Congress will be in their favorite status next week, recess, a.k.a. vacation.  After 85 days of President Donald Trump’s administration both Trump and the Republican controlled Congress are desperate to accomplish something. 

Clearly their preference was to first pass a repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare and then tackle tax reform.  But intra-party wrangling over the GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) prevented them from even taking a vote on this legislation. So what does that mean for tax reform?

Republicans want to pass both the AHCA and tax reform under a budget procedure in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (CBA) called reconciliation.  This procedure limits debate on reconciliation legislation to 20 hours and avoids a filibuster by Democrats.  But it has some drawbacks too. Due to a section of the CBA called the Byrd Rule, reconciliation legislation must not increase deficits beyond 10 years and it must not contain “extraneous” provisions that do not affect federal spending or revenues.

The AHCA would not repeal and replace Obamacare; it would simply amend it.  The Obamacare requirements that insurers cover people with preexisting conditions and that health care policies include coverage for certain basic health care benefits, among other provisions, do not affect federal spending or revenues.  Therefore any attempt by the AHCA to repeal those Obamacare requirements in a reconciliation bill would be invalid extraneous provisions.  That is why Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and others called the AHCA “Obamacare lite.”  And that’s why the Freedom Caucus would not support the legislation.  These Republicans wanted to eliminate virtually all the most popular benefits of Obamacare.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to enact a revenue neutral tax reform plan that eliminates the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax and lowers rates for the wealthy.  Revenue neutral means the plan will collect the same amount of revenue as projected under current law and will not increase the deficits.  This is important because in order for Republicans to use the reconciliation procedure to pass permanent tax reform the CBA requires that the legislation not increase the deficit beyond 10 years.  If it does, it must expire in 10 years like President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.  Ryan wants his tax reform to be permanent.

Repealing and replacing Obamacare with the AHCA before moving on to tax reform accomplishes two things for Republicans.  The AHCA would eliminate most of the Obamacare taxes and reduce revenues over the next 10 years by around $1 trillion.  And because the AHCA reduces spending by $1.15 trillion over that same period the revenue loses would be more than offset so currently projected deficits would be reduced by $150 billion.  Both of these results facilitate Ryan’s budget plans and his tax plan.

First, any time Republicans can claim to reduce budget deficits, they are thrilled.  But the AHCA would not only reduce deficits, it would cut $880 billion in Medicaid funding and virtually eliminate that program as an entitlement.  Make no mistake, Republicans are eager to wage all-out war on entitlements, including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Second, reducing currently projected revenues by $1 trillion would mean Ryan’s tax plan does not have to collect as much revenue to be revenue neutral.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects revenues of $42 trillion for fiscal years 2017 through 2026 under current law, which includes Obamacare taxes.  Ryan would much prefer to structure his tax plan to collect $41 trillion to be revenue neutral.  That enables him to give an even bigger tax cut to the wealthy.

Ryan also wants to include a border adjustment tax in his plan.  This tax would increase revenues by around $1 trillion over 10 years, which would also allow Ryan more flexibility to cut taxes.  Unfortunately for Ryan there are powerful lobbies like Walmart and other importers that are strongly opposed to this tax and I am not sure the White House supports it either.

Well, Republicans may make another attempt to pass a revised AHCA before the end of the recess or shortly thereafter and Trump seems to be in agreement.  But they may attempt to combine a revised AHCA and tax reform in a single reconciliation bill.  Or they may attempt reconciliation legislation with just tax reform and abandon health care reform.  Frankly, I don’t think they know what to do.

We probably won’t know what Republicans will try to salvage Trump’s first 100 days until they come back from recess and reconvene on April 25.  But immediately they must pass legislation to fund the government for the remainder of FY 2017 or cause a partial government shutdown on April 29. 

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the government shut down on Trump’s 100^th day in office?  And wouldn’t that be apropos based on what he has accomplished since he was inaugurated?     

On Friday President Donald Trump completed his 78^th day in office as the 535 members of Congress packed up and left Washington for their two-week Easter Holiday.  It didn’t seem to matter that critical legislation on funding the government after April 28 was unfinished or that very little had been accomplished since January 20.  Republicans certainly won’t have a lot to talk about at town hall meetings back home except the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Trump has signed 22 bills as president.  Eleven of these were noncontroversial measures like naming federal buildings.  The other 11 were roll backs of President Obama’s regulations, including the rule that prevented telecom and cable companies from sharing or selling their customers’ personal information without first obtaining permission.  I don’t think Republicans will brag about sacrificing their constituent’s privacy when asked about their successes. 

Of course the big failure in the House was the universally rejected American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Republican’s long touted repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.  For some moderate conservatives it went too far in eliminating health care insurance coverage and for the radical conservatives like Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and his Freedom Caucus it didn’t go far enough.  Speaker Paul Ryan claims he will continue to try for consensus on this legislation but his chances probably aren’t very good.

Meadows was a self-described “developer” and sandwich shop owner in Western North Carolina. After being criticized by his party and his president for blocking the AHCA last week he is scrambling to make amends.  But in order to get his band of radicals to vote for a revised bill it will have to make health insurance even less affordable for those who need it most.  More moderate conservatives won’t agree to that and the Senate will present an even greater problem.  I think Meadows is in over his head.

