an ObamaCare replacement bill, according to Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.). 

“I am not speaking for the White House; I'm not speaking for the Speaker; but I will speak for the Tuesday Group,” Collins, a member of the group, told reporters. “We have never negotiated with the Freedom Caucus. There was never a meeting scheduled with the Freedom Caucus. We will never meet with the Freedom Caucus, because it's not appropriate for a group of ad hoc members.”

...“It was just reiterated that next time one of those calls comes in [from the Freedom Caucus], just hang up,” Collins said of the Tuesday Group meeting.

...The tension between the groups is a bad sign for prospects of reviving ObamaCare repeal legislation.

Collins predicted that the repeal bill would not come back.

The Conservative Review's Chris Pandolfo wrote yesterday that "These moderate Republicans refused to go along with a full repeal of Obamacare, and now they are pledging to work with liberal Democrats to pass bad bills rather than use the Republican majority to pass conservative legislation. It’s compromise with Democrats. Screw the conservatives. Pass liberal legislation that will hurt people. And President Trump is fine with all of it. This is not what the conservative base in the Republican Party voted for in 2016. Then again, actually it is. The Tea Party took this risk when they handed Trump the Republican nomination in 2016. Donald Trump was never a conservative. He was never anti-establishment. Some conservatives knew that when they held their nose to beat Hillary Clinton. Well, the Democrats are out of power and conservatives are still losing. So where do we go from here?"

To hell, as far as mainstream conservative Adam Kinzinger is concerned. Kinzinger represents a swingy district in north central Illinois that Obama won in 2008, Romney won in 2012 and that Trumpanzee took with 55.5% in 2016 (on the same day that Kinzinger was reelected without opposition). In 2014 he had beaten his Democratic opponent 71-29%. Yesterday Kinzinger penned an OpEd for the NY Times, How the Freedom Caucus is Undermining the GOP. He bemoans the blame game tearing the Republicans in Congress apart-- and then immediately jumped into it. "[C]laiming that the party was in disarray," he wrote, "is untrue. A vast majority of us were ready to vote yes [on TrumpCare], but one faction of the party made it impossible: the House Freedom Caucus."

Kinzinger, forgetting that TrumpCare had eye-popping disapproval from Americans in every part of the country-- and an overall approval of just 17%, wrote that the Freedom Caucus is an "interesting name for a group of about three dozen members that refuses to let the will of the people advance on the House floor, a group that Mr. Trump himself scolded on Twitter on Thursday for undermining the Republican agenda, and our party as a whole." Kinzinger says he's "fed up." (But is he handsome enough to keep his seat in an anti-Trump tsunami? Aaron Schock always thought so-- but he's headed to prison.)

This is why the legislation collapsed: In exchange for their votes on the replacement plan, the members of the Freedom Caucus wanted reductions in essential health benefits. President Trump agreed in good faith. Some more-moderate Republican members struggled to accept these changes. Yet even knowing that some yes votes had turned to no, the conference went to bed on Thursday thinking that we would vote the next day. To our dismay (but not to my surprise), the concessions were not enough to get the Freedom Caucus on board, as usual.

...Those demands included rescinding Title 1 regulations, which include protections for people with pre-existing conditions and allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans until the age of 26. The president, and many of us, had promised to protect these two key provisions.

The Freedom Caucus fully understood that its last-minute demands would doom the bill. The vote was going to fail.

This is a common tactic by the group. Over the years, the caucus has repeatedly demanded more while refusing to compromise. In 2013, a group of conservatives who later became part of the Freedom Caucus won major concessions on the farm bill, and then still voted against it. In 2015, the caucus made demands for a free-trade bill that were clearly intended to kill the legislation. Their demands were not met and the bill passed without their support.

It’s what they do: They move the goal posts, and once that happens, they still refuse to play. We are the Charlie Brown party, hoping that this time, things will be different. But time and again, the Freedom Caucus is Lucy-- pulling the ball out from under us, letting us take the fall and smiling to themselves for making a splash. It’s a cheap tactic, not a way to govern, and enough is enough.

I'd say Kinzinger and his GOP establishment allies have more to worry about than their failed attempts to deny healthcare to millions of Americans. This is something that's going to land on them like a ton of bricks:

And then, of course, there's this... with incredibly unpopular Paul Ryan and Señor Trumpanzee leading the bickering and failed party into the 2018 midterms. One day they may be looking back on today's numbers wistfully, hot tears running down their pudgy, well-fed cheeks:

Full Scale Civil War Breaks Out In The GOP-- But Are Trumpy-the-Clown's Threats Credible?

