2017 Mar 24^th

It is early afternoon and there is no vote yet on the Republican’s replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We know that many sweeteners have been poured into this bill to attract those Tea Party folks, who with Steve Bannon, want to “deconstruct the administrative state” that is to say, strangle it.

A large number of health benefits have been removed, benefits that had been there in the ACA. No more mammograms, and one rather dense Republican legislator said that he couldn’t understand why men should have to pay for women’s mammograms. Someone must have reminded him that some of his constituents were women so he retracted his objection and apologized. Would that Donald Trump could have the grace to admit his stupidities.

Trumpcare will gain some far right support as Ryan and his people make it more Spartan and more palatable to the far right, but as they do this, they will lose the votes of moderates. This might be a “zero-sum game.” If it is it will not be a zero sum for Trump but a dead loss. He cannot afford to lose his very first effort to promote legislation. Whatever will he do? He has already done it; he is distancing himself from the bill. This is not Trumpcare, oh no indeed, this is Ryancare, this is whatever you want to call it except Trump’s name is not to be attached to it. He will lose far more face when this bill loses than he could possibly gain from its passage.

This razzmatazz only concerns the house bill; even if it does slip past the opposition in the house, it will then go to the senate and there it will certainly be shredded and sent back where it came from for a do-over and this game will be played all over again. Hey folks, these shenanigans are your tax dollars at work, enjoy.

Ryan has just gone to the White House presumably to deliver the bad news to Trump that the bill will not pass the house. So, will Trump pull the bill and save himself from the defeat by withdrawing from the contest, or will he forge ahead and then blame the defeat on Ryan and the house Republicans? If the bill should miraculously pass he’ll take credit; if it doesn’t pass he’ll blame Ryan and the Republicans. He can’t lose unless he pulls the bill.

Chairman Nunes, a former member of the Trump transition team, has been complimented by President Trump. Nunes immediately ran to the White House with information that perhaps Trump’s white House had been incidentally surveilled when they were not the target of the surveillance at all. Nunes has nevertheless apologized to his committee for ignoring them about the issue. He admits that this was a mistake. Still, he is making a considerable issue of the fact that he can discern the identity of the redacted names of people incidentally communicating with those being followed by the FBI.

The truly amazing thing here is this intelligence committee chair seems uninterested in investigating any connections between Russia and any member of the administration….or maybe that’s not so amazing at all.