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On March 30 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson inexplicably stated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fate was up to the Syrian people.  No doubt this pleased Russian President Vladimir Putin who is Assad’s ally in Syrian war crimes; but it was a reversal of a long held U.S. policy that advocates regime change in Syria.

Several days later the Syrian air force dropped bombs containing deadly sarin gas on the rebel-held Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun.  Reports indicate that 86 civilians were killed, including 30 children and 20 women.  The timing of this attack coming so soon after Tillerson’s curious comment about legitimizing Assad’s regime makes one wonder if there was a cause and effect relationship.

Trump made a display of compassion for the victims and disgust with the Assad regime after seeing pictures of the carnage.  And now Tillerson is calling for Assad to be ousted.   But Trump also blamed his predecessor saying: “President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.” 

While one can argue that Obama didn’t do enough about Syria’s chemical weapons, it is certainly not true that he did nothing.  Obama negotiated an agreement with Russia that was designed to eliminate all of Assad’s chemical weapons under international supervision.  Russia agreed to ensure the process.  In fact thousands of pounds of chemical weapons were removed and destroyed.  But the only actions that seem to impress Republicans are dropping bombs and killing people.  Obama tried to solve the problem without that.

Certainly the Syrian gas attack was horrific but Syrian and Russian bombings continue to kill women and children and pictures of their bodies, or what’s left of them, would be no less shocking and horrible.  So why isn’t Trump incensed about these atrocities?

Perhaps I’m cynical, but I believe that media manipulator Trump saw the poison gas attack as an opportunity to accomplish something his base could cheer, distance himself from Putin and give the networks a flashy issue to distract them from his miserable record and his Russian connections. 

Well, Trump didn’t solve the poison gas problem with a limited attack on one airfield, or accomplish much else for that matter.  The airfield was back in operation the next day.  And no doubt Assad has more chemical weapons and ample capability to deliver them, even on our troops fighting the Islamic State in Syria.   Sadly, Trump has no cohesive follow-on Syrian policy.

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Finally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proved once again that he cares nothing about the Senate or the Constitution by ramming through the confirmation of Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch.  It is well documented that for eight years McConnell obstructed every part of Obama’s legislative agenda that he could, mainly with filibusters.  In 2010 McConnell stated that his main objective was to make Obama a one term president.  And last August he told a campaign gathering in Kentucky:  “One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy (with Merrick Garland).’”

McConnell has been a leader in making gridlock a fact of life in Congress and further politicizing the judiciary.  His actions have weaken our democratic process and I fear it will be a long time before Congress will return to the days when the minority party was the loyal opposition and compromise for the good of the country was possible.

President Donald Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney is a Tea Party Republican and a former member of both the far-right House Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee.  Together these two groups comprise the majority of Republicans in the U.S. House. During President Obama’s tenure they were the radical deficit hawks that refused to vote for debt limit increases unless the administration agreed to their spending cut demands.  In other words, they voted for catastrophic defaults on the nation’s debt.

With Mulvaney on the job I was expecting a lean Trump budget.  So it was no surprise that the fiscal year 2018 Budget Blueprint for discretionary spending that Trump released March 16 proposed drastic cuts in all federal spending except for defense, homeland security and veteran’s affairs.  Mulvaney claims that it simply mirrors what Trump promised the voters. 

But discretionary spending is only about 30 percent of the federal budget.  The big bucks are in the mandatory spending programs in Trump’s full budget for FYs 2018-2026 that is to be released in May.  If the full budget doesn’t include reductions in spending for Medicare and Social Security I will just be surprised; the Freedom Caucus and most Republicans in Congress will be outraged.

Still there is much more to be done with federal budgeting in the next few months as I have mentioned in earlier blogs.  By the end of April Congress must pass legislation that will keep the government running through the end of FY 2017 and a concurrent resolution on the budget for FYs 2018-2027.

The debt limit extension negotiated by then-Speaker John Boehner in 2015 expired on March 15, 2017.  So on March 16 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stopped borrowing to fund the government and urged Congress to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible.  He also implemented “extraordinary measures” that usually provide enough cash to fund the government for several months without borrowing. 

Typically in May Congress begins work on the 12 discretionary spending appropriations bills for the following fiscal year.  It seems likely that Trump’s Blueprint was intended to provide guidance for this process.  But even some Republicans are not really thrilled with the spending cuts Trump is proposing.    

The Blueprint’s 28 percent reduction in the State Department budget and the 31 percent reduction in the Environmental Protection Agency budget have been well publicized as being drastic and dangerous to national security and the environment.  But Trump’s budget cuts to other departments would be quite damaging too.  The Departments of Labor — Health and Human Services – Agriculture – Commerce – Education – Transportation — Housing and Urban Development and Interior would all suffer budget cuts from 12 to 21 percent.  I think cuts to education would hurt the most.

And Trump wants to totally eliminate funding for 19 independent agencies, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Appalachian Regional Commission.  Even if Trump voters in West Virginia and Kentucky don’t care that much about the arts and humanities, they will suffer from the elimination of the Appalachian Commission that helps create jobs in their anemic economies.

