NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Senate GOP intent on scrapping
health mandate in its tax bill
By MARCY GORDON
Associated Press
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a House
Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Tuesday.
Sessions denies lying on
Russia, pleads hazy memory
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— Attorney General Jeff
Sessions on Tuesday displayed
a hazy memory of the Trump
campaign’s discussions about
and dealings with Russians in
the 2016 election, denying he
ever lied to Congress about
those contacts but blaming the
chaos of the race for fogging
his recollections.
During more than five
hours of testimony to
Congress, Sessions sought to
explain away apparent contra-
dictions in his earlier accounts
by citing the exhausting nature
of Donald Trump’s upstart
but surging bid for the White
House. He also denied under
repeated questioning from
Democrats that he had been
influenced by Trump.
But after saying under
oath months ago that he was
unaware of any relationship
between the campaign and
Russia, Sessions acknowl-
edged for the first time that the
arrest of a low-level campaign
adviser reminded him after
all of a meeting at which the
aide, George Papadopoulos,
proposed setting up a get-to-
gether between Trump and
Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
“After reading his account
and to the best of my recol-
lection,” Sessions told the
House Judiciary Committee,
“I believe that I wanted to
make clear to him that he was
not authorized to represent the
campaign with the Russian
government or any other
foreign government for that
matter.
“But I did not recall this
event, which occurred 18
months before my testimony
of a few weeks ago,” he added,
“and I would gladly have
reported it had I remembered it
because I pushed back against
his suggestion that I thought
may have been improper.”
Papadopoulos was arrested
by the FBI and pleaded guilty
last month to lying to author-
ities about his own foreign
contacts during the campaign.
That guilty plea came in a
wide-ranging criminal inves-
tigation led by former FBI
Director Robert Mueller, who
as the Justice Department’s
special counsel is looking into
whether the Trump campaign
coordinated with Russia to
sway the outcome of the 2016
presidential election and into
whether the firing of James
Comey as FBI director was an
effort to obstruct justice.
During
the
Trump
campaign, Sessions, then
an Alabama senator, led a
campaign foreign policy
advisory council on which
Papadopolous served. The
attorney general has struggled
since January to move past
questions about his own
foreign contacts and about
his knowledge of Russian
outreach efforts during the
election effort.
Each
congressional
hearing, including Tuesday’s,
has focused on Sessions’
own recollections, and he
recused himself in March
from the Justice Department’s
investigation into election
meddling after acknowl-
edging two previously undis-
closed encounters during the
campaign with the Russian
ambassador.
WASHINGTON
—
Senate
Republicans are intent on scrapping
the Affordable Care Act’s requirement
that Americans get health insurance,
targeting a repeal of the individual
mandate to help finance deep tax cuts
in their tax overhaul.
The surprise renewal Tuesday of the
failed effort to scrap the law’s mandate
came a day after President Donald
Trump renewed pressure on GOP
lawmakers to include the repeal in their
tax legislation. It has sharp political
stakes for Trump, who lacks a major
legislative achievement after nearly 10
months in office.
The move by Republicans on the
Senate Finance Committee upended
the debate over the tax measure just
as it was inching closer to passage
following months of fine-tuning and
compromise. It turned the debate into
an angry partisan referendum on health
care and President Barack Obama’s
signature law.
Republican efforts to dismantle
the law collapsed this past summer
as moderate Republicans joined with
Democrats in rejecting the repeal — a
bitter disappointment for Trump, who
lashed out at the Senate GOP for failing.
Adding the repeal of the mandate to
the tax measure would combine two of
Trump’s legislative priorities.
Beyond Trump’s prodding, the
repeal move also was dictated by the
Republicans’ need to find revenue
sources for the massive tax-cut bill,
which calls for steep reductions in the
corporate tax rate and elimination of
some popular tax breaks.
“We are optimistic that inserting
the individual mandate repeal would
be helpful; that’s obviously the view
of the Senate Finance Committee
Republicans,” Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters.
The “Obamacare” mandate requires
most people to buy health insurance
coverage or face a fine. Without being
forced to get coverage, fewer people
would sign up for Medicaid or buy
federally subsidized private insurance.
Targeting the mandate in the tax legis-
lation would save an estimated $338
billion over a decade, which could be
used to help pay for the deep cuts.
The Congressional Budget Office
has estimated repealing the require-
ment that people buy health coverage
would mean 4 million additional unin-
sured people by 2019 and 13 million
more by 2027.
It “will cause millions to lose their
BRIEFLY
Gunman targets people at
random in California town
RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif.
(AP) — A gunman driving stolen vehicles
and choosing his targets at random opened
fire “without provocation” in a tiny, rural
Northern California town Tuesday, killing
four people and wounding at least 10
others, including a student at an elementary
school, before police shot him dead,
authorities said.
The rampage began shortly before 8 a.m.
when the gunman fatally shot a neighbor
he had been accused of stabbing in January,
Tehama County Sheriff Phil Johnston said.
Shortly afterward, the gunman rammed
through the gate of Rancho Tehama
Elementary School about 2 miles away
and spent about six minutes shooting into
the building, striking at least one student,
Johnston said.
Surveillance video showed the
gunman, who was not identified, trying
unsuccessfully to enter the school,
authorities said.
School officials’ swift decision to
lock the doors after hearing gunfire was
“monumental” in saving the lives of
countless children, Johnston said. No one
was killed there.
