Thread: Trump warns GOP on health care: 'We won't have these crowds if we don't get this done

Trump warns GOP on health care: 'We won't have these crowds if we don't get this done'

By MJ Lee, Phil Mattingly and Lauren Fox, CNN
Updated 11:36 AM ET, Tue March 21, 2017

Story highlights

Trump says Republicans will lose seats if they don't repeal Obamacare
His crows will disappear as well :"We won't have these crowds if we don't get this done"

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill Tuesday morning with a familiar mission: Close the deal.
In the single biggest political test of his presidency thus far, the President is looking to carry the Obamacare repeal and replace bill across the finish line. In a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, his message was blunt: You could lose re-election if you don't vote for this legislation.

It was clear, lawmakers said, that Trump was energized by the supporters that had come out for him Monday night in Louisville, Kentucky. But that support may not last, he warned.

"We won't have these crowds if we don't get this done," Trump said, according to a source in the room.

He later added: "I honestly think many of you will lose your seats in 2018 if you don't get this done."

Despite the warning, members leaving the gathering described what they said was vintage Trump -- exuberant, humorous and ready to charm.

"Trump was first rate in every way," said GOP Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan. "He was truly spectacular. This is part of the job that he enjoys and excels at -- closing the deal."

GOP Rep. Richard Hudson described Trump's visit as a "tour-de-force."

"He was charming. He was funny. He really did a great job, I think, in letting us know we're in this together," Hudson said. "He's counting on us to vote for this bill."

Trump's political message, Hudson said, was "the American people are watching. They gave us the House, the Senate the White House and if you squander this opportunity I think there will be real consequences for you and the rest of the party."

Republican leaders are looking to the President to use the full power of his bully pulpit and negotiating skills to pressure members who are still on the fence before Thursday's planned vote.

Asked Tuesday walking to the meeting if he can get the votes, Trump responded, "I think so."

Late Monday, House leadership announced a set of moderate changes to their health care bill meant to reassure both conservatives and moderates who have a distinct set of concerns about the legislation.

But it's still not clear if those changes will be enough.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus announced Monday night that while they would not be taking an official stance against the bill, members said there were enough "no" votes among their group to sink the measure.

Trump specifically called out Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, saying he thinks both Meadows and the group will get on board. "A loss just isn't acceptable," Trump said.

The President also said if the Freedom Caucus members don't come along they could face a primary.

Meanwhile, there is nervous energy among moderate Republicans who fear the political optics of the Congressional Budget Office's assessment that millions more would be uninsured under the GOP bill than under Obamacare.

In advance of Trump's arrival, Ryan walked members through the changes unveiled Monday, according to a source inside the meeting. His pitch is that this was as much as they could do, to mollify as many concerns as they could, at this point in the process. He also made clear the reality of their situation: every change in one direction upsets those on the other side of things, so it's a delicate balance, the source said.

Is Trump engaged?

At a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, last week, supporters of the bill noticed that Trump only discussed the health care bill for a few minutes. On Monday night in Louisville, Kentucky, Trump discussed the legislation -- but his tone suggested that he wanted to get the negotiations over with so he can move on to other priorities like tax reform.

One GOP aide was blunt: "Well, hopefully he'll at least talk about health care. So here we are: Can he actually close this deal? This whole thing has been contingent on the idea that the answer to that is yes. We'll see today."

CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/politi...p-health-care/

Your going to lose your crowds President Trump if you dont end DACA amnesty, build the wall, and start deporting unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens.

W

Republicans just released big changes to their Obamacare replacement bill days before its most important vote yet

Bob Bryan
March 21, 2017
15h

House Republicans have rolled out a large batch of changes to their bill seeking to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare.

The seven-page manager's amendment adds numerous key provisions designed to shore up support for the bill, the American Health Care Act.

The move comes as House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP leaders, and President Donald Trump's administration try to lock down the necessary votes for the bill to pass the House.

Here's a rundown of the key changes:

Move up the date of the Obamacare taxes repeal. Taxes that help fund the credits — on everything from healthcare executives making over $500,000 to tanning beds — would be repealed in 2017 instead of 2018. This appears to be an appeal to conservative House Republicans who say the law does not go far enough or quickly enough in its repeal of Obamacare.

Allow states to create work requirements for Medicaid. While 77% of Medicaid beneficiaries are in households with a worker, Republicans have desired a provision that would allow states to mandate that nondisabled people be working to qualify for Medicaid. The new amendment would also increase the federal assistance for any state that institutes a work requirement by 5%.

Federal exemptions would apply to people under age 19; heads of households under 20 who are in school or job training; pregnant women; single parents; and caregivers of children under 6 years old. States could also add their own exemptions.