Trump’s anti-science Blueprint would reduce the National Institutes for Health budget by 18 percent.  And it suggests that some functions of the all-important Centers for Disease Control would be block granted to the states.  It also reduces federal grants that support job training and shifts responsibility for funding these services to states, localities and employers.

Along with decimating the federal government, a key objective of the Blueprint is to wipe out most if not all funding to combat climate change.  This will likely mean that the Department of Defense would be prohibited from using its funds to predict how climate change might affect national security.  Other departments could be prohibited from gathering scientific data on climate change.  And federal support for clean energy projects that create thousands of jobs would be eliminated. 

Government funding for research contributes significantly to a stronger U.S. economy.  America won’t be made great again by weakening its leading position in science and technology.

Trump’s Blueprint emphasizes military might over diplomacy.  It provides an extra $54 billion for defense while cutting foreign aid and other international programs designed to prevent the spread of the Islamic State.  It also cuts funding for the United Nations, the organization that helps prevent regional problems from becoming global problems. 

Polls indicate that the majority of Americans support climate change initiatives, regulations to protect the environment, better education for their children and protection of our public lands.  Even the much maligned Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare is getting much stronger support these days.  But Trump’s policies oppose all of what the majority of we the people want.

There is no doubt in my mind that Trump’s Blueprint cuts many programs that benefit his supporters while weakening national security and damaging the economy.  But I am not sure that Trump even knows that.  He simply doesn’t understand how government works and doesn’t have the curiosity to learn.  Trump has a score card mentality; every executive order, memorandum and bill he signs is a point scored for him whether it is good or bad, helpful or hurtful.

Many voters were angry with the “establishment” last November but I don’t think that means they favor replacing it with policy disasters.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been the darling of the beltway press for years, the blue-eyed conservative golden boy of Congress.  But on Friday he crashed and burned on national television.   After seven years of doing everything in their power to cripple Obamacare and label it a disaster, Republicans couldn’t come up with a replacement their caucus would accept.

Who knows what will happen to Ryan’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) but I don’t think we will hear much about it for some time.  And it is likely that President Donald Trump will attempt to sabotage Obamacare out of spite if he can.

The past two weeks of legislative fiasco highlighted a problem the GOP has had for a decade or more; it is actually three separate factions, conservatives, moderate conservatives and radicals.  Last week the radicals were in control.

The 50 or so members of the Tuesday Group are the moderate conservatives led by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.).  The 40 or so House Freedom Caucus members led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), plus some members of the Republican Study Committee, are the radicals.  Both groups can prevent Republicans from passing any legislation that requires all Republican votes and members of both groups opposed Ryan’s bill on Friday.

Many radicals, like Meadows, are in gerrymandered districts.  They are bullet proof at election time.  Why should they be worried about President Donald Trump whose latest approval ratings are under 40 percent?  Even the conservative Koch brothers thumbed their nose at Trump by offering campaign funds to any Republican that voted against the AHCA.

So where does Ryan go from here?  Trump wants to move forward on to tax reform, infrastructure legislation and building a border wall.  But remember, Congress has a lot to do in the next few months.  Government funding for the remainder of fiscal year 2017 must be legislated by the end of April and the House must reach agreement with the Senate on a concurrent budget resolution for FYs 2018 through 2027.  Plus Congress must raise the debt limit no later than the end of August and they must pass 12 appropriations bills for FY 2018 before the end of September.

Well, Meadows and his merry band of naysayers are salivating in anticipation of the budget and debt limit process, supremely confident after having scuttled the AHCA.  Make no mistake; their primary objective is to cut federal spending to the bone and balance the budget.  Consequently they will have little enthusiasm for spending billions to build a border wall or voting for infrastructure legislation if it involves government money.

Trump proved he is in over his head a few weeks ago when he said “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”  Well, he is about to find out that health care complexity is just the beginning.  If he thinks tax reform will sail through Congress by August he could be sadly disappointed.  (And losing the battle on health care won’t help.)

So what is the connection between the Obamacare replacement and tax reform?  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the final AHCA legislation repealed most Obamacare taxes and reduced federal revenues over 10 years by around $1 trillion.  It also reduced federal spending by $1.15 trillion over the same period.

The current CBO projection of revenues (the baseline) for FYs 2018 through 2027 is $43 trillion, which includes Obamacare taxes.  The AHCA would have reduced baseline revenues to approximately $42 trillion.  Ryan wants his tax code reform to produce the same revenues as the current tax code so it won’t increase deficits.  Now he must recalculate his tax proposal to collect $43 trillion instead of $42 trillion, which won’t be an easy task.  In fact, some Republicans are beginning to believe that tax reform — instead of just adjusting rates and deductions — will not be possible.

The current CBO baseline spending for FYs 2018 through 2027 is $52.4 trillion, which will result in a deficit of over $9.4 trillion.  The budget produced by the Republican controlled House last April slashed spending by $6.5 trillion and projected a balanced budget within 10 years.  Obamacare repeal was a huge chunk of their spending reductions.  Now that key part of their plan is gone, at least for the upcoming budget process.

