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White House And Political News
Senate Health Care Bill No Closer To Compromise
Condoleezza Rice Defends The Person Who Called Her A ‘Bit...’, President Donald Trump
Days after delaying a vote on their health care bill, Sen- ate Republicans appeared no closer to a compromise last Wednesday. With the 4th of July recess looming, the GOP lawmakers were scavenging for negotiation points that ended up going nowhere.
According to the HuffPost, “We’re at an impasse,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said.
The plan in the mind of Ma- jority Leader Mitch Mc- Connell (R-Ky.) was for Republicans to reach at least a tentative deal by the end of last week before the break. That would have allowed sen- ators to send off the new leg- islative text to the Congressional Budget Office by Friday and get the pro- posal scored during the July Fourth recess.
Barring some miraculous movement Republicans did not have anything resembling an agreement before the break.
Paul predicted that Aug. 1 would be the new deadline to find an agreement.
Republicans met for nearly two hours last Wednesday af- ternoon, discussing what it might take to get 50 votes in the Senate. McConnell’s problem is he can only lose two Republicans if he’s going to pass his health care pro- posal, and it doesn’t appear there are 50 Republicans who agree on a bill ― at least not one of this size or mission.
Rep. Susan Collins (R- Me.) considered one of the most moderate Republicans said,“Tinkering around the edges, adding a bit more money, isn’t going to be the answer.”
She laid out issues Wednes- day that wouldn’t be solved simply by adding some money back to Medicaid.
For very different reasons, Collins and Paul have al- ways been among the most likely Republicans to vote against the bill.
Someone you wouldn’t ex- pect has come to Donald Trump’s defense.
Former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice re- cently spoke out in support President Donald Trump while on a press tour for her appearance at the 2017 KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit.
“I believe every president of the United States stands for our values,” Rice said on CNBC.
She did, however, make it clear that Donald Trump is one of those presidents that “stands for our values,” saying, “You heard President Trump say, for instance, after the Syrian chemical attack, we can’t let that stand. What he was saying was the president of the United States can’t let that stand.”
Rice was referring to com- ments made by Trump that put the State Department into a tizzy; Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, as you may
Former Secretary of State under the George W. Bush administra- tion, Condoleezza Rice met with President Trump in March.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to get revised health care bill done before 4th of July recess to no avail.
There are a number of other senators who appear op- posed. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has held out, citing Alaska-spe- cific concerns as well as broader reservations about cutting Medicaid and Planned Parenthood funding. Shelley Moore Capito (R- W.V.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) say they want more money for Medicaid and opi- oid crisis response. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has taken issue with those Afford- able Care Act regulations.
The clearest legislative path forward seems to be giving moderates some more money for Medicaid, and potentially giving conservatives the changes they want on Oba- macare regulations.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another holdout, has an amendment that would allow insurers to sell plans that don’t comply with Affordable Care Act regulations as long as they also sell at least one plan that does meet the rules.
The effect of that proposal would be undermining pro- tections for people with pre- existing conditions, which is the only way, conservatives say, to bring down costs for healthy people. Senators spent a good amount of time Wednesday debating that proposal.
know, pulled one over on the international community after Obama’s chemical weapons redline was crossed.
After claiming he had no more chemical weapons, many more chemical weapons at- tacks were carried out — often against Syrian civilian popula- tions — by what would seem to be the Syrian government.
President Trump recently said publicly that he’s not play- ing that redline-international- inspectors thing, and that if Syria carries out just one more chemical weapons attack, it will pay a “heavy price.”
However, President Trump didn’t mention this new policy to anybody, and so Rex Tillerson, his head of the State Department and the Pentagon said they had no idea what Trump was talking about.
With all of that said, Rice, believes that Trump has a moral center, like every presi- dent does. “While the language may be different, and we might talk about needing to deal with policy, I think you’re going to see that Americans’ interests in values are always linked,” Rice concluded.
President’s Tweet Against Morning Joe Host Gets Major Backlash From Everyone
Just before 9 a.m. on last Thursday morning, the Presi- dent of the United States, de- cided to tweet insults about a female journalist’s supposed facelift.
After Joe Scarborough levied criticism on “Morning Joe” at President Donald Trump’s treatment of Secre- tary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump lashed out at both Scarborough and his “Morn- ing Joe” co-host and fiancee, Mika Brzezinski, on the president’s favorite platform: Twitter.
The tweets were roundly crit- icized, including by some Re- publican senators, and some on Twitter referred to the inci- dent as “shocking.”
Sadly this is not surprising from a man with a long history of sexual harassment and sex- ual assault,” said women’s rights advocacy organization Ultraviolet in a statement re- leased on Thursday afternoon
President Trump tweeted on Thursday that ‘Mika Brzezinski’s facelift was bleeding’ when she and her fiancé Joe Scarborough allegedly tried to enter his New Year’s party. Brzezinski com- mented on the tweet on Friday.
to press.
MSNBC host Mika
Brzezinski made her first on- air comments about Presi- dent Donald Trump’s Twitter rant against her, saying Trumps remarks are “really sad for our country.”
“I think it’s been fascinating, and frightening, and really sad
for our country,” she said Fri- day on her show “Morning Joe.”
Brzezinski and her co-host and fiancé, Joe Scarbor- ough, also responded to Trump in an op-ed published by The Washington Post Fri- day, in which they argued the president is “not well.”
PAGE 6 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2017