NATION/WORLD
Friday, March 10, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 9A
GOP leaders claim momentum as health bill clears hurdles
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— Republican leaders drove
their long-promised legis-
lation to dismantle Barack
Obama’s health care law
over its first big hurdles in
the House on Thursday and
claimed fresh momentum
despite cries of protest from
right, left and center.
After grueling all-night
sessions, the Energy and
Commerce and Ways and
Means committees both
approved their portions of
the bill along party-line
votes.
The
legislation,
strongly supported by Pres-
ident Donald Trump, would
replace the tax penalties for
the uninsured under Obama’s
Affordable Care Act with a
conservative blueprint likely
to cover far fewer people but,
Republicans hope, increase
choice.
The vote in Ways and
Means came before dawn,
while the Energy and
Commerce meeting lasted
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
House Speaker Paul Ryan uses charts to make his case
for the GOP’s long-awaited plan to repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act Thursday in Washington.
past 27 hours as exhausted
lawmakers groped for coffee
refills, clean shirts and
showers.
Angry
Democrats
protested that Republicans
were acting in the dead
of night to rip insurance
coverage from poor Amer-
icans.
But
Republican
leaders sounded increasingly
confident that, after seven
years of empty promises
about undoing Obama’s law,
they might finally be able to
overcome their own deep
divisions and deliver a bill to
Trump to sign.
“This is the closest we
will ever get to repealing
and replacing Obamacare,”
Speaker Paul Ryan of
Wisconsin said at a press
briefing where he arrived
in shirt-sleeves to deliver a
wonky power-point presen-
tation on the GOP bill, part
TED talk and part School-
house Rock.
“The time is here. The time
is now. This is the moment.
And this is the closest this
will ever happen.”
Leaders are aiming for
passage by the full House
in the next couple of weeks,
and from there the legislation
would go to the Senate and,
they hope, on to Trump’s
desk. The president has
promised to sign it, declaring
over Twitter on Thursday,
“We are talking to many
groups and it will end in a
beautiful picture!”
Yet at the same time the
president is leaving himself a
political out, privately telling
conservative leaders that if
the whole effort fails, Demo-
crats will ultimately shoulder
the blame for the problems
that remain. That’s according
to a participant in the meeting
Wednesday who spoke only
on condition of anonymity to
relay the private discussion.
Democrats reject that
notion, and the entire GOP
effort.
“What we have seen is
the Republicans’ long-feared
and job-killing health bill
that means less coverage
and more cost to American
people,” said House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi of
California. “I don’t think the
president really knows what
he’s talking about.”
The GOP legislation
would
kill
Obama’s
requirement that everyone
buy insurance by repealing
the tax fines imposed on
those who don’t. The bill
would replace income-based
subsidies Obama provided
with tax credits based more
on age, and insurers would
charge higher premiums for
customers who drop coverage
for over two months
The
extra
billions
Washington has sent states
to expand the federal-state
Medicaid program would
phase out, and spending on
the entire program would
be capped at per-patient
limits. Around $600 billion
in 10-year tax boosts that
Obama’s statute imposed
on wealthy Americans and
others to finance his overhaul
would be repealed. Insurers
could charge older customers
five times more than younger
ones instead of the current
3-1 limit but would still be
required to include children
up to age 26 in family
policies, and they would be
barred from imposing annual
or lifetime benefit caps.
Democrats said Repub-
licans would yank health
coverage from many of the
20 million who gained it
under Obama’s statute.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
In this Feb. 13 file photo, Mike Flynn arrives for a news
conference in the East Room of the White House.
White House: Trump
unaware of Flynn’s
foreign agent work
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— President Donald Trump
was not aware that his former
national security adviser,
Michael Flynn, had worked
to further the interests of the
government of Turkey before
appointing him, White House
press secretary Sean Spicer
said Thursday.
Spicer’s comments came
two days after Flynn and
his firm, Flynn Intel Group
Inc., filed paperwork with the
Justice Department formally
identifying him as a foreign
agent and acknowledging
that his work for a company
owned by a Turkish busi-
nessman could have aided
Turkey’s government.
Asked whether Trump
knew about Flynn’s work
before he appointed him as
national security adviser,
Spicer said, “I don’t believe
that that was known.”
Flynn and his company
filed the registration paper-
work describing $530,000
worth of lobbying before
Election Day on behalf of
Inovo BV, a Dutch-based
company owned by Turkish
businessman Ekim Alptekin.
In an interview with The
Associated Press, Alptekin
said Flynn did so after pres-
sure from Justice Department
officials.
The filing this week
was the former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agen-
cy’s first acknowledgement
that his consulting business
furthered the interests of a
foreign government while he
was working as a top adviser
to Trump’s presidential
campaign.
Flynn’s disclosure that
his lobbying — from August
through November— may
have benefited Turkey’s
authoritarian government led
by President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan came as Flynn has
drawn scrutiny from the FBI
for his contacts with Russian
officials. Trump fired Flynn
last month for misleading
Vice President Mike Pence
and other administration
officials about his contacts
with Russia’s ambassador to
the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.
In paperwork filed with
the Justice Department’s
Foreign Agent Registration
Unit, Flynn and his firm
acknowledged
that
his
lobbying “could be construed
to have principally benefited
the Republic of Turkey.”
The lobbying contract ended
after Trump’s election in
November, according to the
paperwork.
A spokesman for Flynn,
Price Floyd, said the general
was not available for an
interview Thursday. Floyd
referred the AP to Flynn’s
filing in response to ques-
tions about why he and his
firm had decided to register
this week.
Flynn’s attorney, Robert
Kelner, declined to comment
through a spokesman for
his law firm, Covington
& Burling. The Turkish
Embassy also didn’t respond
to questions from the AP.
Spicer said he didn’t know
what Flynn had disclosed
about his background and
lobbying work during the
White House’s vetting of him
for appointment as national
security adviser.
Spicer said Flynn was
free to do the lobbying work
because it occurred while he
was a private citizen.
“There’s nothing nefar-
ious about doing anything
that’s legal as long as the
proper paperwork if filed,”
Spicer said. He declined to
say whether Trump would
have appointed Flynn if
he had known about the
lobbying.
After Flynn joined the
Trump administration, he
agreed not to lobby for
five years after leaving
government service and
never to represent foreign
governments. Flynn’s newly
disclosed lobbying would
not have violated that pledge
because it occurred before
he joined the Trump admin-
istration in January, but the
pledge precludes Flynn from
ever doing the same type of
work again in his lifetime.
Under the Foreign Agent
Registration Act, U.S. citi-
zens who lobby on behalf of
foreign governments or polit-
ical entities must disclose
their work to the Justice
Department. Willfully failing
to register is a felony, though
the Justice Department rarely
files criminal charges in such
cases. It routinely works with
lobbying firms to get back
in compliance with the law
by registering and disclosing
their work.
More than a month before
Flynn was appointed as
national security adviser,
news accounts and Demo-
cratic senators had raised
questions about potential
conflicts of interest regarding
Flynn’s work for the Turkish
company.
Sen.
Jeanne
Shaheen, D-N.H., criticized
Flynn’s work and late
disclosure again Thursday as
troubling.
“Gen. Flynn’s behavior
seems to be part of a larger
pattern of poor judgment
from members of this admin-
istration,” she said.
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