A federal budget is a numbers game.  How much will we collect and how much will we spend.  The difference is either a surplus or a deficit.  Ryan’s health care bill provided Republicans with an $839 billion reduction in one of their favorite targets, Medicaid.  This spending cut was to be the spring board in up-coming budget negotiations to turn Medicare into a premium support program, cut Social Security and slash other so-called entitlements.  That key element of their plan has been eliminated too.

So the wreckage of last week’s legislative failure leaves a weakened Speaker Ryan with an energized Freedom Caucus and numerous funding deadlines where the negotiations will be difficult.  Trump could grow impatient because he doesn’t understand the process and turn on Ryan.  Some of his advisors already have.

The budget blueprint for FY 2018 that Trump submitted to Congress on March 16 appalled the Democrats and even some Republicans quipped that it was “dead on arrival.”  It looks like Trump’s first 100 days could end up being the biggest flop in modern presidential history.

Footnote:  I always take some flack when I throw a lot of numbers at my readers.  But folks, if we don’t understand some numbers the politicians can tell us anything and we have no way of knowing what they are saying.

It has been years since Republicans in Congress have been forced to govern.  All of their efforts since 2009 were focused on obstructing everything that President Barack Obama wanted to accomplish.  In fact that is all some of them have known since a large percentage were elected in 2010 and later.    

The Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare was their main issue in 2010.  So after the GOP took control of the U.S. House in 2011, Republicans wasted hundreds of hours trying to repeal it.  And even when they finally got a repeal bill on President Obama’s desk, they knew he would veto it.  Obstruction was all so easy and there were few consequences.

Republicans and their billionaire backers like the Koch brothers spent so much time and money denigrating Obamacare that repealing it became their leading campaign promise.  Of course presidential candidate Donald Trump hopped on that band wagon effortlessly and bragged that he had a cheaper, better health care program that would cover everybody.

Well, after seven years of promises to repeal Obamacare and lying about how bad it is, Republicans finally have their chance with President Donald Trump.  But lies do not translate into effective policies and they are woefully unprepared for the challenge. 

Former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who was involved in the battle over the Affordable Care Act in 2010, has been quoted regarding the Obamacare replacement as saying: “The Republicans are in an impossible position.”  “Most of the people who are in opposition to this have never governed, don’t know how to govern and don’t want to govern.”

Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other conservatives have desperately tried to convince Americans that Obamacare is not only a disaster but a failing disaster.  That way they can claim that any plan they devise will be an improvement.  But across the country those who have benefited from Obama’s health care program and those who understand its worth don’t substantiate these claims.

No doubt Ryan knew he was in a tough spot when he started fashioning what some are calling Ryancare. He has a loose coalition of gun-rights advocates, anti-abortion evangelicals and Tea Party conservatives in his caucus.  Those few moderate conservatives that still survive in the GOP really have no significant voice in Republican policies.  So the American Health Care Act (AHCA) that Ryan rolled out on March 6 that was designed to fit somewhere between what ultra conservatives wanted and what the rest of the party might accept totally missed the mark.

The 40 or so members of the far right Freedom Caucus chaired by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) want Obamacare repealed with little or no tax credits and no Medicaid expansion.  On the other side there are a number of Republican governors whose states expanded Medicaid and the moderate conservatives, some of them in blue districts and states.  They see the downside from throwing millions of Americans back onto the ranks of the uninsured and don’t want to “own” this legislation come election time.

I don’t think Ryan knows where to turn.  If he satisfies the governors and moderates, the Freedom Caucus and other far right conservatives will block the AHCA.  If he yields to the repeal-or-nothing crowd, the AHCA will fail in the Senate even if it passes in the House.  A number of Republican senators have already stated flatly that it won’t pass in the Senate and some probably hope it never passes in the House.  What is poor Paul to do?

Well I think he has no choice but to tough it out with only minor changes like adding a work requirement for able-bodied adults who receive Medicaid.  He can claim that the AHCA is the best that can be accomplished; he can tell his caucus that it’s either the AHCA or Obamacare; and he can remind them of their promise to rid the nation of government controlled health insurance.  This is probably the best he can do, but will it succeed?

So what happens if the AHCA fails?  Will Trump issue another executive order to insure that Obamacare implodes or direct Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price to further undermine it.  Trump has stated several times that Republicans should just let Obamacare go into a death spiral and then blame the Democrats.  But who except strong Trump supporters will fall for that?

And what will happen to tax reform that depends in part on repealing Obamacare taxes?  After failing to replace the hated Obamacare, how hard will it be to push a massive tax cut for the wealthy through Congress? 

On top of that, funding for the government runs out at the end of April and raising the debt limit (which Republicans hate) will be required before September if not earlier.  Republicans have a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time but they are hung up on an Obamacare replacement by their own design.

We are almost 60 days into Trump’s chaotic administration and not much has been accomplished.  Trump is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on numerous weekend ego trips to Mar-a-Lago while in Washington important government positions remain unfilled, Congress is investigating scandals involving Trump’s connections to Russia and Republicans are battling Republicans. 

Will this administration and the Republican controlled Congress ever be able to get their act together and show they can govern?  I don’t think they know how.

The Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare is a very complex law that has numerous taxes, regulations and government subsidies, all of which Republicans hate.  In fact the vast majority of them want to simply repeal the law.  But political pressure from 20+ million Americans who would lose coverage without Obamacare caused them to come up with a replacement.

