President Trump accused former President Barack Obama of stealing his terminology when Obama said last week that there was a “fundamental meanness” at the core of the Republican health care bill, CNN reports.
Said Trump: “Well he actually used my term, ‘mean.’ That was my term. Because I want to see — and I speak from the heart — that’s what I want to see, I want to see a bill with heart.”
Associated Press: “House Republican leaders are firm that they want to completely overhaul the tax system for businesses and individuals. They want to make the tax law simpler and more efficient, and they want the changes to endure beyond the next decade.”
“They want to cut tax rates, but they don’t want the changes to add to the federal government’s long-term debt. That means Congress would have to eliminate a lot of exemptions, deductions and credits, and probably come up with a new source of revenue.”
“The White House is all about tax cuts. Administration officials have talked about simplifying the tax system and getting rid of deductions, but have offered few specifics.”
“One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan,” the Washington Post reports.
“The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.”
“Now, Kushner’s association with Deutsche Bank is among a number of financial matters that could come under focus as his business activities are reviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining Kushner as part of a broader investigation into possible Russian influence in the election.”
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“Senate Republican leaders scrambled Sunday to rally support for their health care bill even as opposition continued to build outside Congress and two Republican senators questioned whether the bill would be approved this week,” the New York Times reports.
“Senate Republican leaders were trying to lock down Republican votes by funneling money to red states, engineering a special deal for Alaska and arguing that they could insure more people at a lower cost than the House, which passed a repeal bill last month. But the forces arrayed against the Republican push to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement are formidable.”
Washington Post: “At least five Republicans have already come out against their party’s bill — which can only afford to lose two votes — and over the weekend more began expressing serious reservations and skepticism about the proposal, saying they would like more time to debate and tweak the plan.”
Mike Allen: “At least 10 Republican senators have expressed reservations, and the White House and GOP leaders can only lose two. That’s why our handicappers have suddenly gone from ‘more likely than not’ to ‘coin flip.'”
“Ending one the most turbulent tenures of a Washington-based ambassador in recent memory, the Kremlin has decided to recall its ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak,” three individuals familiar with the decision tell BuzzFeed News.
“The decision to bring Kislyak back to Russia rather than appoint him to a senior position at the United Nations in New York, as several outlets previously reported, comes amid investigations by the FBI and Congress into the 66-year-old diplomat’s contacts with President Donald Trump’s top aides during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Said one diplomat: “He could use some time away.”
Washington Post: “The largest number of Democratic congressional candidates in decades are putting into play dozens of House districts across the country, raising the possibility of a bitterly contested midterm election cycle next year as the party and its activists try to take advantage of President Trump’s unpopularity to win a majority in the House.”
“Yet these candidates and their supporters are also waging a battle among themselves about what the Democratic Party should stand for. After a string of defeats in special elections this year, activists across the country are pitted against Washington-based leaders and strategists about what the message and the tactical plan should be to win the 24 seats needed to take control of the House.”
Playbook: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to have to cajole and lean on moderate and conservative senators to find enough votes. While he may be able to tweak the bill on the margins to bring some of the lawmakers on board — and lawmakers will be able to add amendments to the underlying bill text — it’s unclear if he’ll be able to thread the needle for passage next week. As we wrote earlier this week, McConnell is going to put this bill up for a vote no matter what — he wants lawmakers on the record.”
Washington Post: “A small group of moderate Republican senators, worried that their leaders’ health-care bill could damage the nation’s social safety net, may pose at least as significant an obstacle to the measure’s passage as their colleagues on the right. The vast changes the legislation would make to Medicaid, the country’s broadest source of public health insurance, would represent the largest single step the government has ever taken toward conservatives’ long-held goal of reining in federal spending on health-care entitlement programs in favor of a free-market system.”
“That dramatic shift and the bill’s bold redistribution of wealth — the billions of dollars taken from coverage for the poor would help fund tax cuts for the wealthy — is creating substantial anxiety for several Republican moderates whose states have especially benefited from the expansion of Medicaid that the Affordable Care Act has allowed since 2014.”
For members: The Senators Who Will Decide the Health Care Fight
Politico: “The most hardline conservatives in the House are taking an unusually cautious approach to the Senate’s Obamacare replacement, promising to keep an open mind about whatever their colleagues across the Capitol send back. It’s a change in strategy for the House Freedom Caucus. When House leaders first released a health care bill in February, for instance, group members took to television talk shows to pan the plan as ‘Obamacare lite,’ furious that it didn’t, in their eyes, do enough to unravel the 2010 health care law.
“They also threatened to withhold their support until changes were made, and later won concessions. For now, those hardball tactics have disappeared. As the Senate looks to pass its own health care legislation this week, those same House conservatives are taking a more measured approach — even as several conservatives in the Senate are currently balking at the bill.”
Associated Press: “To be sure, Kennedy has given no public sign that he will retire this year and give President Donald Trump his second high court pick in the first months of his administration. Kennedy’s departure would allow conservatives to take firm control of the court. But Kennedy turns 81 next month and has been on the court for nearly 30 years. Several of his former law clerks have said they think he is contemplating stepping down in the next year or so. Kennedy and his clerks were gathering over the weekend for a reunion that was pushed up a year and helped spark talk he might be leaving the court.”
Michael Bloomberg “will throw his financial might into helping beleaguered American mayors, creating a $200 million philanthropic program aimed at backing inventive policies at the city level and giving mayors a stronger hand in national politics,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Bloomberg intends to announce the initiative on Monday in a speech to the United States Conference of Mayors in Miami Beach, where he will castigate federal officials and state governments around the country for undermining cities.”
“The Koch network is working with conservative allies behind the scenes to make changes to the Senate health-care bill that was unveiled this week, declining to endorse the measure as it stands,” the Washington Post reports.
“Network officials said they still anticipate spending between $300 million to $400 million on political activity in the 2017-2018 election cycle, a target unveiled earlier this year. They said it will probably be closer to the higher end of that range.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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