"Skinny" Bill in "Critical Condition"

The "skinny" bill is proving to be an exercise in "squaring the circle"; in other words, an impossibility.

Enough senators are on record -- for instance, McCain and his buddy Lindsey Graham -- saying that they will only vote "Yes" on the "skinny" --  a bill that would repeal only those parts of the Affordable Care Act that mandate that individuals have health insurance and that large employers provide insurance to their employees -- if GOP House leadership guarantees a House-Senate conference to reconcile its bill with the Senate's.

McConnell is hoping to pass the "skinny" based on a promise of a conference, but it is becoming apparent that the GOP House leadership intends to take up the "skinny" as is and pass it as such, sending it on to Trump for a quick signature. R.I.P. Obamacare.

The insurance lobby has sniffed the skunk in the air and is now mobilizing to kill the "skinny."

If that were not enough of a headache for McConnell, he has to prove to the Senate parliamentarian that the "skinny" meets specific deficit reduction targets in order pass it with a simple majority; thereby avoiding the necessity of having to wrangle 60 votes. It is not clear how McConnell can do this.

All in all it looks like the "skinny" bill is in "critical condition."

One good thing is that it appears Medicaid is safe.

Two Big Votes in Congress Today + The Demography of Tech Feudalism

Two big votes are scheduled in Congress today. In the Senate, repeal of Obamacare; in the House, sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. The Senate vote is being criticized as a Star Chamber. No one knows what is being voted on other than a motion to begin debate. McConnell has to proceed under a cloak of darkness because enough senators have said that they will vote No on a motion to open debate if what is going to be proposed is repeal without a replacement.

The sanctions bill is being sold as a defense of Western democracy. According to David Sanger in "For Trump and Putin, Sanctions Are a Setback Both Sought to Avoid":

Last week at the Aspen Security Forum, four of his top intelligence and national security officials — including Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director — said they were absolutely convinced that the Russians were behind the effort to influence the election.

“There is no dissent,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said on Friday at the Aspen conference. The Russians, he said, “caught us just a little bit asleep in terms of capabilities” the Kremlin could bring to bear to influence elections here, in France and Germany. The Russians’ goal was clear, he said: “They are trying to undermine Western democracy.”

The wording of the legislation agreed to by House and Senate conferees over the weekend indicates that many Republicans agree with the intelligence assessment: For the first time, it imposes penalties, though not very onerous ones, on anyone determined by the United States government to have participated in the election hacking.

But the latest from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) argues that

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Though Sanger soft-peddles the impact of the sanctions bill, if Congress goes ahead with it, and Trump signs it, Europe is ready to retaliate. Apparently the Europeans feel that it weakens their energy sector. From Patrick Martin's "US sanctions bill against Russia set for passage with bipartisan support":

Besides opposition from the White House—largely behind closed doors—there has been public criticism by the European Union of at least one provision in the sanctions bill, which bars companies from doing deals with Russian partners where the Russian company owns more than a one-third interest in the venture. This could potentially threaten the Nord Stream II pipeline between Russia and Germany, financed by several Western companies but owned by Russia’s Gazprom.

Is Congress worse than Trump? When it comes to war and peace the answer appears to be "Yes." Outside of the U.K., I don't see much left of "Western Democracy" to undermine.

A foul opinion piece over the weekend by American Enterprise Institute president Arthur C. Brooks is a fine example of what the elite excel at -- blaming the victim. Brooks blames young people "for an increasing paranoia about taking big leaps" like starting a business or a family or moving out of town for a new job. He states the obvious, that there are economic reasons for this risk-averse behavior, but he doesn't let that stop him from lacing into youth for spinelessness:

Here’s what all this means: Our sin tends to be timidity, not rashness. On average, we say “no” too much when faced with an opportunity or dilemma.

Once you start looking for this imprudently risk-averse behavior, you see it everywhere, particularly among young people. According to data from the General Social Survey collected by NORC at the University of Chicago, people under age 30 today are almost a third less willing than under-30s in 1996 to relocate for their careers. And as the economist Tyler Cowen observes in his new book “The Complacent Class,” the fraction of people in this age group who own their own businesses has plummeted by about 65 percent since the 1980s.

Economic changes have contributed to both trends, to be sure. But there is another culprit: a diminishing frontier spirit and an increasing paranoia about taking big leaps.

Family formation, perhaps the ultimate personal leap of faith, looks to be another victim of this imprudent hesitation. Census Bureau demographers recently reported that while only a quarter of 24- to 29-year-olds were unmarried in the 1980s, almost half of that age group is unmarried today. And delaying the jump to adulthood has real social consequences. Last August, the Centers for Disease Control announced that the United States fertility rate had fallen to its lowest point since they began calculating it in 1909.

I think this is proof of the eminent rationality of young people, as well as the constricting, plutocratic spirit of our times. We are experiencing an age of tech feudalism. I fear it will only end when things fall apart. There are plenty of signs that the collapse is beginning.

Obamacare Repeal to be Scored by CBO this Week

Despite all the news last week about division in Republican ranks over their plan to repeal Obamacare, I wouldn't bet against it passing out of the House. The Senate is another story. The Republicans only have a slim majority, 52-48, there.

The House Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, for all its shortcomings, achieves two fundamental GOP goals: it redistributes wealth back up to the 1%, and it block-grants Medicaid.

Jessie Drucker reports in "Wealthy Would Get Billions in Tax Cuts Under Obamacare Repeal Plan" that "Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $157 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more, according to a congressional analysis."

Thad Kouusser wrote in The Hill recently, "GOP's Medicaid block grant plan should trump other concerns" --

Medicaid block grants seem at first glance like an obscure debate for the few policy wonks who care about federal funding formulas. But the outcome of this particular fight in D.C. will reverberate across all 50 states for decades to come.

Shifting from “matching rates” to a block grant for Medicaid is not a new demand from the insurgent populist Trump, but the recycling of an idea that has been proposed by small-government advocates from Newt Gingrich to George W. Bush to Paul Ryan. In January, Kellyanne Conway made it clear that they will form a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s health care policy, and they have appeared in what Trump called on Twitter “Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill.”

Though they have garnered little attention in the campaign or even today, block grants would allow Trump to unwind the biggest gains that ObamaCare made for our most vulnerable citizens, radically reduce government investment in healthcare over time, force states to make even deeper cuts when the next recession comes along, but leave no political fingerprints.

A lot is riding on the CBO scoring of the House bill. According to Kevin Quealy and Margo Sanger Katz in "The Five Big Numbers to Look For in the C.B.O. Report on Health Care Reform":

The Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act was released early last week, and it has already marched through consideration in two important committees. Yet members of Congress debated the policy details without essential information: The bill had not yet been “scored” by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group of budget analysts and economists whose job is to forecast the bill’s consequences over the next decade or so.

That score is expected this week, and its estimates could make or break the Republicans’ plan. (The White House has pre-emptively cast doubt on the C.B.O. report.)

We'll see how politicized the CBO is. The big number for political purposes will be the increase in the federal deficit over ten years. If it is large, it will be hard for the Tea Party wing of the GOP to back it.