Friday, March 24, 2017

Who will take the hit for Obamacare lite?

If there is ever a question in your mind about how little difference there is between Republicans and liberal lawmakers consider the following tidbit. Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) said to Brian Williams on MSNBC: “In my district, right now there’s a lot of misunderstanding as to what it is we’re doing and once we get it done, and then we can have a chance to really explain what’s in it”. Collins is talking about the Republican version of Obamacare. As Yogi Berra would have said “It’s déjà vu all over again”. What Collins said is almost verbatim of what Nancy Pelosi said about Obamacare back in 2010: “We have to pass a bill to see what’s in it”. There is little difference in the “group speak” of Republicans and liberal lawmakers in the DC swamp. It really is a matter of “us against them”!

I find it extremely doubtful, but I am hopeful, that somehow or other the Republican establishment led by Paul Ryan has pulled the wool over Donald Trump’s eyes concerning this healthcare bill. It does not have any content that will “repeal and replace” Obamacare. It basically contains the amendments to Obamacare that the Republicans wanted to place in the bill during its inception in 2010. Obama refused to allow any Republican amendments so now that they’re in charge they can do the amendments on their own. The problem is they are leaving Obamacare virtually intact. This Republican version eliminates the mandated purchase of insurance by taxpayers but then requires taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for other people’s insurance. Their excuse for non-repeal is that this must be done in three phases in order to bypass the 60 vote requirement for passage in the Senate if they repeal and start from ground zero with a new bill. Why can’t they just submit the repeal bill that the House has passed on numerous occasions in the past? As I noted in an earlier blog those repeal votes were merely for show; appeasement of their Conservative base to ensure their continued loyalty. Now that they are in charge their big scam has been outed and they’re not going to be able to produce the results that are expected by the 63 million voters who put them and Trump in office.

Now let’s go back to Donald Trump. He campaigned for a year and a half on repealing Obamacare. All of a sudden he is threatening reprisals on Conservative Republican legislators who do not vote for this watered-down version of what will soon be called Trumpcare. If this passes he will own it. This could very well be the broken promise that makes him a typical politician and a one term president. It struck me as his first opportunity to take Ryan and the establish Republicans down a notch or two. All Trump would have had to do was make an appeal to his voting base and request additional time to actually present a bill that is acceptable to them. He could easily have made the case that it was more complicated than even he and his advisors expected and that he will need more time to produce a replacement bill that will be ready to be placed in to law within the same vote that would repeal Obamacare. Instead of taking that simple tact he, in my opinion, has created his own dilemma. Donald seems to have forgotten that the same conservatives that voted for him also voted for the conservative legislators that are opposing this revised version of Obamacare. Donald, you can’t claim to represent the people at the same time you are threatening the people’s representatives. Reprisals from the voters will happen but it won’t be against their representatives that stood strong for their cause.

If this new health bill fails Trump has threatened to drop Obamacare off the agenda altogether and move on to tax reform. The problem with that is that Americans will continue to suffer financially and medically under the system that is left in place. On top of that establishment Republicans are telling him that they cannot move on to tax reform until they have Obamacare and its financial fiasco settled first.

 It appears that the bulk of the continuing roadblocks to the advancement of Trump’s agenda will come from the establishment Republicans. The three things that I consider to be the most important to accomplish are sealing the border, repealing and replacing Obamacare, and tax reforms that will entice American businesses back to the US and increase jobs available to Americans. Ryan and the establishment are blocking two of the three. Of course the most important one, sealing the border, is being blocked by two or three anti-American liberal federal judges who took an oath of office to defend the Constitution of the United States but seem never to have read it. These un-American lunatic judges are conferring our Constitutional rights on every person on the planet. Their injunction against Trump’s ban on terrorists invading US soil should be considered treason making it an impeachable offense. I believe Congress has the power to remove these imposters from their judicial positions.

I got a bit off my main topic of Ryan/Trumpcare so I may as well finish up with more of the same. This repeal and replace bill may very well be Donald Trump’s first stumble. I sincerely hope it is his last. If he does not pursue action against these activist rogue judges his base supporters may very well start to fade away. If he allows the Republican establishment to amend and distort his campaign promised agenda his base supporters will dwindle even faster. If he fails to build a wall on even 1 mile of our southern border his support will melt faster than the last snowman of the season. If Trump fails to deliver on all three of the big promises he made he will be a one term president. He will end up being part of the swamp sewage he has promised to drain.

This last thing is even further off-topic. I read that one of our larger-than-life liberal media pundits complained about the amount of time and money Trump spends playing golf. Ain’t hypocrisy a hoot?


God Bless America!!!

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