Warszawa wrote:""Seven months wasted... How will you explain [failed health care reform] to the voters?"

Sen. Mitch McConnell: "Well, we have a new Supreme Court justice...""

Lol

slugsrbad wrote:Trump moved next for Putin at the G20 meeting for an undisclosed hour meeting. Only other person there was Putin's translator. He is an idiot. Even if it wasn't nefarious it's idiotic to not have your own translator.

thephan wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:Trump moved next for Putin at the G20 meeting for an undisclosed hour meeting. Only other person there was Putin's translator. He is an idiot. Even if it wasn't nefarious it's idiotic to not have your own translator.

Was that the hour that he had Ivanka cover for him in the main meeting? Or was that just a nap time for trumpy. That time he was away, and Ivana was in the driver seat, has never been accounted for. Of course it's laughable that Trump would be accountable to the American public. He feels no compunction to do so.

thephan wrote:

Warszawa wrote:""Seven months wasted... How will you explain [failed health care reform] to the voters?"

Sen. Mitch McConnell: "Well, we have a new Supreme Court justice...""

Lol

The biggest accomplishment is that they effectively used politics to screw the last Administration out of a justice hobling the courts to get their own way. That is some accomplishment. I guess maybe the point is that they actually did something.

Woody wrote:The President of the US answers to Vladimir Putin

I mean how can even the most cynical, blindly tribal republican tolerate this #$!&@?

HARRISBURG — Efforts to end Pennsylvania's 18-day stalemate over how to pay for a nearly $32 billion budget took an unexpected turn Tuesday when House Republican leaders abruptly retreated from discussions over raising taxes to help stitch together the state government's threadbare finances.

The new stance left Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf further away from an agreement to settle his third budget and more clearly facing the prospect of having to set at least $1.5 billion aside to balance the budget bill he let become law last week.
Still hung up in the Legislature are measures carrying about $600 million in aid to Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincoln universities and the University of Pennsylvania.

Turzai — who has all-but declared his candidacy to challenge Wolf's bid for a second term in next year's election — and leaders of the huge Senate Republican majority are now in the position of counting votes for a roughly $2 billion revenue package based largely on borrowing.
It would be rounded out by tapping into cash in off-budget programs and scrounging money from another big expansion of casino-style gambling and by privatizing more of the state-controlled wine and liquor store system, the approach preferred by Turzai.

The House GOP also advanced legislation last week that would require the Wolf administration to seek federal approval to impose new limitations on Medicaid benefits

Wolf had sought a tax package of roughly $700 million to $800 million in annual recurring revenue, according to negotiators, after initially floating in February a $1 billion tax package that has been ignored by top GOP lawmakers.
One key element of that — slapping a new tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas production — remains a key point for Democrats at the bargaining table. Other taxes discussed included those on basic cable service, movie tickets, bank profits, natural gas utility service, electric utility service and telephone service.
Senate GOP leaders had been more flexible than House GOP leaders in negotiating with Wolf on a tax increase. In talks leading up to Tuesday, House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, had put forward a tax package of $200 million to $300 million, negotiators said.

The document is essentially a GOP wish list with many of the policies and reforms Republicans have pushed for years like repealing Obamacare, rolling back financial regulations, paring back social welfare programs and getting rid of some of the Obama Administration's top priorities.
Even before the budget panel set the topline numbers for the 2018 fiscal year, the appropriations committee already crafted spending bills that designated $621 billion for defense spending and $511 billion for non-military domestic programs.
But the primary legislative focus of the 2018 budget is to use It as a vehicle for changing taxes. As they did with their Obamacare repeal plan in the 2017 budget, GOP leaders are employing a a budget tool called "reconciliation" to move tax legislation through the Senate with a simple majority.

The House GOP plan showcases how policy proposals that many in the party have pushed for years could be attainable with Republican control of the White House and Congress. The resolution lays out structural changes to Medicaid, transforming the program largely into a block grant for states to administer and adding work requirement for able bodied adults receiving benefits.
The budget also proposes major changes to Medicare, suggesting that the government program model itself on the Medicare Advantage program that offers better benefits to seniors who pay a premium. It suggests that traditional Medicare would still be an option.

The plan promises to balance the budget through unprecedented and politically unworkable cuts across the budget. It calls for turning this year's projected $700 billion-or-so deficit into a tiny $9 billion surplus by 2027. It would do so by slashing $5.4 trillion over the coming decade, including almost $500 billion from Medicare amd $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and the Obama health law, along with sweeping cuts to benefits such as federal employee pensions, food stamps and tax credits for the working poor.

But in the immediate future the GOP measure is a budget buster. It would add almost $30 billion to Trump's $668 billion request for national defense. The GOP budget plan would cut non-defense agencies by $5 billion. And of the more than $4 trillion in promised saving from mandatory programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the plan assumes just $203 billion would actually pass this year.

All told, the GOP plan would spend about $67 billion more in the upcoming annual appropriations bills than would be allowed under harsh spending limits set by a 2011 budget and debt agreement. It pads war accounts by $10 billion. And, like Trump's budget, the House GOP plan assumes rosy economic projections that would erase another $1.5 trillion from the deficit over 10 years.

The budget resolution is nonbinding. It would allow Republicans controlling Congress to pass follow-up legislation through the Senate without the threat of a filibuster by Democrats. GOP leaders and the White House plan to use that measure to rewrite the tax code.