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NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Friday, January 13, 2017
GOP leaders look to early health care bill, details vague
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Under mounting pressure
from Donald Trump and
rank-and-file Republicans,
congressional leaders are
talking increasingly about
chiseling an early bill that
dismantles President Barack
Obama’s health care law and
begins to supplant it with
their own vision of how the
nation’s $3 trillion-a-year
medical system should work.
Yet even as Republicans
said they will pursue their
paramount 2017 goal aggres-
sively, leaders left plenty of
wiggle room Thursday about
exactly what they will do.
Their caution underscored
persistent divisions over
how to recraft a law they’ve
tried erasing since its 2010
enactment, plus their desire
to avoid panicking the 20
million people who’ve gained
coverage under Obama’s
overhaul or unsettling health
insurance markets.
In an interview with
conservative radio host Mike
Gallagher, House Speaker
Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the
initial repeal and replace
legislation will be “the
primary part of our health
care policy” and would be
followed by other bills.
Later, he told reporters at the
AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File
In this Jan. 4 file photo, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell of Ky. pauses during a news conference on
Capitol Hill in Washington.
Capitol that while Repub-
licans will work quickly,
“We’re not holding hard
deadlines, only because we
want to get it right.”
Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,
said the early repeal bill
would “begin to make
important progress.” He said
Republicans “plan to take on
the replacement challenge
in manageable pieces, with
step-by-step reforms.” He set
no timetable.
“Repealing and replacing
Obamacare is a big chal-
lenge. It isn’t going to be
easy,” McConnell added.
The leaders spoke a day
before the House plans to
give final approval to a
budget that would shield the
forthcoming repeal-and-re-
place bill from a Democratic
filibuster in the Senate.
Stripping Democrats of
their ability to endlessly
delay that bill — a tactic that
takes 60 votes to thwart — is
crucial for Republicans,
who have just a 52-48 edge
in the Senate. That chamber
approved the budget early
Thursday by a near party-line
51-48 vote, drawing a Twitter
thumbs-up from Trump.
“Congrats to the Senate
for taking the first step to
(hash)RepealObamacare —
now it’s onto the House!” the
president-elect tweeted.
Trump, who enters the
White House next Friday, has
pressed Republicans in recent
days to act quickly on annul-
ling and reshaping Obama’s
law. GOP leaders seem to be
taking his urgings to heart,
though some have suggested
his desire for speed doesn’t
match Congress’ vintage lack
of agility.
Asked how quickly
lawmakers
could
send
Trump a bill, No. 2 Senate
Republican leader John
Cornyn of Texas said, “The
most important thing is
when do you get 218 votes
in the House and 51 votes in
the Senate,” the majorities
needed for passage.
“He’s not a creature of
this place so there’s always a
bit of a learning curve,” said
the No. 3 Senate GOP leader,
John Thune of South Dakota.
Obama’s law, which he
considers a trophy of his
soon-to-end presidency, has
provided health care subsi-
dies and Medicaid coverage
for millions who don’t get
insurance at work. It has
required insurers to cover
certain services like family
planning and people who are
already ill, and curbed rates
the sick and elderly can be
charged.
GOP leaders hope to use
their first bill to void and
rewrite as much of Obama’s
law as they can, but so
far they’ve provided little
detail. Cornyn said in a brief
interview Wednesday that the
early legislation will “push
some of the responsibility
and resources down to the
states and give them more
flexibility,” such as for
Medicaid.
Republicans want to end
the fines that enforce the stat-
ute’s requirements that many
individuals buy coverage and
that larger companies provide
it to workers — mandates
that experts say were needed
to stabilize insurers’ rates.
They’d like to expand
health savings accounts,
erase the taxes Obama’s
statute imposed on higher-in-
come people and the health
care industry, eliminate its
subsidies that help people
buy policies and pare back its
Medicaid expansion.
But they face internal
disagreements over policy,
such as how to pay for
their new statute and how
to protect consumers and
insurers during what may be
a two- or three-year phase-out
of Obama’s overhaul.
They also must heed
Senate rules forbidding
provisions that don’t directly
affect taxes and spending
from being safeguarded
from filibusters. That means
repealing important parts of
the law — like the require-
ment that insurers offer
coverage to all customers
including the most ill —
would have to await later
bills that would need Demo-
cratic support.
Democrats have so far
solidly opposed the GOP
effort.
But
one
influential
conservative health care
authority warned Republi-
cans Thursday that it would
be best to work with their
rivals.
“Bipartisan support for
whatever is assembled is the
best way, and probably the
only way, to ensure that what
passes in 2017 is accepted by
the public” in a way Obama’s
law was not, James Capretta,
a fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute who
formerly worked for Presi-
dent George W. Bush, wrote
Thursday in National Review
Online.
Trump’s pick for top diplomat
splits from him in many ways
AP Photo/Dave Martin, File
In this 1994 file photo, Cuban refugees float in seas, 60
miles south of Key West, Fla. President Barack Obama an-
nounced Thursday he is ending a longstanding immigra-
tion policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S.
soil to stay and become a legal resident.
