As Congress factors in Senator John McCain’s refusal to back, for now, the latest scrupulously unvetted legislation to scramble the American health-care system, the gamey smell of states’ rights still lingers in the air.
“Instead of a Washington-knows-best approach like Obamacare, our legislation empowers those closest to the health-care needs of their communities to provide solutions,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, co-sponsor of the latest scratch at the Republican itch to destroy Obamacare anyway, anyhow. “Our bill takes money and power out of Washington and gives it back to patients and states.”
For advocates of quality health care, broadly delivered, Graham’s paean to the county courthouse smells as healthful as a gust of napalm in the morning.
Even if the Graham-Cassidy bill doesn’t survive the rush to pass it before the fiscal year ends at the end of September, the legislation can resurface in the next fiscal year. Its chief selling point never grows stale in Republican circles. It promises to unleash the innovative powers of the states by reducing the amount of money Americans have to afford health insurance. Unlike previous GOP proposals, which merely sought to deform Obamacare beyond recognition, this legislation would indeed destroy it.
I stopped watching the news quite a long time ago because it became an outlet for political propaganda. Now im getting politics with my comedy, politics with my football, politics with my coffee. So, no more watching football or anything else that wants to give me a side of politics with it. Not much left to do but read I suppose.
In 1982, the rival United States Football League (USFL) announced it intended to start playing in the spring, outside the NFL season. Trump eventually owned the New York City-area team, the New Jersey Generals. Newsweek spoke about the USFL with author Jeff Pearlman,who has a book on the league, The Useless, that's due out in 2018. Having spoken with coaches, players, owners and just about everyone involved with the league—some 420 people in total (although not Trump himself)—it's unlikely anybody has a fuller picture of the USFL's brief life than Pearlman.
It was Trump's undying need to get into the NFL that drove the billionaire to buy his way into the upstart league in the '80s, the author said. But the big league wasn't a fan.
"They just saw him as this scumbag huckster," Pearlman told Newsweek. "He was this New York, fast-talking, kind of con-man."
President Trump regularly says that his policy goals – an Obamacare repeal, an infrastructure bill, an overhaul of the tax code, a border wall, among others – will happen “soon,” “very soon,” “very, very soon,” “in the coming weeks” or even “immediately.”
This tendency is perhaps most prominent in Mr. Trump’s descriptions of Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Those efforts officially failed, for now, on Tuesday.
Below, in chronological order, is how Mr. Trump has described what would happen to Obamacare since his election:
Statements about repealing and replacing Obamacare
The repetition of these phrases may be a verbal tic, or part of the branding and salesmanship that is associated with the Trump name. But it also reflects a sense of urgency – or impatience, depending on your view – that has become central to the tensions between Trump and Republican leaders in Congress.
Mr. Trump has mocked congressional Republicans as incompetent do-nothings. They have responded that he is simply impatient. “I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said after Republicans’ previous failure to repeal the law.
Using a website called Factbase, we reviewed nearly all the president’s remarks since his election, searching for references to specific time frames, like “soon” or “very soon” (a full list of such words is at the bottom of this article). Factbase transcribes, sorts and tags nearly every public statement made by President Trump – spanning official White House releases, speeches, interviews and even tweets.
Like most politicians, the president makes plenty of claims that are imprecise, mundane or not easily checkable. But many claims were very specific. Among more than 100 specific policy predictions Mr. Trump said would happen soon, we found that at least 75 percent of the time, they did not – or had not, as of this writing.
These kinds of promises occur across a broad range of topics and policies. For example, Mr. Trump has said his administration was “drawing documents now” to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Nearly seven weeks later, the paperwork has not been filed.
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