Allow states to shift Medicaid funding to a block-grant system. The original AHCA wording would shift funding for Medicaid expansion to per capita block grants, but the new provision would allow states to shift their funding for Medicaid to a simple block grant.

According to a press release by GOP leaders in charge of the amendment, it would also give the Senate the ability to expand tax credits for Americans ages 50 to 64.

"This change provides the Senate flexibility to potentially enhance the tax credit for those ages 50 to 64 who may need additional assistance," a press release from the GOP leaders of the Energy and Commerce and the Ways and Means committees said.

According to the summary of the technical changes of the amendment, the tax-credit section of the AHCA would be eliminated "to accommodate the technical restructuring of the new tax credit made as a result of Senate guidance to maintain the privilege of the bill."

At the same time, the amendment would lower the threshold for a tax deduction on medical expenses to 5.8% from 10%. The Congressional Budget Office would most likely score this as a savings of $75 billion to $85 billion.

Politico reported earlier Monday that this relief for older Americans would come in a the form of a $75 billion pool of additional tax credits, but that exact provision does not appear in the actual amendment. According to analysts, however, the savings from the tax exemption could be shifted in the Senate to make this happen, but it is not guaranteed.

The current flat-tax credit structure of the AHCA gives 50- to 59-year-olds $3,500 annually to help pay for insurance and people 60 years old and above $4,000 annually. Analysis by health-policy experts has suggested this would lead to a significant increase in premiums costs compared with the Affordable Care Act's tax credits.

The moves come as Trump's White House tries to wrangle conservative votes in the House and Ryan tries to persuade moderate Republicans to get on board.

Mark Meadows, the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said before the package of changes that he had enough votes to block the law.

The House Rules Committee will consider the AHCA on Wednesday, and a full vote on the bill is expected in the House on Thursday.

http://www.businessinsider.com/repub...se-vote-2017-3

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

Your going to lose your crowds President Trump if you dont end DACA amnesty, build the wall, and start deporting unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens.

W

Agreed.

The Tennessee Education Committee is voting tomorrow on in-state tuition for illegal aliens. Had President Trump kept his promise to end DACA day one this move in Tennessee to further fleece taxpayers and to increase the numbers of illegal aliens would be less likely to pass. President Trump and his refusal to end DACA bears some responsibility for in state actions, etc.

The last time Tennessee voted on this it failed by one vote.

As far as this new Ryancare Bill, it does not repeal Obamacare. The American people will continue to see many of the same problems as they do now.

Ryancare sounds a bit like like comprehensive immigration reform. We are told they must pass part 1 of Ryancare and then efforts 2 and 3 will follow where buying insurance across state lines, etc. should occur and Secretary Price will make some changes so the American people will see real improvements.

Trump plows under protests on TrumpCare

By Chris Stirewalt
March 21, 2017 FoxNews.com

On the roster: Trump plows under protests on TrumpCare - New Russia allegations surface against former Trump campaign boss - FBI investigation into Trump, Russia started three months before election - Tillerson Russia trip timing awkward - But you’ll still respect me, right?

TRUMP PLOWS UNDER PROTESTS ON TRUMPCARE

Maybe the most notable thing about the debate over President Trump’s proposed replacement for ObamaCare is how little anyone is talking about policy.

After many years discussing the ins and outs – mostly outs – of the beleaguered health insurance program, Republicans are spending an astonishingly small amount of time talking about what they want to do to replace it.

Trump headed out to Kentucky Monday night for a campaign rally where he did mention his plan or, rather, the things he wants to do after his plan is passed.

There was no particular discussion about the specifics in the measure, which is headed for a vote on Thursday, or even its general merits. That’s probably because nobody in particular seems to like it, even after Speaker Paul Ryan and his team pinned a suite of policy revisions onto its tail Monday.

Today, Trump headed to the Hill to urge Republican lawmakers to pass his plan – not so much for what’s in it but for its political necessity and its importance for him personally.

This tells us a couple of things: First, that Trump is – despite the ongoing wild gyrations over Russian influence – displaying some steadiness. For the new president to stand beside a bill that is controversial and unpopular rather than dump it back in Ryan’s lap shows a surprising willingness to engage in sacrificial leadership. And second, this will be the defining political struggle of Trump’s young presidency. This is TrumpCare.

Trump’s most ardent defenders have tried to blame Ryan for the creation of this patchwork plan, but by embracing it so closely, the president is passing up a politically expedient escape and instead staking his limited political muscle squarely behind the measure.

But can he force it through?

There’s not a lot of reason for conservatives to be much happier about the legislation despite the leadership’s tweaks. And moreover, they know that the deal only gets worse from here as the more-moderate Senate takes the baton. This is as good as it is likely to get for the right.

