Re: The Week: At least one GOP senator is pretty sure Trump doesn't understand the ba
yes, I have been a leader of an organization (several of them) and I made it my job to know the facts.
That’s good then at least we can talk on the same level of expectations. And we both understand how much he wants to involve himself with the details is upto his own style of leadership and there are good and bad leaders who do both styles. Correct? In est, you can't judge a leader for this alone.
Knowing that the Senate bill cuts Medicaid
This is a common fight between people where-in I do not even see eye to eye with my own wife. Cutting a commitment for a funding raise above inflation by a previous administration is not in my view or in the eyes of many "a cut". It is the rollback of an unrealistic promises and to be expected in politics who has a reputation for over promising. Not doing so is why we had insane deficit spending(regardless of the party in power); well that and poorly implemented tax cuts.
and provides hundreds of billions in tax-cuts is a major provision of the bill.
I can not speak if he knew or did not know about the tax-cuts. I do however think his confusion is to the fact he views the opposition to healthcare reform being different from that of tax reform and can’t understand people conflating the two.
As to the individual points (please correct me if I miss any)
-net investment income tax
-Medicare wage tax (potentially)
-individual and employer mandates
100% of those taxes were justified as part of expansion within the ACA. As such it would stand to reason those would be repealed along side the promises in service expansion. So the tax repeal is a good faith move to the taxpayers and has exactly zero to do with tax reform (either lower or higher).
If he doesn't know that, he doesn't know anything.
Conflation, see my original point. He personally doesn’t need to know that, his team needs to understand that in detail. By all measures they do.
the actual bill -- the one that he would sign -- worsens healthcare, is more expensive, and throws millions off while providing less coverage.
Wrong, wrong, very wrong and potentially.
- The statement it make it “worse” is subjective, can’t be measured, as it affects a lot of different people differently.
- The second is willfully mis-worded, as paying out less is by definition less expensive; but since I think your talking about individual healthcare costs again that depends on your particular circumstances, generally healthy people less, generally sick people more. Most importantly when you add public and private I almost guarantee less expensive for quite a few market reasons.
- People who have never received the assistance and who by any measure we(the public) can’t currently afford to support[in the manner we currently are].
- Since it opens many new areas for the private sector that is wrong; however, insurance is a tricky business and this could have unintended consequences worth exploring, sure.
BTW, doesn’t mean I am fan of the bill. I am not, but that does not make it horrible legislation. It is a piece of legislation in a direction that is needed (gearing down from the previous failed plan)
It isn't the media framing Trump as a clown.
Not to me. Not to millions of Americans. So its a narrative one is choosing to read on the facts.
To put it another way, you would not exempt that level of ignorance from any Democratic president but you except it from Trump.
I am pretty non-partisan guy so I most certainly would have the same expectations of a democratic president. As I did when the ACA was proposed against much the same negative framing except that time the media & political establishment was not on the opposition. I thought it was a good principle/direction but still had specific concerns about certain implications, the inability of the Obama administration to work with all stakeholders including critics ultimately left us where we are and with a system worse then where we started. I hope Trump is mindful of this mistake in judgment by his predecessor.
I think you must ask yourselves, why you have such low expectations and don't deserve better?
Trump gives me a lot more hope than I have had in awhile. So he has actually raised my expectations. If he’s a lame duck in the end, like Hillary likely would have been, it certainly going to be worse, as we had to go through all this circus with the media and outrageous accusations. Either way, this emotionalism makes this country worse and hurts the chances for good policy to be developed, which involves representatives of all sides playing in good faith. Go be critical of trump but this demonizing is completely unhelpful to anyone. Republicans are not your enemy.