So last Monday House Republicans rolled out their American Health Care Act (AHCA).  The House and Senate conservatives who oppose it call it “Obamacare-lite.”

The GOP leadership is rushing the AHCA through Congress before the Congressional Budget Office has determined its cost and its effect on the number of individuals insured.  Of course the more people who are insured, the cheaper insurance is for everybody.  That was the whole idea behind Obamacare.  So I was eager to analyze how the GOP plan differs from Obamacare and here is what I discovered:

Individual and Employer Mandates – The AHCA repeals Obamacare’s mandates and its penalties for not having health insurance.  This will cause some younger, healthier individuals to exit the market.

Subsidies for out-of-pocket expenses – In 2020 the AHCA repeals Obamacare’s cost-sharing assistance that helps low income families pay deductibles and co-payments.  This increase in out-of-pocket costs could make their policies unaffordable.

Premium subsidies – Obamacare provides tax credits to middle-income Americans on a sliding scale to help pay premiums.  These credits are based on income, age and local health insurance costs.  The AHCA uses age instead of income to grant a flat tax credit amount for individuals earning less than $75,000 and households earning less than $150,000.  A person under 30 would receive a maximum subsidy of $2,000, a person age 40 would receive $3,000 and those over 60 would receive $4,000.

These less generous subsidies based solely on age will no doubt reduce the number of participants in the health insurance market.  And they will penalize older, poorer individuals in high premium markets.  According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s interactive map, in 2020 a person in Henderson County, NC aged 60, earning $30,000 per year, would lose $10,160 in tax credits under the AHCA.  While the same 60 year old in states like Washington and Massachusetts might lose less than $1,000 in many cases.

Medicaid expansion – Obamacare expanded Medicaid to include some 11 million people in 31 states.  The AHCA would keep Medicaid expansion and continue federal funding as promised under Obamacare for two more years.  Then in 2020 it would cap federal funding per Medicaid enrollee based on state Medicaid spending in fiscal year 2016, with inflation adjustments thereafter.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the AHCA formula will shift $370 billion of Medicaid’s costs to the states over the next 10 years.  Some states may have to ration care, perhaps having to decide on who lives and who dies.  Nursing homes and hospitals with emergency rooms would no doubt suffer significant revenue loss.

Tax-Free Health savings accounts – The AHCA would almost double contribution limits in 2018 to $6,550 for an individual and $13,100 for a family.  But those who need this law probably can’t afford these contributions and may not even pay much in taxes.

Older Americans pay higher premiums – Obamacare allows insurers to charge older insureds three times more than younger insureds.  The AHCA allows five times more.  This provision will no doubt price many seniors out of the market.

Other provisions in both Obamacare and AHCA – Obamacare and AHCA both require insurers to accept those with preexisting conditions, allow young adults to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26, require insurers to offer 10 essential health benefits and prohibit caps on annual and lifetime coverage limits.

Obamacare taxes – The AHCA repeals most of the tax provisions in Obamacare that were designed to help offset the cost of providing subsidies to lower income individuals.  The Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress has estimated that this repeal will reduce federal revenues by almost $600 billion over 10 years.  So seniors get higher premiums; the wealthy get lower taxes.

Planned Parenthood and Abortions – For one year the AHCA prohibits funding to organizations that primarily provide reproductive health care, which will effectively defund Planned Parenthood.  It also prohibits beneficiaries from using subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or life-threatening complications.

The American Medical Association has called the AHCA “critically flawed” and it is opposed by the AARP.  Major physician’s groups have said they have serious issues with or outright oppose the plan.  But I don’t think most Republicans are worried about opposition from health care organizations.  The Koch brothers and various right-wing groups also oppose their replacement bill and that’s who they fear the most.

Republican controlled states are among the poorest in the nation and have the most to lose with an Obamacare replacement.  And President Donald Trump’s promise that “his” Obamacare replacement will be better, cheaper and cover everybody certainly won’t be fulfilled by the AHCA.  Yet I wonder if low and middle-income Trump supporters and Republican voters even realize how badly this law will hurt them.

President Harry Truman probably said it best:  “How many times do you have to get hit over the head until you figure out who’s hitting you.”  Of course he was referring to Republicans.

Note:  Click on the link interactive map above to determine tax credit differences in other state counties.

President Donald Trump managed to give a decent speech to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday without the rancor he displayed on the campaign trail or making cringe-worthy statements.  The bar was set very low and he managed to clear it.  But improving the wrapping doesn’t change what is in the package.  As usual he made numerous false and misleading claims; they just sounded more reasonable.

Still, Trump’s night of glory didn’t last more than a day before his newly confirmed Attorney General Jeff Sessions came under fire for allegedly lying to the Senate about his meetings with Russians during the campaign.  As one commentator put it, there is a drip, drip, drip of bad news about Trump’s connections to Russia that the White House can’t seem to stop.  Perhaps Trump needs to reestablish President Richard Nixon’s “plumbers.”