What conservatives have to worry about is Trump hounding them if they manage to defeat the measure this week. If they hand the president a painful loss at exactly the moment that his administration is mired with low public approval and tossed with Russian dressing it could be a devastating setback.

The prospect of contending with an angry, wounded Trump for the next three years would be no happy thought for House conservatives.

Plus, the next deal to keep ObamaCare afloat if this one fails would likely be even less conservative – a health insurance subsidy version of the spending plans passed in the Boehner era with lots of Democratic votes.

Trump’s pitch, previewed in Louisville, is that the details of this plan matter less than its passage for political purposes. Do this unpleasant thing, he essentially agues, so that we can get to the fun stuff: tax cuts, a massive infrastructure spending package and renegotiating trade deals. TrumpCare is just the cover charge to get into the party.

The initial response from conservatives was that they weren’t feeling the beat just yet. “House leadership does not have the votes to pass this very liberal bill unless they have a bunch of Democrats on board,” crowed Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Mo., upon exiting the briefing on the updated version, according to Politico.

Trump reportedly hit them pretty hard today, warning that Republicans would lose the House and the Senate both if they did not proceed.

And, according to multiple sources, Trump called out House Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Mark Meadows by name and joking-not-joking warned him that the president was going to “come after” him.

So now it’s clear: In what is proving to be the first ideological test for conservatives of the Trump era, the president is not going offering any exemptions for conscientious objectors.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...trumpcare.html

Freedom Caucus, please don't mess this up. Please support Trump's bill, if he's happy with it, it's enough to get it going. The revised bill helps our Americans get their FREEDOM back, it repeals the tax penalties, it helps all those who can't afford insurance or don't want it, their right, to no longer have to pay the $895 tax penalty per adult, I just read that the 2016 penalty is $969, I guess it goes up, and another figure for all children under 18, or $2085 for a family, probably more in 2016. It also erases the tax penalties that force some employers to cut hours and stop hiring to avoid the penalties for not having employer provided insurance.

We're talking about expendable income, more hours, more jobs and most importantly we're talking about FREEDOM.

Come on FREEDOM CAUCUS, support the bill for these 2 reasons alone, the rest of it will be fixed later. Lets pass the bill, restore liberty, increase jobs and move immediately to tax reform to fix our economy. The other stuff can be worked out in Phase 2 with regulatory changes and or as part of the legislation to be introduced as part of Phase 3.

Related:


https://www.alipac.us/f12/ryancare-u...-plan-345114/?

The Republicans have had 7 years to work on a bill they could pass with full party support. I can not support passing a defective bill simply to own it, nor can I support passing a bill with 'promised' fixes at a future date to be determined. How many times have we heard promises from our congress critters that never evolve. If that's the best they can do, I'd suggest they just repeal Obamacare and start over. It's no secret the majority of Americans were much better off before Obamacare ever came to be. Just my opinion ......

Originally Posted by MW

The Republicans have had 7 years to work on a bill they could pass with full party support. I can not support passing a defective bill simply to own it, nor can I support passing a bill with 'promised' fixes at a future date to be determined. How many times have we heard promises from our congress critters that never evolve. If that's the best they can do, I'd suggest they just repeal Obamacare and start over. It's no secret the majority of Americans were much better off before Obamacare ever came to be. Just my opinion ......

They don't have enough votes to repeal it. The Senate will never pass a repeal of Obamacare. That's why they're going through this tedious process of Budget Reconciliation to be able to pass a bill that repeals the mandates with 51 votes. We don't have 60 votes in the Senate and won't ever have them to repeal Obamacare.

Republicans had a nice bill they liked put together in 2015. It passed the House but died in the Senate. We have a smaller margin in the Senate now than we had then.

Reality Check.

Trump Warns House Republicans: Repeal Health Law or Lose Your Seats

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, THOMAS KAPLAN and ROBERT PEARMARCH 21, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday turned up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to support a sweeping bill to overhaul the health care system, threatening wavering lawmakers in his party with political payback if they failed to get behind a measure that has become an early test of his negotiating power.

In a series of meetings and phone calls at the White House and on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Republican congressional leaders haggled with holdouts over details as they struggled to assemble a majority to support a bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The legislation is scheduled for a floor vote on Thursday in the House.

But at a private meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol, the president also delivered a blunt warning that many of those present would lose their seats in next year’s midterm congressional elections if the effort failed.

“I’m going to come after you,” Mr. Trump told Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, a prime holdout and the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, a hotbed of concern about the legislation, according to several people in the room who described his comments on condition of anonymity because the session was private. “I believe Mark and his group will come along, because honestly, a loss is not acceptable, folks.”

