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Groton Daily Independent
Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 190 ~ 37 of 40
He announced his intention to take the U.S. out of the Paris climate-change accord. He gave swift ap- proval to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines stalled by President Barack Obama, moved to shrink protected national monument lands in Utah and Arizona, and acted to lift restrictions on mining coal and coastal drilling for oil and natural gas.
A provision in the new tax law opens the long-protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
As other countries turn harder toward green energy, Trump is making fossil fuels the centerpiece of his drive toward energy independence — a benchmark that Obama closed in on during an era of surging natural gas development.
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HEALTH CARE
Probably nothing exempli es frustrated ambition more than the Obama health law Republicans have
been trying to dismantle ever since it was enacted in 2010. Trump has declared it dead many times — he just never got around to killing it.
He made this overpromise in the campaign: “My rst day in of ce, I’m going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability. You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. It’s going to be so easy.”
That hasn’t happened.
Republicans took several runs at repealing and replacing the law last year, only to fall short. The De- cember tax law, though, is knocking out a pillar. As of 2019, the requirement to carry health insurance or pay a ne will be gone.
Trump has come out with a proposed regulation to promote the sale of health plans across state lines. The goal is to make it easier for associations to sponsor plans that are cheaper than Affordable Care Act policies but don’t have to meet all consumer protection and bene t requirements of that law.
Insurance industry groups, patient groups and some state regulators are wary of the idea and see little chance it can make more than a dent in the ranks of the uninsured (nearly 30 million). Easing restrictions on the sale of health insurance across state lines has been a longtime mainstream conservative goal.
He also promised to authorize Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. It hasn’t been done. ___
‘AMERICA FIRST’ ABROAD
Trump promised swift victory over the Islamic State group. Over the past year, U.S. and coalition-backed
local forces in Iraq and Syria did deal a crushing blow to IS, ousting the militants from most of the territory they once held. The success built on the strategy of the Obama administration to work with and through local forces. Trump did relax restrictions on the number of U.S. troops who could be deployed both to Iraq and Syria, and that aided the nal push.
U.S. commanders, however, stop short of saying IS is defeated, pointing to remaining militants and ghting in Syria. They also note the group has spawned af liates in other countries, such as Afghanistan and Yemen, where they routinely attack U.S. forces and allies. While reeling as a territorial force, the IS group has inspired terrorist attacks in the West.
The Pentagon has yet to see the massive increase in military spending that Trump has promised. That still might come, but the protracted struggle to pass a Pentagon budget of whatever size has hurt U.S. military readiness, defense of cials say.
More broadly, Trump’s “America First” ethic has been re ected in his pressure on member NATO coun- tries to step up their own military spending, in his wariness of international accords and in the seeming drift from a diplomatic tradition of promoting U.S. democratic values abroad.
Past presidents made common cause with authoritarian gures, and their promotion of values could be cursory. But Trump has lavished praise on select strongmen, from the Philippines to China to Russia and beyond.
Despite railing against the Iran nuclear deal as a candidate, Trump has so far passed up opportunities to get the U.S. out of it. On the other hand, he rolled back part of Obama’s opening to Cuba. He also moved