NATION
Thursday, May 4, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
House to vote on health care bill Thursday
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The
House will vote Thursday
on GOP legislation to repeal
and replace Barack Obama’s
Affordable Care Act, as
Republicans finally aim to
deliver on seven years of
campaign promises that
helped them gain control
of Congress and the White
House.
But the move announced
late Wednesday by GOP
leaders also carries extreme
political risk, as House
Republicans prepare to
endorse a bill that boots
millions off the insurance
rolls and may not even
survive the Senate.
“We will pass this bill,”
House Majority Leader
Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.,
confidently predicted after a
day of wrangling votes and
personal arm-twisting by
President Donald Trump.
Pressed by reporters as he
exited a meeting in Speaker
Paul Ryan’s office, McCarthy
protested: “We’re gonna pass
it! We’re gonna pass it! Let’s
be optimistic about life!”
After an earlier defeat
when Republican leaders
were forced to pull the
bill for lack of votes, the
decision to move forward
indicated confidence on the
part of GOP leaders. Failure
would be catastrophic. But
a successful outcome would
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., left, speaks to reporters
outside the White House in Washington, Wednesday,
following a meeting with President Donald Trump on
health care reform. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. is at right.
make good on the GOP’s No.
1 goal of undoing Obama’s
signature legislative achieve-
ment, and provide a long-
sought win for Trump, who
has been in office more than
100 days without a signifi-
cant congressional victory
save Senate confirmation of
a Supreme Court justice.
The White House had
aggressively pushed House
leaders to act, and Trump
got heavily involved in
recent days, working the
phones and personally
agreeing to changes earlier
Wednesday that brought two
pivotal Republicans back on
board. Reps. Fred Upton of
Michigan and Billy Long
of Missouri emerged from a
White House meeting with
Trump saying they could
now support the bill, thanks
to the addition of $8 billion
over five years to help people
with pre-existing conditions.
“‘We need you, we need
you, we need you,’” Long
described as the message
from a president eager for a
victory.
Democrats stood firmly
united against the health bill.
But they generally applauded
a separate $1 trillion-plus
spending measure to keep
the government running,
which passed the House on
a bipartisan vote of 309-118
earlier Wednesday.
The latest iteration of the
GOP health care bill would
let states escape a require-
ment under Obama’s law
that insurers charge healthy
and seriously ill customers
the same rates. Overall,
the legislation would cut
the Medicaid program for
the poor, eliminate fines
for people who don’t buy
insurance
and
provide
generally skimpier subsidies.
The American Medical
Association, AARP and
other consumer and medical
groups are opposed. The
AMA issued a statement
saying the changes sought by
Upton and Long “tinker at
the edges without remedying
the fundamental failing of
the bill — that millions of
Americans will lose their
health insurance as a direct
result.”
If the GOP bill became
law, congressional analysts
estimate that 24 million
more Americans would be
uninsured by 2026, including
14 million by next year.
When the health bill does
come to a vote Thursday it
will be without an updated
analysis from the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office
about its cost and affect, a
point Democrats complained
about bitterly.
“Forcing a vote without
a CBO score shows that
Republicans are terrified of
the public learning the full
consequences of their plan,”
said House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “But
tomorrow, House Republi-
cans are going to tattoo this
moral monstrosity to their
foreheads, and the Amer-
ican people will hold them
accountable.”
Even with Upton and
Long in the “yes” column,
GOP leaders had spent the
day hunting for votes among
wary moderates. More
than a dozen opponents —
including Kentucky’s Tom
Massie, New Jersey’s Chris
Smith and Leonard Lance
and Pennsylvania’s Patrick
Meehan — said they were
still no despite the changes.
GOP leaders can lose only 22
from their ranks and still pass
the bill, and an Associated
Press tally found 19 opposed.