Congressional Republicans have supposedly been afraid of Trump attacking them in tweets for months. And this week, he went for it. He called out the Freedom Caucus and tweeted "we must fight them" and tweeted twice specifically against Tea Party leaders Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Raul Labrador. Earlier, it came out that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman, personally delivered a threat from Trump to Mark Sanford that Señor Trumpanzee was actually hoping Sanford would vote No on TrumpCare so that Trump would have an excuse to recruit and back a primary opponent against him in 2018.

Against the backdrop of crumbling negotiations over the GOP bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump said last week he wanted to oust incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in 2018.

The South Carolina Republican told the Post and Courier that Trump chose to convey this message through an intermediary: White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, a former member of the S.C. congressional delegation, co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a friend.

"'The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run (a primary challenger) against you in 2018,'" Sanford said Mulvaney told him.

He added that Mulvaney made it clear he did not want to deliver the message but did so at Trump's insistence.

"I’ve never had anyone, over my time in politics, put it to me as directly as that," Sanford said, perhaps understating just how monumental it is for a sitting president to openly go after members of his own party.

Back in February we noted that Sanford would probably be better off keeping the increasingly unpopular Trump at a distance anyway. Today we see even the oafish Hannity has sided with the Freedom Caucus over Trump! And in the fever swamps of the fringe right, when you've lost Sean Hannity...

The 4 members of Congress Trump chose to single out are all pretty well-respected hard-core conservatives, and his move was not a very popular move among Republicans in Congress-- or among hard-core ideologues in the far right grassroots. We'll come back to that in a moment. First, though, let's look at how serious Meadows, Jordan, Labrador and Sanford have to take Trump's overt threats. Let's overlook, for a moment, that Trump has failed miserably in every single Republican primary contest he's gotten involved in and that his preferred candidates have all lost. (Right now the Trump candidate in the GA-06 primary, Bruce LeVell, is polling at 0.6%.)

Fact of the matter is that Trump won all 4 congressional districts of the congressmen he threatened-- and pretty strongly... but not as strongly as the congressmen won the same districts on the same day!

• ID-01- Trump- 63.7%, Labrador- 68.0%
• NC-11- Trump- 63.2%, Meadows- 64.2%
• OH- 04- Trump- 64.3%, Jordan- 68.1%
• SC-01- Trump- 53.5%, Sanford- 58.6%

Mark Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, was interviewed by The Hill and he made it clear which side he's on: "The man who promised to 'Drain the Swamp' now appears to be the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon.' He is now on the side of the swamp monsters."

Meckler and others on the right have warned that Trump risked losing his grassroots base by whipping support for the healthcare bill.

Many conservatives have so far directed their anger at Ryan and GOP leadership, who they say misled the president on the legislation.

But Trump’s attack on the Freedom Caucus could open up a rift with grassroots conservatives, who have defended the president against criticism over his support for the bill.

Chris Gandolfo, writing for Conservative Review, also took the side of the Freedom Caucus and against Trump's attacks. He wrote that "Though the Freedom Caucus is under assault from all sides, some of its members who have spoken to the media or made public statements are standing strong-- insisting that they are willing to work with President Trump to keep the GOP’s promise to repeal Obamacare. The media has used the failure of the American Health Care Act-- Republican leadership’s phony repeal bill-- as an excuse to attack conservatives in Congress. The Tea Party members of the Freedom Caucus, who opposed the legislation on grounds that it would not improve the American health insurance market, have been labeled 'hardliners' who are unwilling to 'compromise' or 'get things done.'... 'The Freedom Caucus is trying to change Washington. This bill keeps Washington the same, plain and simple,' Rep. Jordan said on Fox News Thursday."

Liberty News Now was even harsher towards the GOP Establishment, into which they're lumping Trumpy-the-Clown. "For those who praised the selfless actions of the Freedom Caucus," wrote Shane Cory, "Trump’s tweet was a shot heard round the nation. Trump is vowing to defeat the leaders who stopped him from passing a $1.4 trillion bill that would raise insurance costs and create yet another entitlement program. The threat is directed at Virginia’s Dave Brat who threw out Establishment icon Eric Cantor. The threat is directed at Texas’ principled Louie Gohmert and the most conservative member of Congress, TEA Party favorite, Ken Buck. To put this in perspective, if you take a look at the Heritage Foundation’s Congressional Scorecard, the President of the United States just vowed to defeat eight of the ten highest-rated conservatives and libertarians in Congress. While threatening members of the Freedom Caucus who hold ratings 90% or higher with Heritage, President Trump strongly stands by Speaker Paul Ryan who holds a pathetic lifetime score of 58%. Paul Ryan is closer to Elizabeth Warren than he is to Dave Brat according to the Scorecard. And Donald Trump wants us to defeat our only principled members of Congress in 2018? Something is simply twisted in Trump World, or we were twisted to trust him."

