Four far-right senators balk at GOP health plan, for now

The arithmetic for Senate Republicans is pretty straightforward: they have 52 members in the chamber, and their far-right health care overhaul will need 51 votes to pass.

If one or two GOP senators break ranks and decide they can't support the bill, that won't be enough to change the outcome: Vice President Mike Pence would break the tie and advance the legislation. If three or more Republicans oppose the plan, it dies.

And that, in turn, gives a group of four GOP senators a fair amount of influence.

Four Republican senators have announced that they will not vote for the GOP health care bill unless changes are made, putting passage of the bill at risk just hours after it was unveiled. [...]

The four conservative GOP senators -- Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas -- released a joint statement outlining their concerns:

"Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor," the four conservatives said in a written statement. "There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs."

This isn't exactly a hard-hitting threat. On the contrary, it's a lukewarm, almost mealy-mouthed statement. It's one thing for a group of senators to announce their opposition; it's something else when senators say in the first sentence of their statement that they're "open to negotiation and obtaining more information."

Still, it's a warning shot of sorts: Senate Republican leaders are apparently going to have to move the bill to even further to the right, at least some tangible ways, to pick up these four far-right members.

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New Republican health care plan focuses on tax cuts, Medicaid cuts

The Senate is expected to vote in a week on a massive overhaul of the American health care system. After weeks of secretive deliberations, we can finally read what Republicans have in mind.

Senate Republicans have unveiled a draft of their legislation to revamp the government's role in the nation's health care system, a proposal that includes big reductions to Medicaid, eliminates the Obamacare mandate requiring individuals to purchase insurance and offers tax credits to help people afford insurance while slashing taxes for the wealthy.

The major change to health care comes in the form of Medicaid. The bill winds down the expanded Medicaid program under Obamacare after 2020 -- a longer timeline than the House health care bill that was passed in May. But it also makes deeper cuts to the program in the long run, by 2025, through changing the federal funding allocation formula for states to receive fewer federal dollars for Medicaid recipients.

The 142-page bill, which is being described as a "discussion draft," is online in its entirety here. (It is, fortunately, searchable.)

Scrutinizing any health care bill should always start with the same question: what is the problem the proposal intends to solve? In this case, GOP senators appear to be working from the premise that the nation needs a big tax cut.

And so, at its core, this new Republican legislation is effectively an income-redistribution plan: it intends to cut Medicaid deeply, and apply the bulk of those saving to tax breaks.

As for the details, we'll have a better sense of the projected impact of the bill -- which GOP senators have ironically called the "Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017" -- after the Congressional Budget Office releases a score, which is expected early next week, just a few days before the scheduled vote. But in the meantime, here are some tidbits to keep in mind:

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Trump says his original North Korea policy 'has not worked out'

For reasons that still aren't altogether clear, Donald Trump published a curious tweet about U.S. foreign policy this week that raised a few eyebrows:

"While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!"

The American president, you'll recall, was originally convinced that he should blame Beijing for North Korea's provocations, and that China could easily get Kim Jong-un and his regime under control if it wanted to. In April, however, Trump said he had a conversation with China's Xi Jinping about the geopolitical challenge.

"After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy," Trump conceded. "I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power" over North Korea, he said. "But it's not what you would think."

The result was a clumsy sort of policy in which Trump, relying largely on his perceived bond with the Chinese president, would wait for Beijing to rein North Korea in. That never happened. In fact, by all appearances, Xi Jinping briefly humored Trump, before largely ignoring the American president's appeals and continuing with the same policy China has maintained for years.

Trump may feel inclined to declare, "At least I know China tried!" but in reality, that didn't happen. Whether Trump knows and/or understands any of this is unclear. (In China, Trump has already been the target of mockery and ridicule following a series of embarrassing reversals.)

But what I'm concerned about is what happens now.

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Trump vows to pursue new immigration law that already exists

At his campaign rally in Iowa last night, Donald Trump received a very warm welcome from his audience, but one of the president's ideas received an especially rapturous standing ovation.

Reading from his trusted teleprompter, Trump declared, "The time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years."

Recognizing the popularity of what he'd just said, the president added, "We'll be putting in legislation to that effect very shortly."

As it turns out, that won't be necessary. The Hill reported that this idea already exists in a law created 20 years ago.

Known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), the legislation was passed during the administration of former President Bill Clinton and said that an immigrant is "not eligible for any Federal means-tested public benefit" for 5 years, which starts on the date the immigrant enters the country.

There are exceptions under the law as to what qualifies as a federal-means tested public benefit. Some exceptions include certain medical assistance, "in-kind emergency disaster relief," and public health assistance for some vaccines.

I suppose it's possible Trump intends to "put in legislation" to change the restrictions that already exist, but it seems more likely that the president is simply unaware of current federal policy.

And those Iowans who stood to cheer the proposal, many of whom have been conditioned to believe the worst in response to the words "welfare" and "immigrants," probably didn't know about the existing restrictions, either.

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Trump defends economic team: 'I just don't want a poor person'

After last fall's presidential election, as Donald Trump's team took shape, it was hard not to notice that the new administration would be led in part by several Wall Street billionaires. Last night, the Trump campaign hosted a rally in Iowa, where the president shed some light on his perspective.

"So somebody said, 'Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy," Trump said to a group of his supporters at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids. "I said, 'Because that's the kind of thinking we want ... because they're representing the country. They don't want the money."

"And I love all people -- rich or poor -- but in those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person," Trump continued.

As the Washington Post's report added, in context, "those particular positions" referred to Trump's secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, whom he called a "the legendary Wall Street genius," and Gary Cohn, his economic council director who was the president of Goldman Sachs -- a title that Trump repeated four times.

It's quite a change in perspective in light of what Trump told voters before the election. As regular readers may recall, during the Republican presidential primaries, one of Trump's most common attacks against Sen. Ted Cruz was blasting the Republican senator’s ties to – you guessed it – Goldman Sachs. “Is Cruz honest?” Trump asked in January. “He is in bed w/ Wall St. & is funded by Goldman Sachs.” Trump added,  "Goldman Sachs owns [Cruz], he will do anything they demand. Not much of a reformer!"

In the general election, the fact that Hillary Clinton once gave a speech to Goldman Sachs was also a central line of attack, with Trump claiming the investment giant has “total control” over her.

Now, however, the president has surrounded himself with a half-dozen Goldman Sachs alum -- a point Trump believes is worth bragging about. The swamp, I'm afraid, isn't being drained.

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