Monthly Archives: March 2017

Steve Bannon was furious.

Last weekend, the Washington Examiner published a story claiming that President Donald Trump had vowed to back primary challengers to run against Republicans who oppose the GOP's health care plan. The article named Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows as a "possible target." Bannon believed the story was categorically untrue, according to sources, and he met with Meadows over the weekend as speculation mounted about who was behind it.

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Multiple House Republican whips denied that Trump made the threat during the meeting with GOP leaders cited in the story. But a few days later, Trump leaned on Paul Ryan to compromise with the House's far-right flank, which has dubbed the speaker's health care bill "Obamacare-Lite."

The Freedom Caucus may not need to fear Trump-backed primary challengers because of this episode. But the group, nonetheless, is taking a big risk in threatening to blow up Ryans health care proposal: Its passage is a top priority for Trump and could have ramifications for the rest of the president's agenda. Trump told GOP vote counters last week that hed do everything in his power to get it through Congress.

The Freedom Caucus, however, has clearly found a sympathetic ear in Trumps right-hand man Bannon, who wants conservatives to be included in the legislative process instead of twisting their arms to vote yes. The fledgling alliance has given the group newfound hope that they can win the White House over to their side or, at least, that Trump wont blame them if Obamacare repeal implodes.

The last thing I want is for the president to be mad at me, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows told POLITICO in a brief interview on Thursday. He asked me to negotiate in good faith, so I have been working around the clock to negotiate in good faith, reaching out to people that I would not normally reach out to. He understands that no one wants a deal more than me.

Allies of Ryan say the speaker cant possibly agree to everything that conservatives are requesting, and they don't believe Meadows and the Freedom Caucus have engaged in good faith. They also argue that Ryan, at the White House's behest, is trying to incorporate their wishes while still getting the bill passed within a week.

But for months, conservatives have complained that GOP leaders aren't listening to them. That's why Meadows (R-N.C.), who declined to divulge details of his talks with the White House, and other conservatives have circumvented leadership and taken their case to the White House. Trump has essentially become the middleman between warring House GOP factions.

The Freedom Caucus' unwillingness to go along with GOP leaders could backfire if Trump loses his patience. The president carried most of its members' districts by wide margins. If he turns against them blaming them for the bills failure the hard-liners could find themselves in a precarious spot in the 2018 midterms.

Everybodys concerned about getting into a Twitter war with the president, said Freedom Caucus member Ral Labrador of Idaho. He added, however, that conservatives cant simply get on board with something they reject.

And it's not only the House factions complicating the calculus.

Conservative lawmakers have proven adept at exploiting similar divisions in the White House to build momentum for their cause. Administration sources say they stovepipe their concerns to Bannon because of his relationships with the far right, and they warily eye others aligned with chief of staff Reince Priebus, who is closer to Ryan.

They've found sympathizers in the West Wing for complaints that leadership has excluded them from the legislative process. One senior administration official told POLITICO that House leadership cut them out of the process totally.

We opened up a direct channel" with Meadows, fellow Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan and Sen. Ted Cruz, the source continued, "to get the real issues on the table.

If Trump is aware of the infighting, he's not acknowledging it.

"Great progress on healthcare," he tweeted Thursday. "Improvements being made Republicans coming together!"

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The alliance with the White House has emboldened the Freedom Caucus. The group is now aiming to strike its own deal with moderates independent of the efforts of GOP leaders. In fact, with the exception of one conversation with Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), Meadows told reporters Wednesday evening that he had not spoken to GOP leaders in two weeks. He said he talks to the White House almost daily.

The end-run around House leaders has had mixed success. The White House isn't listening to the Freedom Caucus' plea to repeal Obamacare now and replace it later, or their request to axe health care tax credits essential to the Ryan plan. But Trump pressed Ryan Tuesday night to amend his bill to placate conservatives, something the far right has been imploring the White House to do for weeks.

Meadows had given the White House a list of a half-dozen "improvements" that the group wants to be made to the bill.

Trump is also kibitzing with rank-and-file Freedom Caucus members. Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, an early Trump supporter, flew from Nashville with the president on Air Force One late Wednesday and said the two talked about health care pretty extensively.

With a cadre of top aides in the cabin, along with Rep. Marsha Blackburn, another Tennessee Republican, DesJarlais said Trump listened closely as he pitched proposals that would push the health care bill to the right.

