When the week began it wasn’t at all clear whether Trumpcare would pass the Senate or not. On Monday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its report saying that with Trumpcare 22 million Americans would lose health insurance over 10 years, with 15 million of that number losing their coverage in 2018. After that, it quickly became apparent that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would not have the 50 votes needed to pass the bill, so the vote was postponed indefinitely. Ironically there were Republican Senators who opposed the bill for not going far enough to repeal Obamacare, although it was the loss of support from “moderate” Republicans that killed the vote on the bill this week. McConnell tried to get a revised version of the bill ready by the end of the week, but that attempt failed as well.
The battle is far from over, though: Recall that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan initially could not get Trumpcare passed in the House, but was able to change it enough over the following weeks to have it approved. One item concerning the moderates was the impact of Trumpcare cuts on the opioid crisis. McConnell apparently is willing to offer more opioid money — as much as $45 billion — to win over moderates. That would still leave huge cuts to Medicaid, which the moderates may well not be able to accept. The Senators all went home for their Fourth of July break, and likely they will hear a flurry of opposition to Trumpcare from their constituents at town hall meetings and other events, given that polls show Americans in general (and even Republicans) really hate Trumpcare. That and the split between “moderate” Republican Senators and far-right ones who also oppose the bill as it stands will make it very difficult for Trumpcare to pass – but there are no guarantees and Mitch McConnell will certainly be trying.
A number of news items were buried under the controversy of Trump calling MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show host Joe Scarborough “psycho” and Trump stating “he had once seen Ms. Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a face-lift”. One item that was largely overlooked was a huge development in the Russia investigation. On Thursday the Wall Street Journal stated that there are “reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to [Trump campaign advisor] Mr. Flynn via an intermediary….” The story said that a Republican opposition research specialist, the late Peter W. Smith, “was trying to get hacked emails from Russia and held himself out to be in contact with disgraced Trump advisor Michael Flynn.” On Friday the Wall Street Journal followed up with another story stating that a document from Smith suggested – although it was not definite -- that he was working with a number of senior Trump campaign officials, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn and Lisa Nelson. We can be sure there will be much more news to come.