Obama ends visa-free
path for Cubans who
make it to U.S. soil
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— President Barack Obama
announced Thursday he is
ending a longstanding immi-
gration policy that allows any
Cuban who makes it to U.S.
soil to stay and become a legal
resident.
The repeal of the “wet foot,
dry foot” policy is effective
immediately. The decision
follows months of negotiations
focused in part on getting Cuba
to agree to take back people
who had arrived in the U.S.
“Effective
immediately,
Cuban nationals who attempt
to enter the United States
illegally and do not qualify
for humanitarian relief will be
subject to removal, consistent
with U.S. law and enforcement
priorities,” Obama said in a
statement. “By taking this
step, we are treating Cuban
migrants the same way we treat
migrants from other countries.
The Cuban government has
agreed to accept the return of
Cuban nationals who have
been ordered removed, just as
it has been accepting the return
of migrants interdicted at sea.”
The Cuban government
praised the move. In a state-
ment read on state television, it
called the signing of the agree-
ment “an important step in
advancing relations” between
the U.S. and Cuba that “aims
to guarantee normal, safe and
ordered migration.”
Obama is using an admin-
istrative rule change to end the
policy. Donald Trump could
undo that rule after becoming
president next week. He has
criticized Obama’s moves
to improve relations with
Cuba. But ending a policy
that has allowed hundreds of
thousands of people to come
to the United States without a
visa also aligns with Trump’s
commitment to tough immi-
gration policies.
President Bill Clinton
created “wet foot, dry foot”
policy in 1995 as a revision
of a more liberal immigration
policy that allowed Cubans
caught at sea to come to the
United States become legal
residents in a year.
The two governments have
been negotiating an end to
“wet foot, dry foot” for months
and finalized an agreement
Thursday. A decades-old U.S.
economic embargo, though,
remains in place, as does the
Cuban Adjustment Act, which
lets Cubans become permanent
residents a year after legally
arriving in the U.S.
Under the terms of the
agreement, Cuba has agreed
to take back those turned
away from the U.S., if the time
between their departure from
Cuba and the start of deporta-
tion hearings in the U.S. is four
years or less. Officials said the
timeframe is required under
a Cuban law enacted after
Congress passed the Cuban
Adjustment Act.
“For this to work, the
Cubans had to agree to take
people back,” said Ben
Rhodes, Obama’s deputy
national security adviser.
Administration
officials
called on Congress to repeal
the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Officials said the changes
would not affect a lottery that
allows 20,000 Cubans to come
to the U.S. legally each year.
But Rhodes cast the shift as a
necessary step toward Cuba’s
economic and political devel-
opment.
“It’s important that Cuba
continue to have a young,
dynamic population that are
clearly serving as agents of
change,” he said.
Rhodes also cited an uptick
in Cuban migration, particu-
larly across the U.S.-Mexico
border — an increase many
have attributed to an expec-
tation among Cubans that the
Obama administration would
soon move to end their special
immigration status.
Since
October
2012,
more than 118,000 Cubans
have presented themselves
at ports of entry along the
border, according to statistics
published by the Home-
land Security Department,
including more than 48,000
people who arrived between
October 2015 and November
2016.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rex
Tillerson’s foreign policy isn’t
sounding much like Donald Trump’s.
At his confirmation hearing
Wednesday, the former Exxon Mobil
CEO selected by Trump for secretary
of state called Russia a “danger”
and vowed to protect America’s
European allies. He rejected the idea
of an immigration ban on Muslims.
He treaded softly on the human rights
records of key U.S. partners like
Saudi Arabia.
In the words of Sen. Bob Corker,
the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee’s
GOP
chairman,
Tillerson “demonstrated that he’s
very much in the mainstream of
foreign policy thinking.” But doing
so forced Tillerson to break with
several of the president-elect’s most
iconoclastic statements on diplomacy
and international security.
Again and again, Tillerson hewed
more closely to long-standing, bipar-
tisan positions on America’s role in
the world, and who are its friends and
foes.
That may help Tillerson win over
senators who’ve expressed wariness
about his extensive relationship with
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But it could leave him putting a
Trump foreign policy in place that
looks little like the vision he outlined
Wednesday.
A look at where Tillerson’s views
didn’t quite match those of his
would-be boss:
RUSSIA
Tillerson adopted a tough
tone toward Moscow, apparently
attempting to rebut the perception
that he’s too close to Putin.
The Russian leader previously
awarded Tillerson his country’s
“Order of Friendship” following
Exxon’s deals with Russia’s oil
industry. But on Wednesday, Tillerson
called Putin’s Russia a threat to the
United States.
Whereas Trump as a candidate
played down Russia’s 2014 annex-
ation of Crimea from Ukraine,
arguing the population there was
pro-Russian
anyway, Tillerson
said the annexation was illegal and
amounted to “a taking of territory
that was not theirs.”