He also said Trump is approaching the process carefully and is weighing various ideas to help shepherd it through a Republican conference with sharp divisions. He realizes that its really important to get this done, but he knows that if his names going to be on it, it must be a good product, said DesJarlais, who was a doctor before coming to Congress. I dont think that hes rigid.

On Thursday, Meadows, during a panel discussion with fellow conservatives, slammed the Examiner report as inaccurate and hinted that the White House has told him it was not true.

It didnt happen, and I know that from good authority, asking people that not only were in the room, but I know the president didnt say that, he said.

The Examiner reporter who wrote the story stood by the report.

Meadows suggested someone intentionally was trying to threaten him into voting for the bill and said it wasnt working.

This is the typical kind of thing that happens whenever pressure comes to bear trying to get people to vote against their constituency," he said. "Obviously, we want to say yes. Everybody up here wants to say 'yes.' But the kinds of things that are happening, they dont bring us closer to yes. If anything, they have an opposite reaction.

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Freedom Caucus aligns with Bannon in risky Obamacare gambit - Politico

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and wife Lucy arrive at the memorial service for Bill Leak on Friday. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch have paid tribute to Bill Leak, labelling the late cartoonist a free-thinker and defender of freedom.

He was accused of racism because of a cartoon, Turnbull said during a Sydney memorial service for Leak who died, aged 61, of a suspected heart attack a week ago.

A cartoon that united Australians in defence of freedom.

The prime minister was referring to one of Leaks most controversial works, a cartoon depicting a drunk Aboriginal father who had forgotten his own sons name.

Leak was investigated for a possible breach of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act but the racism complaint was subsequently dropped.

Turnbull was one of many prominent figures who attended Fridays memorial in Sydney Town Hall. Former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard, cabinet ministers Peter Dutton and Mitch Fifield, crossbench senators Derryn Hinch and Malcolm Roberts, satirist Barry Humphries, Leaks former colleagues at the Australian and other conservative figures also attended.

Turnbull, who was depicted in a portrait by Leak for the Archibald Prize in 1994, said his cartoons embodied the freedom to agree or disagree with ideas. There was nothing more Australian than challenging authority, he added. We dont look up or down, we look each other in the eye. Side by side. Mates.

Murdoch, in a letter read out by the Australians editor-in-chief, Paul Whittaker, described Leak as one of the worlds best political cartoonists. He was a fine example of the Australian tradition of free-thinking, a fearless opponent of hypocrisy, Murdoch, who wasnt at the memorial, wrote.

I am proud to have known him as a colleague and a friend.

Humphries criticised those who continued attacks on Leak after his death, labelling them low-lifes. Hes been snatched from the jaws of the PC jackals, the comedian said.

Humphries also poked fun at the Australian Human Rights Commission saying he did not normally enjoy memorials. The only one I would have enjoyed would be the funeral of the Human Rights Commission.

Outside the service, one supporter held up a poster about the cartoonists contest with section 18C.

Wanted: for the untimely death of Bill Leak and other crimes against western civilisation, Gillian Triggs, Tim Soutphommasane, 18c and their rotten commission, it read.

Leak died in Gosford Hospital last Friday.

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Turnbull lauds Bill Leak's 'cartoon that united Australians in defence of freedom' - The Guardian

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The novelist Anatole Frances mischievous observation came to mind when the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the Republican cut-taxes/gut-Medicaid bill and its defenders went into a continuous loop talking about freedom. Conservatives are fond of saying that freedom isnt free. This is entirely true, especially when it comes to health care.

Republicans speak of the wondrous things that will happen if they succeed in slaying the monster known as Obamacare. House Speaker Paul Ryan offered this rush of animated words to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: You need to have an individual market where people care about what things cost, where people have real freedom, where those providers of health care services, be they insurers, doctors or hospitals and everybody in between, compete against each other for our business based on value, based on price, based on quality, based on outcome.

Ryan spoke to Hewitt shortly before the CBO concluded that under his legislative contraption, 24 million fewer people would be insured over the next decade. Ryan dismissed the CBO in advance by accepting that the coverage numbers would, indeed, drop because people would be able to exercise a newfound right to be uninsured, much as they might be liberated to sleep under bridges or beg in the streets.