Or both. And it won't be too long before Trump is going to need the Freedom Caucus members he's been alienating to save him from impeachment. Later we'll talk more about this poll that came out this morning:

Will TrumpCare Signal The End Of The Republican Party In California's Federal Politics?

Whip counts change. The most worthless ones-- aside from Steve Scalise's-- come from the clueless Beltway media clods. I laughed when I saw Lou Barletta (R-PA) start turning up on lists of NO votes. There's no one in the House more easily bought-off by a thug like Trump than Barletta. So I wasn't quite as breathlessly in shock as the little children at The Hill when Barletta took his bribe and switched his vote:

Mark Meadows, head of the Freedom Caucus, said a few days ago his own whip count shows 40 NO votes in the House. That's the highest I've seen and I wouldn't count on that big a fuck you to Ryan, who has been busy showing Republicans he knows how to get even with expensive TV ads and cheap rob calls in their own districts. As late as yesterday-- after arm-twisting and some pretty massive bribe promises that netted Trump-- besides Barletta-- John Faso (R-NY), John Katko (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY), Martha McSally (R-AZ), paper tiger Steve King (R-IA), Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Meadows said he had firm NOs from 25 Freedom Caucus members alone. They only need 22 to kill TrumpCare so that it never even goes to the Senate at all.

Last night many of our Senate contacts were telling us they expected Ryan to have a heart to heart with Scalise, realize he doesn't have the votes, and postpone today's do-or-die attempt. Yesterday Trump set Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway and #PresidentBannon loose on a dozen or so Freedom Caucus members he lured over to the White House. A staffer for one member told me that after the meeting, his boss was more sure than every he would be a NO vote. Several members complained that there is no talk about substantive poilicy-- just politics, crude bribes and usually subtle threats.

One firm NO vote is Thomas Massey, a Libertarian-leaning independent thinker from Kentucky. He says he knows over 35 Republicans against it and he feels they can force Ryan to raise the white flag and repeal ObamaCare without replacing it. "This is worse than Obamacare," he told the media, "and we’re going to own it. We’re going to own it lock, stock and barrel." He tweeted jokingly that he had changed his vote late yesterday, sending out this as a tweet:

Ryan and Trump, though, aren't the only ones holding cash under Republicans' noses to get them to vote on TrumpCare. The Kochs want to see it defeated and CNN reported late yesterday that the Koch network is creating a new multimillion dollar fund for Republican candidates in the 2018 reelection races-- but only for the ones who vote against TrumpCare today.

The Koch-aligned networks oppose the bill because they think it does not do enough to scale back former President Barack Obama's health care policies.

"We want to make certain that lawmakers understand the policy consequences of voting for a law that keeps Obamacare intact," Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips said. "We have a history of following up and holding politicians accountable, but we will also be there to support and thank the champions who stand strong and keep their promise."

Ted Lieu addressed a statement directly to the California Republicans in Congress: "Today’s revelation by Governor Jerry Brown of a $6 billion a year tax bill for California under President Trump’s health care plan is astounding.  I triple-dog-dare moderate House Republicans from California to vote for TrumpCare." What he's talking about is that any Republican who votes for TrumpCare is voting to deny their own constituents federal support for health insurance for a simple reason: in California state law mandates abortion coverage in health insurance, while Ryan specifically wrote TrumpCare to deny tax credits for any policy that does that. The consequences would be calamitous for the state's insurance markets and probably signal-- if (and it's a BIG if) the DCCC could find good candidates-- the end of the careers of at least half a dozen California Republicans, namely Steve Knight, David Valadao, Darrell Issa-- regardless of which was he flip-flops today-- Jeff Denham, Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrabacher, Ed Royce maybe even Paul Cook, Ken Calvert and Tom McClintock. The losses of health care under these circumstances go way beyond what was implied by the CBO because they didn't take the abortion inclusion statute into consideration.


If the DCCC is smart they'll nudge their losing import/invention from last cycle, Brian Caforio, aside and get behind local progressive Katie Hill in CA-25 and retire Steve Knight, the right-wing Republican incumbent. Last night, Hill reiterated that she's far from being a fan of TrumpCare while Knight runs around like a chicken without a head trying too decide which position on TrumpCare hurts him more, backing it or opposing it. Katie Hill:

Representative Knight has been non-committal regarding how he will vote on Ryan's repeal bill. At this point, we have no idea if he will vote in favor of a bill that will result in more than 60,000 of his own constituents losing health coverage, and ultimately decimate the entire insurance market here in California. However, given the tremendous pressure he and other Republican members of congress are receiving from GOP leadership and President Trump, it is likely that he will end up voting yes tomorrow.