That
suggests
that
Thursday’s margin could be
razor-thin, much like when
“Obamacare” itself cleared
the House in 2010 on a party-
line vote of 219-212. The
GOP has been trying ever
since to repeal the law even
as around 20 million Amer-
icans gained coverage under
it. On Thursday Republicans
might succeed for the first
time in passing a repeal bill
that may have a chance of
getting signed into law.
As they have throughout
the debate, Republicans
argued that Obama’s health
law is collapsing under
its own weight, and they
must intervene to save it.
They argue that their plan
will provide consumers
with lower premiums and
more choices, removing the
unpopular mandates that
require most Americans
to carry insurance or face
fines. Several Republican
lawmakers pointed to news
out of Iowa this week that
the last carrier of individual
health insurance policies in
most of the state might stop
offering them to residents.
“That’s why we have
to make sure this passes,
to save those people from
Obamacare that continues to
collapse,” McCarthy said.
Separately,
on
the
spending bill to keep the
government running, Trump
and GOP leaders hailed it
as a victory, citing increases
in money for the military.
The $1.1 trillion spending
bill was the bipartisan result
of weeks of negotiations in
which top Democrats like
Pelosi successfully blocked
Trump’s most controversial
proposals, including a down
payment on his oft-promised
Mexico border wall, cuts to
popular domestic programs,
and new punishments for
so-called sanctuary cities.
Now that it’s passed
the House, the mammoth,
1,665-page measure to fund
the government through
September heads to the
Senate, which is also expected
to approve it. Despite his
complaints, Trump has prom-
ised to sign it.
BRIEFLY
Trump on Mideast peace:
‘We will get it done’
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., accompanied by
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., speaks to re-
porters Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington. A gov-
ernment-wide spending bill that President Donald
Trump seemed to criticize Tuesday morning but now
calls “a clear win for the American people” is headed
for a House vote on Wednesday.
House passes $1.1 trillion
spending bill, sends to Senate
WASHINGTON (AP) —
The House easily passed a
$1.1 trillion governmentwide
spending bill on Wednesday,
awarding wins to both
Democrats and Republicans
while putting off until
later this year fights over
President Donald Trump’s
promised border wall with
Mexico and massive military
buildup.
The 309-118 vote sends
the bill to the Senate in time
for them to act to avert a
government shutdown at
midnight Friday. The White
House has said Trump would
sign the measure, which is
the first major legislation
to pass in Trump’s short,
turbulent presidency.
House Speaker Paul Ryan
praised the measure as bipar-
tisan, and said the biggest
gain for conservatives came
as Democrats dropped long-
standing demands to match
Pentagon increases with
equal hikes for nondefense
programs.
“No longer will the needs
of our military be held
hostage by the demands for
more domestic spending,”
Ryan said. “In my mind,
that is what’s most important
here.”
Democrats also backed
the measure, which protects
popular domestic programs
such as education, medical
research and grants to state
and local governments from
cuts sought by Trump —
while dropping a host of
GOP agenda items found in
earlier versions.
“It’s imperative to note
what this bill does not
contain,” said Rep. Nita
Lowey of New York, lead
negotiator for Democrats.
“Not one cent for President
Trump’s border wall and
no poison pill riders that
would
have
prevented
so-called sanctuary cities
from receiving federal
grants, defunded Planned
Parenthood, undermined the
Affordable Care Act.”
The bill is the product
of weeks of Capitol Hill
negotiations in which top
Democrats like House
Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi successfully blocked
Trump’s most provocative
proposals — especially the
Mexico wall and cuts to
popular domestic programs
like community develop-
ment grants.
The White House won
$15 billion in emergency
funding
to
jumpstart
Trump’s promise to rebuild
the military and an extra
$1.5 billion for border
security — each short of
Trump demands — leading
the president on Tuesday to
boast, “this is what winning
looks like.”
The opinions of top party
leaders were not shared by
everyone in the rank and file,
some of whom feel that GOP
negotiators too easily gave
up on conservative priori-
ties, such as cutting funds
for Planned Parenthood and
punishing “sanctuary” cities
that fail to cooperate with
immigration authorities.