Whereas Trump’s campaign team
last summer softened language in
the GOP platform calling for arming
Ukraine, Tillerson said he would
have recommended providing U.S.
and allied defensive weapons, plus
aerial surveillance, so the Ukrainians
could protect their Russian border.
“The taking of Crimea was an
act of force,” Tillerson said. When
Russia flexes its muscles, he said
the U.S. must mount “a proportional
show of force.”
Still, the Kremlin said Thursday
the former Cold War foes can over-
come their differences once Trump
takes office. Putin’s spokesman,
Dmitry Peskov, said he hopes the two
presidents will get along and they can
normalize ties if they show “mutual
respect.”
CAMPAIGN HACKING
Before Wednesday, Trump spent
weeks ridiculing the U.S. intelligence
agencies’ accusations that Russia
hacked and leaked emails, spread
“fake news” and took other actions to
interfere with the U.S. election.
Tillerson wasted no time in
accepting the findings. He even
went further than Trump, conceding
it’s a “fair assumption” the hacking
couldn’t have taken place without
Putin’s consent
Not Trump, who has repeatedly
praised Putin’s leadership. While he
said at a news conference Wednesday
that “I think it was Russia,” Trump
sidestepped the question of Putin’s
responsibility. Instead, he argued,
“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess
what, folks? That’s called an asset,
not a liability.”
THE MUSLIM BAN
During the campaign, Trump
called for a temporary ban on
Muslims immigrating to the U.S. The
proposal then evolved into halting
immigration from countries linked to
terrorism. Trump later suggested he
was reconsidering the Muslim ban.
“I do not support a blanket type
rejection of any particular group of
people,” Tillerson said categorically
at his hearing. He said the U.S. should
“support those Muslim voices” that
reject extremism and insisted Ameri-
cans shouldn’t be scared of Muslims.
RAPISTS AND CRIMINALS
Trump started his presidential bid
by taking aim south of the border,
accusing Mexico of sending “rapists”
and criminals with drugs into the U.S.
Asked about those sentiments,
Tillerson said he would “never char-
acterize an entire population with any
single term at all.”
Mexico and other Latin American
nations are anxious about Trump’s
campaign pledges to build a border
wall and deport millions of immi-
grants illegally in the U.S.
Tillerson, by contrast, said he
would engage closely with Mexico.
“Mexico is a long-standing
neighbor and friend of this country,”
he said.
DEFENDING ALLIES
Trump sent chills through much of
Europe when he suggested the U.S.
might not defend its NATO allies if
they came under attack, unless they’d
contributed enough to the alliance’s
collective defense costs.
He later qualified his comments,
while insisting NATO’s future
depended on members paying their
fair share.
Tillerson offered ironclad support
for NATO’s Article 5, which obli-
gates the allies to treat an attack on
one as an attack on all. If a NATO
member is invaded, the oil man said,
the U.S. would join other members in
coming to its defense.
“The Article 5 commitment is
inviolable, and the U.S. is going
to stand behind that commitment,”
Tillerson said.
SAUDI ARABIA
Trump used Saudi Arabia’s
shoddy human rights record as a
campaign cudgel against Hillary
Clinton, pointedly asking why she
wouldn’t “give back the money” the
kingdom gave her family foundation.
He called out Saudi Arabia and
other Mideast countries for violence
against gays and women, and other
human rights violations.
Tillerson played it more conserva-
tively with a country at the heart of
the American security strategy for the
Middle East.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t share Amer-
ican values, he said.
But Tillerson said he needed
“greater
information”
before
declaring Saudi Arabia a human
rights violator.
It was an answer that wasn’t well
received by all the senators present.
But it was, to use a turn of phrase,
diplomatic.
Obama awards Biden the Medal of Freedom
WA S H I N G T O N
(AP) — President Barack
Obama awarded Vice
President Joe Biden with
the highest civilian honor
Thursday, commemorating
an “extraordinary man with
an extraordinary career in
public service.”
A teary-eyed Biden
accepted the Presidential
Medal of Freedom at a cere-
mony at the White House
dedicated to honoring the
outgoing vice president.
Obama said he is
bestowing the honor on
Biden for “faith in your
fellow Americans, for your
love of country and a lifetime
of service that will endure
through the generations.”
Biden praised his wife
and children for their support
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Barack Obama presents Vice President
Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
on Thursday.
throughout his career, and
praised the Obama family
for their dedication to
country and service.
“I was part of the journey
of a remarkable man who
did remarkable things,”
Biden said.
Speaking ahead of Biden,
Obama said the tribute will
give the Internet one last
chance to joke about the
“bromance” the two share.
He called Biden the “best
possible choice, not just for
me, but for the American
people.”
Obama commended the
“Biden heart,” listing the
influences in Biden’s life,
from the nuns who taught
him in grade school, to his
Senate colleagues, to his
parents.
Noting that Biden’s
career is “nowhere close to
finished,” Obama said his
vice president will go on to
have an impact in the U.S.
and abroad.