US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7117

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on Tuesday threw cold water on remarks from top Republicans that legislation the Congressional Budget Office gave a dreadful score to is just one of three phases in the process of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

"There is no three-phase process. There is no three-step plan. That is just political talk. It’s just politicians engaging in spin," Cotton told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Republicans have said that after passing the House GOP's repeal bill, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price plans to follow up with regulations and Congress plans to pass another bill with additional reforms that would need to net 60 votes in the Senate.

During a Tuesday morning interview on NBC's "Today," Price mentioned this three-part plan. He argued the CBO report that projects 24 million people will lose insurance by 2026 under the bill is incomplete because it does not take into account the other two steps in the process.

"What the report looked at was only one third of our plan. And that’s why you can’t look at this in isolation," Price said. "The fact of the matter is, with our whole plan, every single American will have access to coverage."

However, Cotton argued that Republicans cannot rely on either subsequent regulations or another piece of legislation. He said that regulations will be "subject to court challenge, and therefore, perhaps the whims of the most liberal judge in America." And he argued that the third, legislative step will never happen, describing it as "some mythical legislation in the future that is going to garner Democratic support and help us get over 60 votes in the Senate."

"If we had those Democratic votes, we wouldn’t need three steps. We would just be doing that right now on this legislation altogether," Cotton told Hewitt. "That’s why it’s so important that we get this legislation right, because there is no step three. And step two is not completely under our control."

Cotton called on House Republicans to slow down their process for repealing and replacing Obamacare. He also urged the House to make changes to the legislation before it reaches the Senate.

The Arkansas senator said that he does not believe the CBO's projection will fully play out, saying "the CBO director is not Moses." He argued that the CBO has "pretty consistently overestimated" Obamacare's coverage, even though experts say the CBO's projections on insurance coverage and premiums under Obamacare turned out to be fairly accurate.

But he did say that the CBO is "directionally correct" on the impact of the Republican plan.

"They’re right that coverage levels will go down in the coming years under the House bill. They’re also right, I’m afraid, that insurance premiums will continue to go up in the near term, for three to four years, before they start perhaps falling in the long term," he said. "However, I suspect that the political consequences of those near term changes means that the long term will never actually arrive."

Eight years ago, Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware was headed to the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden had left his seat open upon ascending to the vice presidency, and Castle, a Republican, appeared to be in the perfect position to take it. Delaware is a solidly blue state, but Castle had built a moderate record, was well-liked and held an early lead over his three potential Democratic opponents. His only problem: That moderate record cut both ways. By September 2010, the tea party wave was cresting and Castle got swallowed up. He lost the Republican primary to tea partier Christine O’Donnell. Two months later, O’Donnell lost the general election by 17 points, and Republicans failed to win a majority in the Senate.

The Castle-O’Donnell primary should be a cautionary tale for Democrats now. Some liberal activists want to challenge Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia’s 2018 Democratic primary. They complain that he’s too conservative and that he voted to confirm most of President Trump’s Cabinet officials. Manchin is probably safe — Democratic voters in West Virginia are pretty conservative.1 But the impulse to challenge Manchin from the left could be dangerous for Democrats. Manchin, even though he often votes with the GOP, is incredibly valuable to the Democratic Party compared to any plausible alternative.

West Virginia leans heavily Republican on the federal level. Trump won it by 42 percentage points in 2016. Republican Shelley Moore Capito easily dispatched — by 28 percentage points — Democrat Natalie Tennant in the 2014 U.S. Senate race — the last Senate race in West Virginia with a Democrat not named Manchin on the ballot. Tennant, who was the secretary of state, was deemed a “top recruit.” But she performed about as you’d expect for a non-incumbent Democrat running for the Senate from West Virginia.

On March 15 2017 05:07 farvacola wrote:
A Democratic Party too afraid to lose the support of someone like Joe Manchin is a Democratic Party that will continue to lose elections left and right. But at least they'll still have one Senator from West Virginia!

On March 15 2017 05:06 zlefin wrote:
I'm inclined to keep manchin; imho one of the problems we're having now comes from parties being too pure ideologically, and from trying to enforce that purity. having a more mixed mess seems like it works out better in practice.
of course since i'm nominally not a democrat, my opinion shouldn't matter as much.

too bad we can't just ditch primaries, that'd help the issue a lot too.

from a strategic perspective, i'd say better a dem that wlil sometimes vote with tihe party for party loyalty than republican. i.e. it's worthwhile to support people who are far from the party's centerpoint if their locality requires such.

On March 15 2017 05:12 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:


California and some other states went to open senate primaries where top 2 go to the main election unless someone gets above 50 percent of the vote. There are some issues like 12 people on the ballot and it seems to be more name recognition. Still though I wouldn't mind if more states did this especially because it would stop the Ted Cruzes from ever being elected.