“I don’t think it was nego-
tiated very well, and I’ll just
leave it at that,” said Rep.
Jeff Duncan, R-S.C.
The long-overdue bill
buys just five months
of funding while Trump
and his allies battle with
congressional
Democrats
over spending cuts and
funding for the wall, which
Trump repeatedly promised
during the campaign would
be financed by Mexico.
Mexican officials have
rejected that notion.
The measure is the
product of a bipartisan
culture among Congress’
appropriators, with money
for foreign aid, grants to
state and local governments
and protection for the
Environmental Protection
Agency from cuts sought by
tea party Republicans. The
measure provides $2 billion
in disaster aid money, $407
million to combat Western
wildfires, additional grants
for transit projects and a $2
billion increase for medical
research at the National
Institutes of Health.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite
bleak prospects for success,
President Donald Trump promised
on Wednesday “to do whatever
is necessary” to forge an Israeli-
Palestinian peace deal.
At a White House meeting with
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas,
Trump pledged to reinvigorate the
stalled Mideast peace process that
has bedeviled his predecessors and
said he would serve as “a mediator,
an arbitrator or a facilitator” between
the two sides. “We will get it done,”
Trump confidently told Abbas.
“I’m committed to working with
Israel and the Palestinians to reach
an agreement,” Trump said. “But any
agreement cannot be imposed by the
United States or by any other nation.
The Palestinians and Israelis must
work together to reach an agreement
that allows both peoples to live,
worship, and thrive and prosper in
peace.”
The source of Trump’s optimism
was not immediately apparent. He
offered no details about his effort or
how it would be any different from
attempts over the past two decades
during which former Presidents
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and
Barack Obama all tried and failed.
Palestinian officials said after the
meeting that Trump had not raised
any specific proposals to restart
negotiations.
Asked what distinguishes Trump’s
plans from previous attempts, White
House spokesman Sean Spicer said
merely: “The man is different.”
The peace process has been
stalled since 2014, and there have
been no serious attempts to restart
negotiations.
Like previous U.S. leaders,
Trump faces numerous obstacles in
the long-shot bid. They include the
contours of a potential Palestinian
state, Jerusalem’s status and the
question of Palestinian refugees.
Complicating it all are the vehement
Palestinian criticisms of Israeli
settlement construction and Israeli
complaints that Palestinians are
inciting violence.
Tillerson calls for
balancing U.S. security
interests, values
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Translating “America First” into
diplomatic policy, Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson on Wednesday declared
the United States can’t always afford
to condition its foreign relationships
and national security efforts on
countries adopting U.S. values like
human rights. He spoke to a State
Department eager for answers about
changing priorities and a sweeping,
impending overhaul.
Tillerson did not provide
employees any details about the 2,300
jobs he plans to eliminate or how his
proposed cut of roughly a quarter of
the State Department budget might
affect operations. Acknowledging
widespread unease about the
forthcoming changes, he pledged that
diplomats would emerge from the
agency’s changes with “a much more
satisfying, fulfilling career.”
Yet even as he left key
administrative questions unanswered,
Tillerson offered the most extensive
presentation to date of what President
Donald Trump’s “America First”
mantra, adopted during the campaign
and carried into the White House,
means for America’s relations around
the world. Over the last two decades,
he said, Washington had “lost track”
of whether post-Cold War alliances
were still serving U.S. interests.
The former Exxon Mobil CEO
distinguished between U.S. “values,”
which he described as enduring, and
“policies,” which Tillerson said must
adapt to the times.
BUTTE CHALLENGE
SATURDAY , MAY 6 , 2017
5K Run, 5K Walk, 10K Run, Kid's Butte Scoot
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DRAWINGS • FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
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All proceeds benefi t THE HERMISTON
CROSS COUNTRY PROGRAM
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!