Mr. Trump told Republicans at the meeting that after voting repeatedly to repeal the health care law and campaigning in 2016 on doing so, they had an obligation to back the bill and would lose their majority if they “blow it,” attendees said.

Despite the day’s feverish efforts — a combination of cajoling, browbeating and horse-trading that recalled Democrats’ efforts to pass the law in 2010 — White House and congressional officials conceded Tuesday that they still lacked the votes to pass the bill. As many as three dozen Republicans remain opposed or unpersuaded, according to one aide with knowledge of the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

It is not clear whether Mr. Trump would be able to exact a political price from Republicans who opposed the measure; conservative groups including the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America were lining up against the legislation and pressuring lawmakers to oppose it, raising questions about whether it would be possible to mount a successful primary challenge to defectors. And some Republicans said the political peril would be greater if they supported the health care bill, which they said failed to achieve their goals or those of their constituents.

“I think if we do do this, we lose the majority,” said Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican and a member of the Freedom Caucus, who said he remained opposed.

Representative Leonard Lance of New Jersey, one of the nearly two dozen Republicans from districts that Mr. Trump lost in 2016, said he was leaning strongly toward a “no” vote. “I campaigned in support of a repeal-and-replace bill that would make health care more affordable and accessible and provide a smooth transition to those who were forced into Obamacare through no fault of their own,” Mr. Lance said. “The bill, as currently drafted, does none of these things.”

It is also not clear whether Mr. Trump, whose popularity has fallen from what was already a historically low point since he took office, is capable of rallying the public behind a plan that is also viewed negatively. Mr. Trump’s approval rating sank to 37 percent in Gallup’s daily tracking poll on Monday. That is only slightly higher than the 34 percent who favor the health measure, according to a Fox News poll last week, compared with 54 percent who were opposed.

The use of a political threat was a classic tactic for Mr. Trump, who keeps a running mental tally of his backers and detractors, and frequently boasts of his efforts to exact revenge from those who have crossed him.

“We’re going to make sure to remember those who stood by us, and who stood by the word that they gave to their voters,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.

Mr. Trump has not focused on the specifics of the health care bill, arguing in recent days that he is more concerned with pushing it through Congress so he can move on to issues he cares more about, including a large tax cut.

At a fund-raiser for House Republicans on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump said he was eager to cut taxes, but had “no choice” but “to go with the health care first.”

But he has been putting the full power of the White House behind the effort to sell the health bill.

Besides his meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday, he met at the White House with about a dozen members of the centrist Tuesday Group. On Wednesday morning, he is scheduled to meet with members of the Freedom Caucus. Over the weekend, he summoned three prominent conservative critics — Mr. Meadows, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Mike Lee of Utah — to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for meetings with Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, to discuss their concerns about the bill.

“He made it very clear he’s all in on this legislation,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “This is a historic moment and a historic promise for Republicans to deliver on this Thursday.”

Speaker Paul D. Ryan was upbeat after the Capitol meeting. “The president just came here and knocked the ball out of the park,” he said. “He knocked the cover off the ball.”

But Mr. Meadows said he was neither bothered nor persuaded by Mr. Trump’s warning that he would lose his constituents’ support if he did not fall in line.

“I believe that I’m representing them in opposing this bill, because it won’t lower premiums,” he said. “Until it does, I’m going to be a ‘no,’ even if it sends me home.”

A prime concern for holdouts was the measure’s lack of provisions to relax federal health insurance regulations that require insurers to provide certain minimum benefits and to spend certain percentages of premium revenues on medical care.

White House officials argued privately that if they included such language in the bill, they would run into procedural problems in the Senate, where the measure is to be considered under special rules that apply to “budget reconciliation” bills. Those rules allow such legislation to be approved with a simple majority — meaning Republicans could push the bill through without any Democratic backing — but to qualify, the provisions must affect spending or revenues.

For other House members, the bill has been an opportunity to deal. Mr. Trump promised Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, that he would hold to his pledge to consider reversing President Barack Obama’s opening with Cuba if Mr. Diaz-Balart backed the measure, the White House official said, which he did in the Budget Committee last week.

Representative Claudia Tenney, Republican of New York, said she was likely to support the bill after House leaders added a section that would shift Medicaid costs from New York’s counties to the state government.

House leaders also included provisions to allow states to impose a work requirement for certain able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries, and to allow states to choose a lump-sum block grant to fund Medicaid.

Both of those provisions were meant to win over conservatives, and Mr. Ryan presented the health bill on Tuesday as an improved product that had been refined as much as possible to reflect lawmakers’ concerns — and that now needed to be approved so lawmakers could fulfill their promise to repeal the health law.

“In this day and age, and in this business, in politics, if you get 85 percent of what you want, that’s pretty darn good,” he told reporters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/u...ald-trump.html