Vol. 33: Patently Misleading

It turns out the public is not super excited about a bill that takes money away from people in nursing homes and gives that money to the very rich. A USA Today/Suffolk poll showed just 12% support for the Republican bill. As comparison, 14% of Americans believe Bigfoot is real.

Republicans have been unable to make a compelling argument to support this bill. The most conservative senators, like Ted Cruz (R-TX), think it doesn’t go far enough in ending the ACA. Republican senators from purple states and/or those which have expanded Medicaid are not sure they want to risk their career on a bill that makes the lives of people in their state worse. Trump can’t fight for it because, he . . . umm . . . doesn’t understand it. From The New York Times: “A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan—and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.”

With so many disgruntled parties and passage far from assured, Senate Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reluctantly postponed the vote until after the July 4 recess.

So is this horrible bill dead? Can we celebrate? Well, in just the past year, Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat, eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments, blocked a bipartisan response to the Russian attack on the election, and refused to meet with the March of Dimes to discuss health care reform. The March of Dimes funded the polio treatment of a young, poor Mitch McConnell and kept him from being paralyzed. Mitch McConnell is a terrible person. Mitch wants to pass this terrible bill. It is not dead. This is the part in the horror movie when the killer everyone thought was dead shockingly comes back to life.

What’s McConnell’s next move? The CBO score actually had some good news for McConnell and the GOP. It projected $188 billion in savings over 10 years, meaning that McConnell has a $188 billion slush fund to play with in order to bribe senators on the fence. You may think bribe is a bit harsh of a term, but it’s literally what the administration is saying. One administration official told Axios, “I think we’re going to pass this. I really think they’ll bribe off the moderates with opioid money and then actually move policy to shore up Mike Lee [R-UT] and Ted Cruz.”  

McConnell has put in two revised versions for another set of CBO scores. It’s not clear what is in these two versions, but one version is believed to include the Cruz amendment. That change allows insurance companies to sell plans that do not protect those with pre-existing conditions and/or do not meet the quality requirements of the Affordable Care Act as long as they sell at least one plan that is ACA compliant. In other words, Cruz’s plan allows insurance companies to sell worthless insurance policies. The thinking is that people (or businesses) will buy these cheaper plans, which is all they can afford. Therefore the reported numbers of “uninsured” won’t look as bad. In fact though, millions will not have adequate insurance when they need it. Cruz is putting a lot of cynical lipstick on this pig of a bill.

A vote is expected in mid-July. To fight McConnell’s bribes and GOP peer pressure, it’s essential to keep up the heat on wavering senators: Collins in Maine, Murkowski in Alaska, Gardner in Colorado, Cassidy in Louisiana, Portman in Ohio, Capito in West Virginia, and Heller in Nevada. If you’re wondering if you’re doing enough, think of the group of 10 disabled protesters who performed a 48-hour sit-in at Senator Gardner’s Denver office. Many slept in their wheelchairs. Gardner refused to meet with them and insteadhad them arrested. They spent over 24-hours in jail.

Amazingly, people who have not been living in caves for the past 24 months were actually shocked that Trump said this. Republicans in Congress made strong statements against Trump, but then quickly repelled down from their high moral ground to work on eliminating health care. In case you’re wondering how Melania’s pet project fighting cyber-bullying is going, I got this video of her assistant telling herabout Trump’s latest tweet barrage.

As is seemingly often the case, something classless, pathetic, and dumb that Trump said shined a light on a potential crime. Mika and Joe responded to Trump by accusing the President of blackmail. They said that back in December, the National Enquirer (owned by a buddy of Trump) threatened to run a negative story about the two of them. White House staffers then called Joe multiple times telling him that all he had to do was call Trump and apologize for saying negative things about him, then Trump would make the story disappear.

According to The Washington Post, the White House staff felt the problem wasn’t what Trump tweeted, but rather who it was tweeted about. “Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud . . . overtook the president’s fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes.” Trump must have made his staff happy on Sunday morning when he tweeted a movie of himself body slamming CNN. Trumps sent this tweet one month after a GOP congressional candidate assaulted a reporter. The video Trump tweeted was created by someone who goes by the name of “Hanassholesolo” and posts things online about killing homeless people. We’re in a lot of trouble, folks.

There is just one federal agency tasked with providing election oversight, including leading efforts on election cyber-security — the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). This week, in the midst of an investigation into Russians hacking into election databases, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee voted to terminate the EAC.

While the House was voting to end federal election watchdogs, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, began ramping up its efforts. Its stated mission is to examine “improper voter registrations and improper voting.” Its unstated mission is to verify Trump’s false claim of millions of illegal votes and lay the foundation for suppressing voting nationally. Leading the commission is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has made it his life’s work to make it more difficult for people to voteand just last week was fined by a federal magistrate judge for “patently misleading representations,” in a suit by the ACLU. Joining Kobach is probably the second worst man for voting rights in the country,Hans von Spakovsky. When he was up for confirmation to the Federal Elections Commission, six former Department of Justice professionals wrote a letter naming von Spakovsky the “point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.”

The Commission launched its work this week by requesting from every state a complete list of voters’ names, birthdays, the last four digits of their social security, and their voting history. Voting rights advocates fear that the Commission is building this database to make specious attacks about voter fraud, e.g. noting how many people are registered in multiple states, and then pushing to purge voter roles.

Thankfully, over half of the states, both red and blue, have told Kobach and the Committee to go jump in a lake – almost literally. In response to the request, the Mississippi Secretary of State said, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” Oh, and do you know which is one of the states to already say it can’t fully comply? Kansas. Yep, even Kris Kobach realizes that Kris Kobach is out of control.