On March 15 2017 05:07 farvacola wrote:
A Democratic Party too afraid to lose the support of someone like Joe Manchin is a Democratic Party that will continue to lose elections left and right. But at least they'll still have one Senator from West Virginia!

The Republican-backed American Health Care Act would be totally devastating to older Americans who rely on the individual market for insurance, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The bill does bring down overall premiums in the individual market by about 10 percent by 2026 compared with what they would be under current law, the CBO found. But the CBO includes a big caveat: This would greatly differ based on age and income.

The CBO offers an example of a single individual with an annual income of $26,500.

If that person is 21 years old, he'll largely benefit from the Republican health care bill. Under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), he would on average pay $1,700 in premiums for insurance. Under the Republican plan, he would pay $1,450.

But if that person is 64 years old, he would be hurt by the Republican bill. Under Obamacare, he would also pay $1,700 in premiums for insurance. But under the Republican bill, he would pay $14,600 — more than half his annual income. That amounts to more than a 750 percent increase in premiums from Obamacare to the Republican bill.

A 64-year-old who's making $68,200 a year would fare a bit better. Under Obamacare, he's expected to pay $15,300 in premiums for insurance — because his income would be too high to receive the law's tax credits. But under the Republican bill, everyone below $75,000 gets a tax credit based on age (with a phaseout for higher incomes). So he would get a subsidy that would reduce his premium to $14,600 — just barely enough to be lower than it would be under Obamacare.

Older people with an annual income of $75,000 or more would get fewer to no subsidies under the GOP bill. So they would likely face higher premiums, much like the lower-income consumer.

The Republican bill accomplishes all of this in two ways.

First, it abandons Obamacare's income-based tax credits (which give more money to people with lower incomes) to instead give anyone with an annual salary below $75,000 a tax credit based on age, with older people getting more money and a phaseout for higher incomes.

But it also peels back an Obamacare rule that protects older people from higher premiums. Under Obamacare, insurers are generally only allowed to charge an older person about three times what they would charge a younger person — under the theory that older people are often sicker and therefore need to use more insurance. But under the Republican bill, the limit of three times would go up to five times, effectively letting insurers charge older people 66 percent more than they would under Obamacare.

Republicans argue this is necessary because it would also let insurers charge younger people less, which would encourage younger and generally healthier people to come into the insurance pool — and therefore bring down the overall cost of health care by making it so more younger, healthier people are effectively subsidizing everyone's care.

The CBO found that's broadly true. It would bring insurance premiums down in general, and it would cost young people less to get signed up for a health plan. But it would do all of that at a high cost for older Americans.

On March 15 2017 05:17 Mohdoo wrote:


Agreed. Manchin represents exactly what is wrong with the party. By trying to be everything, it has become the party of nothing.

On March 15 2017 05:43 KwarK wrote:

I feel like sanity should be a broad umbrella that people should be able to unify under. I'd have voted for Jeb before I voted for a Democratic Trump equivalent running on a platform of mandatory abortions, estates taxes over 100% and imposed quotas for sexual orientations. With two centrist parties left and right have meaning. When there is just one centrist party in the sane part of politics I don't know that we should necessarily be asking ourselves "yeah, but is the insane party conservative insanity or liberal insanity?" as if either of them are preferable to the sane alternative.

I liked it better when we were swinging between different implementations of broadly the same idea. If the country were to start swinging back and forth between two crazy extremes then the fact that one of the crazy extremes is color coded to my party affiliation isn't going to comfort me much.

On March 15 2017 05:54 Mohdoo wrote:


Until people stop identifying with their political philosophies, centrist messages aren't going to go well.

On March 15 2017 06:30 MyTHicaL wrote:
I didn't know you guys had left-wing party.. Bernie might be the most left-winged candidate I've ever heard of and he wasn't exactly helped within his own party. Is the democratic party not a centre-right party and the republican party a right-wing one?

On March 15 2017 06:30 MyTHicaL wrote:
I didn't know you guys had left-wing party.. Bernie might be the most left-winged candidate I've ever heard of and he wasn't exactly helped within his own party. Is the democratic party not a centre-right party and the republican party a right-wing one?

On March 15 2017 06:37 Gorsameth wrote:

it all depends on perspective. For Americans the Democrats are left.
For the rest of the west they are much more center.

On March 15 2017 07:11 Sermokala wrote:
Sweet jesus we're going to have this dance again. Left and right are a matter of perspective so the Democratic party is the left wing party and the conservative party is the right wing party.

There are two parties and it shouldn't be this hard for people to understand there are two directions and thus two labels for each party.