But Trump has his own method for dealing with bad news; he tries to deflect it onto someone else.  Yesterday he let loose a torrent of tweets accusing President Obama of wire-tapping Trump Tower last October.  No doubt Trump got this information from one of his conspiracy theory friends like Mark Levin, or from Breitbart News where Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon was formerly CEO.  I believe these Twitter rants beg the question:  Is Trump emotionally unstable?

With every passing day we get more evidence that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing.  The New York Times Editorial Board reported in a recent op-ed that “President Trump has appointed fewer than three dozen of the top 1,000 officials he needs to run the federal government.”  When asked about the open positions by Fox News he said, “Well, a lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint because they’re unnecessary to have.”  Trump and Bannon seem to be organizing a top down administration where they think very little staff is needed.  This is dangerous!

So it’s not surprising that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who holds a very powerful position, seems to be, as one article put it, “invisible.”  He did not attend the high level meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, nor did any other State Department official.  But Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was there.

Meanwhile it has been reported that numerous layoffs have occurred at the State Department and huge budget cuts are planned.  This means key foreign policy issues will be handled directly by the White House, rather than by professional diplomats.  What could go wrong with that?

Trump’s has proposed a military buildup like we haven’t seen since the days of President Ronald Reagan, including a larger nuclear arsenal.  Never mind that the current stockpile of 5,000 nuclear warheads is enough to destroy the entire world; and the U.S. defense budget of around $580 billion was greater than the next 12 countries combined according to 2015 estimates.

Where is the enemy?  Defending against North Korea is no excuse.  And the Islamic State (ISIS) has neither ships nor aircraft except for a few they might have captured.  The military needs to go after them with drones and special ops forces, not nuclear weapons.

Trump apparently wants to cut $1 billion from the Coast Guard’s already strapped budget, perhaps to offset the cost of building a few miles of wall on the 2,000 mile U.S./Mexican border.  This is shocking given Trump’s statements condemning illegal immigrants, drugs and ISIS.  These threats can also enter the country by sea along the 12,383 miles of coastline that the Coast Guard patrols.

And the guardian of our coast has only two icebreakers; the largest of which is decades old.  Russia is reported to have 40 icebreakers, more than enough to take control of the Arctic waters where large oil reserves are believed to exist and where the U.S. has vital national security interests.  Cutting Coast Guard funding not only shows incompetence; I think it is grossly negligent.

It is difficult to tell which of Trump’s policies come from strategist Bannon.  At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Bannon vowed that the Trump administration is in an unending battle for “deconstruction of the administrative state.”  Is he referring to the system of taxes, regulations and trade policies that Trump continuously rails against?  Or is he advocating the “deconstruction” of the federal government?

Bannon claimed that Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement was “one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.”  He believes the current world order should be replaced by a system that “empowers” ordinary people over coastal elites (a.k.a. Democrats) and international institutions.  Well, withdrawal from the TPP and cuts in the State Department budget probably mean that China and Russia are being more empowered.

Choosing what to cover in my blog these days is like trying to pick one of Baskin and Robin’s more than 31 flavors of ice cream.  But here are a few other things I need to include:

• Reviews of court documents by the Guardian indicate that Attorney General Sessions used his position as U.S. Attorney for Alabama’s southern district to bring thin prosecution cases against Democratic politicians.
• In February the Justice Department dropped its position that Texas intended to discriminate when it passed its strict voter-ID law. This was one of the Department’s strongest claims.

But above all one thing seems clear to me:  The truth about Donald Trump is worse than the lies Republicans continuously spread about Barack Obama.

We are on the cusp of a new era in U.S. politics.  Over the course of the next four years some very different policies will unfold.  Some will be hard to understand and we won’t always know what they intend to accomplish. But perhaps if we look into the philosophy of the Republican Party — the soul of the beast as it were — we can gain some insight.

Immigration was on everyone’s tongue during the 2016 presidential campaign. So President Donald Trump has attempted to move quickly on his signature issue with executive orders, stepped up enforcement and deportations of illegals.  And he is still talking about the border wall.

In the Senate, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is pushing a bill that would reduce “legal” immigration by 50 percent over the next decade.  The GOP claims that their immigration policies keep Americans safe and protect American jobs.  But there is no doubt in my mind that the real reason the GOP wants to limit immigration is because Latinos, Asians and other immigrants tend to vote for Democrats.

Tax reform is a high priority for Republicans this year.  Both Trump and the U.S. House initially proposed tax plans that would add significantly to the deficits.  Since increasing deficits is not popular we may hear Speaker of the House Paul Ryan talk about a plan that will be “revenue neutral” and that will “broaden the base.”  Revenue neutral means that federal revenues will neither increase nor decrease.  Broaden the base means that revenue will be collected from more sources like the border adjustment tax that ends up being paid by middleclass and lower income consumers.  But one thing is certain; the wealthy will get a big tax cut.

The GOP mantra has always been that cutting taxes grows the economy.  I’m sorry; the economy doesn’t always work that way. President George W. Bush engineered large tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but they mostly resulted in much higher deficits.  And Bush ended eight years in office with the country going headlong into the Great Recession and with the worse job creation record, on record according to the Wall Street Journal. 

And then there is Kansas Tea Party Gov. Sam Brownback, the poster child for disastrous tax cuts.  Kansas budgets have been drowning in red ink under his tax plan and the legislature projects a $1.2 billion revenue shortfall over the next two years.  Way to go Sam!