GOP boosts pressure on
Alabama party on Moore
WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington
Republicans tightened pressure Tuesday
on Alabama’s GOP to keep a defiant Roy
Moore from being elected to the Senate
next month, with many voicing hope that
President Donald Trump could use his clout
to resolve a problem that Republicans say
leaves them with no easy options.
With Alabama Republicans reluctant
to block Moore and enrage his legions of
loyal conservative supporters, national
GOP leaders were turning to Trump as
their best chance of somehow turning
the tide. Two women by name have said
Moore molested them in the 1970s when
one was 14 and the other 16 and he was
a local district attorney, and three others
said he pursued romantic relationships
with them around the same time.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, in all-out warfare with Moore,
said there’d be conversations about Moore
after Trump returns from Asia.
Military now in Zimbabwe’s
capital after army chief’s threat
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — At least
three explosions were heard in Zimbabwe’s
capital early Wednesday and military
vehicles were seen in the streets after the
army commander threatened to “step in”
to calm political tensions over 93-year-old
President Robert Mugabe’s possible
successor. The ruling party accused the
commander of “treasonable conduct.”
The U.S. Embassy closed to the public
and encouraged citizens to shelter in place,
citing “the ongoing political uncertainty
through the night.” The British embassy
issued a similar warning, citing “reports of
unusual military activity.”
For the first time, this southern African
nation is seeing an open rift between
the military and Mugabe, the world’s
oldest head of state who has ruled since
independence from white minority rule in
1980. The military has been a key pillar of
his power.
The Associated Press saw armed
soldiers assaulting passers-by in the
early morning hours in Harare, as well as
soldiers loading ammunition near a group
of four military vehicles. The explosions
could be heard near the University of
Zimbabwe campus. The developments
came several hours after the AP saw three
armored personnel carriers in a convoy
heading toward an army barracks just
outside the capital.
Mugabe last week fired Vice President
Emmerson Mnangagwa and accused
him of plotting to take power, including
through witchcraft.
Australians endorse
gay marriage, ensuring
Parliament bill
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) —
Australians supported gay marriage in a postal
survey that ensures Parliament will consider
legalizing same-sex weddings this year.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said
on Wednesday 62 percent of registered
voters who responded in the unprecedented
survey favored reform.
The conservative government promised
to allow a bill creating marriage equality
to be considered in Parliament in the final
two-week session that is due to end on Dec. 7.
A “no” vote in the survey would have put
marriage equality off the political agenda,
perhaps for years. Thousands of marriage
equality supporters waving rainbow flags
gathered anxiously in city parks around the
country and cheered when the results was
announced.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a
vocal advocate of marriage equality, called
on lawmakers to heed the “overwhelming”
result and to commit to legislate for gay
marriage by next month.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a member of the Senate Finance Committee,
joins Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., left, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., to talk about work on overhauling the nation’s tax code, on Capi-
tol Hill in Washington on Tuesday.
health care and millions more to lose
their premiums,” Sen. Ron Wyden of
Oregon, the senior Democrat on the
Finance Committee, angrily insisted
when the panel reconvened to work
on the tax bill and word came of the
Republicans’ move on the mandate.
Feeling ambushed without advance
notice, minority Democrats exploded
in anger.
The completed House tax bill,
pointed toward a vote in that chamber
Thursday, does not currently include
repeal of the health insurance mandate.
Trump plans an in-person appeal to
House Republicans before the vote.
To win over moderate Senate
Republicans to the tax legislation, the
Senate may take up at the same time
a bipartisan compromise to shore up
health care subsidies, Sen. John Thune,
R-S.D., indicated Tuesday. Thune is a
member of the Finance panel.
Outside Congress, as word spread
of the Senate Republicans’ intention,
major organizations representing
insurers, doctors and hospitals urged
lawmakers to keep Obamacare’s
unpopular requirement that most
Americans have health insurance — at
least for now.
Ending the “individual mandate”
would prompt healthy people to leave
the insurance market in droves, driving
up premiums, the groups argued in a
letter Tuesday to congressional leaders.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul of
Kentucky and Tom Cotton of Arkansas
had pushed for the repeal in the tax
bill just months after GOP efforts to
dismantle the 2010 health care law had
collapsed in the Senate.
“Repealing the mandate pays for
more tax cuts for working families
and protects them from being fined
by the IRS for not being able to afford
insurance that Obamacare made unaf-
fordable in the first place,” Cotton said
in a statement.
Congressional
Republicans
projected confidence earlier in the day
about delivering the legislation.
“This bill will make things better
for hard-working Americans,” House
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told
reporters.
House GOP leaders rallied support
with the rank-and-file at a closed-door
meeting.
Earlier in the Senate panel’s work on
the bill, the Democrats complained that
the bill would enable U.S. corporations
with foreign operations and wealthy
individuals and families to exploit
loopholes to skirt millions in taxes.
On Monday, a nonpartisan analysis
of the Senate bill showed it would
increase taxes for some 13.8 million
moderate-income American house-
holds.
Promoted as needed relief for the
middle class, the House and Senate
bills would deeply cut corporate taxes,
double the standard deduction used by
most Americans and limit or repeal
completely the federal deduction
for state and local property, income
and sales taxes. Republican leaders
in Congress view passage of the
first major tax revamp in 30 years as
imperative for the GOP to preserve its
majorities in next year’s elections.
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