DC Deciphered

Update ahead. In yesterday’s post, Make Some Noise, which is one of several posts I’ve written here about the controversy over payments for Obamacare’s cost sharing reductions (CSRs), I mentioned that there would be a court hearing on Monday relevant to the issue.  The hearing was an appeal in the case of the United States House of Representatives v. Price, which is a lawsuit over the payments that was brought by the House several years ago when Obama was still President. Continue reading →

Okay, I know DC Deciphered is starting to sound like a broken record on the topic of how Trump & the GOP are doing their darndest to destroy Obamacare . . . but I believe this has been the underreported story of the Trump presidency. And things are about to reach emergency status. The ever-expanding Russia story, Trump’s ethics breaches, his daily destroying of democratic norms – and the GOP’s indifference in the face of all of it – that is all huge, and it deserves the massive amounts of attention it’s been getting.

But that’s all big picture stuff – things we likely won’t know the real impact of for months or even years to come, the sort of stuff that might have an enormous effect on our democracy, but for right now, it doesn’t really change our day to day lives.  What Trump & the GOP are doing to sabotage Obamacare, on the other hand, will affect millions of lives almost immediately.  And until last week, there was very little reporting on it. Continue reading →

Wow, we all thought last week was wild, what with the sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey and the uproar that followed.  But this week makes last week look dull.  I’ve lost track of all the scandals that have broken this week – just when you started to absorb one, the next one dropped.

Finally things seemed to settle down just a bit with the news that Former FBI Director Robert Mueller had been appointed as special counsel to investigate the Russia matters. And it’s kind of hard to believe there was any other news going on this week . . . but there was.  So what else happened this week that you might have missed? Continue reading →

About two weeks after Trump took office, I wrote a post called Show & Tell.  It talked about a group of Republicans who were putting on a really good show of standing up to Trump, but who in reality,  were doing nothing of the sort. They would put out statements critical of him or his policies and even occasionally take some steps that appeared defiant, but they were never willing to do anything that would actually make a material difference as a check on Trump.  They would never oppose his policies or vote against a cabinet appointee if it would actually affect the outcome, they’d never demand disclosures on taxes or require him to divest from his businesses or anything else along those lines. Continue reading →

Whoa, well that was an interesting week, wasn’t it!? The chaos of the Comey firing has sucked up all the political oxygen ever since the news broke early last week.  And that’s understandable – it’s a hugely important story.  Depending on how things eventually shake out, it could even end up being the pivotal story of the Trump presidency.  But in the meantime, Republicans will pretend this is all completely normal and will keep pressing on with their agenda. And those of us who oppose that agenda have to keep our eye on the ball.

So in today’s post, I want to get back to talking about the GOP’s attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare.  That’s their top priority right now, and it must be our top priority to fight it.  To that end, I’ve written a bunch of posts over the last couple months about the different plans the GOP has been proposing to do that.  Along with those posts, I’ve also written about another crucial, related issue: how they will handle the implementation of Obamacare in the meantime. Continue reading →

Never a dull moment! The week started out looking like it was going to be dominated by tales of GOP House members home for recess being confronted by constituents angry about the health care bill.  But then, just like that, Trump pulled the old “fire the FBI Director” trick out of his hat!  Of course I don’t think Trump fired Comey to distract from the angry town hall meetings, but remember back in the day when every new Trump scandal was considered some bit of strategic genius by him to distract from whatever the previous scandal was??  Anyway, this week’s news ended up being dominated by the bombshell story of Comey’s unceremonious firing & the Trump administration’s rapidly unraveling attempts to rationalize it.  But what else happened this week? Continue reading →

So, I’d been meaning to write an update on this recent post about John McCain, Hero WARship, for a few days now, but I got a little sidetracked trying to keep up with all the news on the GOP health “care” reform efforts.  But now with the unceremonious firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, this seems like the perfect time to get to it.  Continue reading →

It’s par-tay time!  At least, that was the spirit among House Republicans Thursday afternoon, after they passed their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, otherwise known as the AHCA.  And I mean, who wouldn’t feel like celebrating after taking the first big step toward yanking insurance away from approximately 24 million people, right??[1] Oddly enough, some Democratic officials seemed oddly joyful as well.  Perhaps just trying to make the lemonade out of the most bitter lemons, many Democrats celebrated the political peril this vote would likely cause for a number of House members in swing districts.  Unfortunately it will be a while before we’ll know how that will really play it.  In the meantime, I fear that on the substance, this bill presents the worst case scenario – both for those who rely on Obamacare to help them get health insurance and for the Democrats & others who want to see Obamacare do well as a matter of politics. Continue reading →

Protections for internet privacy: gone. Protections for Planned Parenthood’s family-planning funds: gone.  Protections for streams & forests: gone. And for wolves & grizzly bears on wildlife refuges: gone.  Workplace protections for certain labor violations: gone.  Sensing a pattern here? While the Trump administration hasn’t been able to get any major legislation passed in its first 100 days, one thing it has been very successful at is rolling back Obama-era regulations. Continue reading →

Sometimes what appears to be news is really just a mirage.  An illusion.  A whole lot of stories will suddenly get generated about a particular thing, so it seems like news must be happening, but when the flurry of activity dies down, it turns out nothing has really changed. In this case the “nothing” has to do with Obamacare’s cost-sharing reductions.  Last week I wrote a post, Sharing is Caring?, because it appeared in the news that there had been a happy development on this very important feature of Obamacare.   However, when I looked a little closer, I came to the conclusion that what was being reported as good news was really no news at all. Continue reading →