But I don’t think Republicans care about such clear examples.  In my opinion their goal is all about limiting the size of the federal government; and their mentor is Grover Norquist.  Grover is the architect of the pledge to never raise taxes on anything, and he loves tax cuts.  Libertarian Norquist’s objective is to shrink government by cutting off its revenue and forcing drastic spending cuts. Most congressional Republicans have signed his pledge. 

So as Congress begins to legislate next month on tax reform, an Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) replacement or Trump’s infrastructure plan, here are some political realities that will affect negotiations:  There are 200 or so members of the far-right House Republican Study Committee (RSC) and the House Freedom Caucus, which is chaired by North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows.  They are totally against increased federal spending for anything other than defense and they so strongly reject to deficit spending that they voted to default on the nation’s debt in February 2014.

Last March the RSC rolled out an “alternative” fiscal year 2017 budget that would cut taxes significantly, cut spending by $8.6 trillion over the next 10 years and grow defense spending every year.  These cuts would reduce government spending by almost 17 percent. 

But never mind the numbers; the point is that these conservatives won’t be enthusiastic about a costly Obamacare replacement or Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. And they have the clout to block any legislation in the House that requires almost total GOP support.

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich is understandably very concerned about what happens to Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion.  Together they provide health care to 700,000 of his constituents.  And he knows all about the Freedom Caucus and the RSC.  In his opinion the House conservatives will not likely vote for an Obamacare replacement plan if it retains any of the key components of Obamacare.  In fact, he believes they want to trash the entire law, period.

These conservatives received support from a January 2017 report from the Congressional Budget Office that encouraged President Trump and the new Congress to make deficit reduction a top priority.  No doubt they will use this report as a cudgel in upcoming negotiations.

President Trump will be speaking to Congress tomorrow night.  It could be a scolding because he wants faster action on a number of issues.  But listen to what he says about his budget that is due in Congress soon.  If he talks about trillions in spending cuts and a huge tax cut we will have some idea of his agenda.  But either way, March should be a political knock down drag out month.

Last week was a real problem for me.  I wrote several blogs but couldn’t convince myself to post them.  There was not much new to write about.  After all, how many times can you document President Donald Trump’s lies, his administration’s chaos and his attacks on the media?  If you keep doing that, after a while it all becomes normalized.  Well, Trump and his administration are not normal.

But an interesting article by The Washington Post surfaced later last week that may not have been covered in the regular news.  What prompted the article was Trump’s third consecutive weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago.  I call these “ego” trips because Trump can surround himself with admiring friends.  This past weekend he stopped in Melbourne, Florida where he gave a long campaign speech to his supporters, more salve for his ego.

Presidential trips are very expensive and we taxpayers get the bill. According to several articles on this subject, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that seeks to expose misconduct by government officials, estimated that President Barack Obama’s travel expenses totaled almost $97 million over eight years.  That is around $12.1 million a year.  If you recall, conservatives were constantly hammering Obama for his vacations to golf or whatever.

Estimates for Trump’s three weekends at Mar-a-Lago, plus his son’s business trips during that period are estimated to have cost taxpayers $11.3 million.  Then there is protection for First Lady Melania and their son Barron living in Trump Tower in New York City.  This is estimated to cost the city $500,000 per day according to the WP article and could cost as much as $183 million a year.  No doubt that cost will be paid by the federal government.  Of course the government must rent space in Trump hotels when Trump or his family stay in those facilities and the Secret Service is discussing renting space in Trump Tower where leasing a floor can cost $1.5 million per year. 

Republicans and conservative organizations called Obama the “Vacationer in chief,” the “Divider in chief,” the “Spender in chief,” etc.   They held Obama to a very high standard.  It remains to be seen if Trump will be held to any standard at all.

Also last week some policy proposals surfaced from the U.S. House.  As you recall repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and tax cuts are high on the GOP agenda.  So Speaker of the House Paul Ryan ventured over to the other side of the Capitol to discuss his tax proposal with GOP senators.  This plan includes the controversial 20 percent border adjustment tax that would be applied only to imports and would collect more than $1 trillion over 10 years.

Of course retailers, oil companies and businesses that import other products like vehicle parts are not happy.  Ryan wants the border tax to offset the tax cuts his plan gives to the wealthy.  Needless to say the border tax will be paid by John Q. Consumer in higher prices.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that Ryan’s plan wouldn’t get 10 votes in the Senate.  We shall see.

Last Thursday House Republicans rolled out a preliminary proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare.  It has taken them over six years to get their act together and by all accounts it isn’t quite together yet.  You would think that Obama’s health care plan would be a snap to replace if it is actually the “disaster” Republicans and Trump say it is.  Replacing a program so bad and so detrimental to the public should be really popular too, right?

Well now congressional Republicans are terrified about being reelected because their replacement plan could result in millions of Americans losing their health care coverage.  And Trump keeps adding to their misery by promising that the replacement will provide better coverage for less money and cover more people. 

According to an article by The Hill, the latest GOP plan will include tax credits, an expansion of health savings accounts, funds for high risk pools to provide insurance for those with preexisting conditions and restructuring of Medicaid to cap federal payments.  In addition it would repeal all taxes included in Obamacare; immediately repeal penalties for violating Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates; and phase out the Medicaid expansion over time.  . 