Health care is a basic human right. If I am elected to congress, I will fight each day to ensure that every single person is able to receive health care that they can afford. It's common sense-- if our people aren't healthy, our society isn't healthy. If anyone gets sick or dies because they can't afford insurance or the care they need, then we are failing as a country and as a community. I won't rest until we know that that won't happen anymore.

Congressman Knight, it's time to put people over party. I know I will.

UPDATE: What Ryan Did To TrumpCare Overnight-- Aromatherapy Is Nice, But Who Will Cover Chemotherapy?

Looks like the GOP Establishment still doesn't have enough votes to pass this Frankenstein's monster of a bill and that it will be postponed 4 or 5 days while they threaten and bribe more Republican members. The changes they made to the bill last night actually turned off even more members! Margot Singer-Katz covered the sausage-making for the NY Times this morning.

There are two main problems with stripping away minimum benefit rules. One is that the meaning of “health insurance” can start to become a little murky. The second is that, in a world in which no one has to offer maternity coverage, no insurance company wants to be the only one that offers it.

Here is the list of Essential Health Benefits that are required under the Affordable Care Act:

• Ambulatory patient services (doctor’s visits)
• Emergency services
• Hospitalization
• Maternity and newborn care
• Mental health and substance abuse disorder services, including behavioral health treatment
• Prescription drugs
• Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
• Laboratory services
• Preventive and wellness services, and chronic disease management
• Pediatric services, including oral and vision care

The list reflects some lobbying of the members of Congress who wrote it. You may notice that dental services are required for children, but not adults, for example. But over all, the list was developed to make insurance for people who buy their own coverage look, roughly, like the kind of coverage people get through their employer. A plan without prescription drug coverage would probably be cheaper than one that covers it, but most people wouldn’t think of that plan as very good insurance for people who have health care needs.

Under the Republican plan, the government would give people who buy their own insurance money to help them pay for it. A 20-year-old who doesn’t get coverage from work or the government, for example, would get $2,000. If the essential health benefits go away, insurance companies would be allowed to sell health plans that don’t cover, say, hospital care. Federal money would help buy these plans.

But history illustrates a potential problem.

In the 1990s, Congress created a tax credit that helped low-income people buy insurance for their children. Quickly, it became clear that unscrupulous entrepreneurs were creating cheap products that weren’t very useful, and marketing them to people eligible for the credit. Congress quickly repealed the provision after investigations from the Government Accountability Office and the Ways and Means Committee uncovered fraud.

Mark Pauly, a professor of health care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who tends to favor market solutions in health care, said that while the Obamacare rules are “paternalistic,” it would be problematic to offer subsidies without standards. “If they’re going to offer a tax credit for people who are buying insurance, well, what is insurance?” he said, noting that you might end up with the government paying for plans that covered aromatherapy but not hospital care. “You have to specify what’s included.”

A proliferation of $1,995 plans that covered mostly aromatherapy could end up costing the federal government a lot more money than the current G.O.P. plan, since far more people would take advantage of tax credits to buy cheap products, even if they weren’t very valuable.

There’s another reason, besides avoiding fraud, that health economists say benefit rules are important. Obamacare requires insurers to offer health insurance to people who have pre-existing illnesses at the same price as they sell them to healthy people, and the Republican bill would keep this rule. But if an insurance company designs a plan that attracts a lot of sick people, it will be very expensive to cover them, and the insurance company will either lose money or end up charging extremely high prices that would drive away any healthy customers.

...Before Obamacare passed, there were few federal standards for health insurance bought by individuals, and it was not uncommon to find plans that didn’t include prescription drug coverage, mental health services or maternity care. But plans tended to cover most of the other benefits. That was in a world where health insurers could discriminate against sick people. In that era, insurers in most states could simply tell the mother of a mentally ill child that she couldn’t buy insurance. That made it less risky for insurers to offer mental health benefits to everyone else.

David Cutler, a professor at Harvard who helped advise the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act, said he thinks the kind of insurance products that would be offered under the proposed mix of policies could become much more bare-bones than plans before Obamacare. He envisioned an environment in which a typical plan might cover only emergency care and basic preventive services, with everything else as an add-on product, costing almost exactly as much as it would cost to pay for a service out-of-pocket.