Were going to have a free market, and you buy what you want to buy, Ryan explained. Theyre going to say not nearly as many people are going to do that. Left-wingers are often cast as dreamy utopians, but its Ryan and his allies who pretend they can create a capitalist paradise in health care something that not one wealthy capitalist country has ever done because the health care market is not like any other.

Older people, for example, are not an ideal market for private insurance companies. Thats why we have Medicare. Lower-income people cant afford to pay the full cost of a decent insurance policy. Thats why we have Medicaid, and why the Affordable Care Act subsidizes policies from private insurance companies.

Slash Medicaid and take away the subsidies and, presto, the ranks of the uninsured mushroom. There is thus something unseemly about Ryan declaring that he is so excited about eviscerating Medicaid. We are de-federalizing an entitlement, block-granting it back to the states, and capping its growth rate, he told Hewitt. Thats never been done before.

Of course, maybe its never been done before because enough politicians stood up to resist the cruel idea of tossing so many people overboard.

Defenders of this proposal try to argue that health care is radically different from coverage. They must think the American people are dunderheads. Coverage is not the end, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on MSNBCs Morning Joe Tuesday. People dont get better with coverage. They get better with care.

Well, sure, but try taking your kids to get care from a pediatrician if you dont have insurance coverage. Or do backers of the Coverage Destruction Act of 2017 just want people to get sicker and sicker until they have to get really expensive care in an emergency room which may come too late?

Ryan urges people to read his bill. If you do, youll realize how many of its pages are devoted not to health care but to tax cuts. According to the CBO, the bill takes $1.2 trillion out of helping people get health care (including $880 billion from Medicaid) and then hands out about $600 billion of that in tax cuts, mostly for the well-to-do and various interest groups, the beleaguered tanning industry being my favorite. This could also be called the Make Inequality Worse Act of 2017.

In his youth, Ryan was a devotee of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is nicely summarized by the title of her book The Virtue of Selfishness. In her world, government should never take money from the better-off to help lesser souls. In the glorious future created by Ryans bill, they will now be even freer to try maintaining their own existence without health insurance.

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Ryan health plan offers freedom to be ill - Albuquerque Journal

The American Health Care Act cleared another hurdle on Thursday, and now its headed to the Rules Committee before getting a vote on the House floor.

Republicans on the House Budget Committee voted quickly, but not unanimously, on Thursday morning to pass the Republican plan to replace Obamacare. About 30 minutes into a hearing on the bill, the committee voted 19-17 to advance the bill to the Rules Committee and set the stage for a full House vote.

Republicans didnt represent the same unified front as they had done in the earlier Ways and Means and Energy Committee markups last week. This time, three GOP members of the committee all part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus voted against moving the bill.

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), and Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), all joined Democrats in offering a no vote to the bill, bringing the vote total just short of a tie.

It was an odd coalition for the first roll call vote of the hearing, as Brat, Sanford, and Palmer have criticized the bill for not being conservative enough, while Democrats continue to decry the cuts to Medicaid and safety nets for low-income citizens.

Still, the conservative opposition has long been expected. Brat said he would not vote for the plan in committee prior to the hearing, and the Freedom Caucus has been vocal in its opposition to the bill.

More Republicans on the panel have voiced some concerns about the bill, and acknowledged that it is not comprehensive under the restrictions of the budget reconciliation process that Republicans are attempting to use in the Senate to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

No one is saying its a perfect plan, Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) said. Its not even a complete plan. Even so, enough of those concerns were apparently assuaged for the vote.

The rest of the Budget Committee hearing wont be another marathon session, akin to the all-night affairs in Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means. Under the rules of the hearing, each party can offer up to seven motions, which, if passed, will be recommended to the Rules Committee, but wont become permanent changes to the bill.

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3 Freedom Caucus Republicans voted against the Republican health bill in committee - Vox

New York Post

Kidnapped woman escapes from moving car's trunk and runs to freedom New York Post Dramatic surveillance video shows the moment a kidnapping victim hopped out of the trunk of a moving car in Alabama and dashed to freedom. A man abducted the 25-year-old woman outside her apartment in Birmingham's Avondale neighborhood around ... and more »

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Kidnapped woman escapes from moving car's trunk and runs to freedom - New York Post