Insurers say that the individual mandate is critical for getting healthy people enrolled and with no penalties that won’t happen.  And according to a CBO report, if the individual mandate is repealed “premiums for policies in the individual market would increase by roughly 20 percent relative to current law in all years between 2017 and 2025.”  Ouch!

Over the weekend Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich said that phase out of Medicaid expansion “is a very, very bad idea.”  Ohio and 30 other states expanded Medicaid under Obamacare thereby providing coverage for an estimated 11 million low income citizens.

I will focus on GOP budgets, tax plans and Obamacare replacement plans as they unfold over the next several months.  But it is obvious to me that House Republicans are intent on benefiting corporations and the wealthy.  They do this in the name of growing the economy and adding jobs, but don’t be fooled.  Their ultimate objective is to dismantle the federal government’s safety net for the elderly and low income citizens.  We must not let that happen.

Wary of an autocratic British King, the Founding Fathers established a political system that was designed to help insure that this nation would remain a Constitutional Republic.  They set up three branches of government with offsetting powers, executive, legislative, and judicial.  Although the Constitution does not specifically mention “separation of powers,” it contains checks and balances to prevent the executive branch from becoming all powerful, with Congress as the primary check on the president. 

Over the course of the ensuing 230 years since the Constitution was ratified in 1788 it has been tested many times.  But I believe it is about to be tested like never before.

The forces that would diminish our democratic government have been building for decades, mostly in the shadows.  The halls of Congress have become infested with hundreds of lobbyists that represent powerful special interests.   The perks they lavish on legislators and the support they provide to political campaigns gives them a seat at the table when policies are made and legislation is drafted. 

Unfortunately, money is the lifeblood of politics.  To be viable, candidates must have a large campaign war chest.  This means politicians can literally be bought by the highest bidder.  To make matters worse the conservative majority of the Supreme Court held that corporations and unions are people and that money is speech in the 2010 Citizens United case.   This decision opened the flood gates of anonymous (dark-money) funding of politicians.         

But money isn’t the only threat to democracy; there are numerous others.  Partisan congressional redistricting is certainly one.  And although both parties have abused the process, the 2011 redistricting (gerrymandering) in Republican controlled states was particularly egregious. 

Another threat is the strict voter ID laws that have been enacted in most Republican-controlled states.  These laws go far beyond simply requiring voters to show a photo ID.  They were designed to make it harder for minorities, typically democrats, to vote.

In the presidential election Hillary Clinton carried less than 500 counties while Donald Trump carried almost 2,600.  So it is obvious that Republicans are taking control of the state capitols in many of the more rural states.  And with gerrymandered districts, Republicans have retained control of the U.S. House even though nationwide more votes are frequently cast for Democrats.  We experiencing a tyranny of the minority.

According to a November 2016 Washington Post article, Republicans will totally control 25 states and partially control 20 others in 2017.  And conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers have set up complex political organizations to pour millions into state legislative and judicial races to further cement GOP control over state governments.  With this power, Republican states could one day force conservative Constitutional amendments.

During the next four years Trump will likely appoint two or more conservative justices to the Supreme Court.  And a radicalized Republican Party has demonstrated during the past eight years and the early weeks of the Trump presidency that congressional Republicans will only apply checks on the executive branch if the president is a Democrat.

Now we have President Donald Trump who attacks the judiciary when its decisions go against him and the media if they publish something he doesn’t like.  Why?  With Congress in his pocket, these are the only remaining institutions that can limit his power.   And it has become increasingly apparent to me that Trump has little appreciation for the rule of law or any understanding of the Constitution and its checks and balances.

We have a Republican-controlled Congress that wants to decimate the federal government except for defense.  They think climate change is a hoax, that money in politics is just fine, that corporations should be left to regulate themselves and that the nation can afford to give tax cuts to the wealthy but can’t afford to provide adequate health care for its citizens. 

Polls indicate that the majority of Americans want reasonable gun controls, higher taxes for the wealthy, affordable health care, limitations on climate change and better education for their children.  And they want Medicare and Social Security left untouched, as Trump promised.  Do these statistics impress Republicans in Congress?  NOT IN THE LEAST.  They are charging ahead to do exactly the opposite of what most people want.

So here are my questions:  What has happened to government of the people, by the people and for the people?  Has it become a victim to gerrymandering, voter ID laws, special interests and big money in politics?  And what is happening to the separation of powers that the Founders carefully set up in the Constitution to protect us from an autocracy? 

The three branches of government will soon be primarily controlled by conservative ideologues. The Justice Department, which is supposed to protect citizen’s rights under the Constitution, is headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a right-wing conservative who is almost certain to do Trump’s bidding.  Consequently the separation of powers is being eroded to the point that our Constitutional Republic is in serious jeopardy.

It is quite clear that we can no longer take democracy for granted.  And I am not confident that Republicans in Congress will move to check an anti-democratic Trump.  So there is only one sure way democracy can be saved, strong, constant and peaceful action by “we the people.” 

Folks, it is time to get involved — before it’s too late.