The Director of President Trump’s Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) Mick Mulvaney discusses the ongoing budgetary priorities of President Trump and the intertwined larger policy objectives – with the newest spokesperson for Grecian men’s haircare formula Jake Tapper.

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Larger things considered, Mulvaney has always been an odd duck selection.  However, perhaps President Trump knew something we didn’t.  What better way to coordinate a budget than to use the same people who allowed a willfully-blind decade of financial usurpation, only this time holding them accountable to a corrective path.  Leverage is, if they fail, their prior activity can always be exposed.
Heck, there’s growing evidence President Trump might just be pulling off an epic reverse Castellano’s maneuver.  After all, Paul Ryan was the former Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and current Chair Kevin Brady has been a key focus of President Trump.  Hmmm…
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As more people begin seeing through the fog of political “talking points”, the next response from those suffering from battered conservative syndrome is to say: well, do nothing, and allow ObamaCare to simply self-destruct.
Unfortunately, this is not an option.  At least it’s not a reasonable option.  To understand how battered conservatives are being lead around, used and abused, it is very important to understand the abusers.  There are many.

Last week Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin informed congress it will soon be necessary to raise the debt ceiling.   Immediately, crony-constitutional conservative types, like many who assemble in the House Freedom Caucus, shouted “no way”; apparently, according to their pearl-clutching political position – it unnerves their fiscally conservative sensibilities.
Interesting.
On October 21st, 2015, the Freedom Caucus itself backed Paul Ryan for Speaker of the House of Representatives. (LINK)  A week later, October 28th, 2015, members of the same Freedom Caucus voted to approve a $2+ trillion dollar Omnibus spending bill, a massive continuing resolution, and removed the debt ceiling restrictions (link).  Two days later, October 30th, 2015, at 3:00am in the morning, the Omnibus CR bill passed the Senate (link).
This was yet another year without a federal budget, and a specific decision to fund all of Obama’s spending priorities for 2015 and 2016.  (more…)

In the largest measure, the basic problem is in 2009 Harry Reid passed the ObamaCare legislation in the Senate with 60 votes.  The House then passed the exact same bill, and the Democrats moved to immediate reconciliation to remove the House concerns (Gator-Aid, Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase etc.).
In 2017 the Republican congress are attempting to repeal and replace that ObamaCare legislation with only 52 Senate votes available, well, maybe.
Unfortunately for the GOP there are not even 52 votes for repeal.  Portman, Thune, Collins, Murkowski, Graham, McCain, Blunt, Cochran, Cornyn, Hatch, McConnell and others, are not necessarily on board; that’s 11. (Leaving only 41).
No amount of byzantine rule changes surrounding “reconciliation” are going to overcome that factual vote hurdle.  In 2009 Senator Reid started with 60 votes.  In 2017 Senator McConnell starts with 52.

So anything coming from the House of Representatives has to keep this reality in mind.  Even if support or opposition is based on ideological principle, it still has to pass – or it’s moot.
There’s no doubt the Paul Ryan proposal holds the worst U.S. CoC aspects demanded by Tom Donohue.  Heck, Donohue poured a lot of lobbying money into the entire architecture in ’09/’10 and he’s paid republicans in congress hundreds of millions to make sure his interests in keeping ObamaCare around are protected.  Ryan is big GOPe and he’s supported by the Big Club.
And, as much as Paul Ryan is beholden to Donohue to retain some form of ObamaCare, so too are the Rand Paul / Ted Cruz types paid by billionaires like Cary Katz (Conservative Review); who want an abject repeal without compromise. (more…)

It’s obvious the financial interests are pouring in money to the R.A.T groups right now in the fight over ObamaCare Repeal and/or Replace.   Boy howdy are they all fibbing as they fling their poo at each other.  Forget the Democrats in this discussion.  For the sake of this analysis we only look at the right side of the UniParty; the Republican side.

There are two financial special interest groups within the Republican fight on ObamaCare. Two groups within the BIG CLUB.  Essentially, two swamp R.A.T factions:
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Our President Trump met with the CEO’s of various small and community banks earlier today as part of the financial reform that underpins much of the overall Trump economic agenda.
Previously President Trump issued an executive order which modified, actually tiered, the choking rules, regulations and compliance reporting within Dodd-Frank banking rules which buried smaller locally operated banks with the same regulatory framework as massive financial institutions.
The next aspect of Trump’s financial reform will most likely come in some form of reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. President Trump personally put the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall into the GOP platform as part of uncoupling Wall Street financial policy from Main Street financial needs. [More explanation on that below]

[Transcript] 11:17 A.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody, very much. Good morning and I greatly appreciate you being here. We have some real experts with us and we have some great bankers with us.
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Good news, they’re listening to you.  No other approach to repealing ObamaCare is possible.  It’s not ideological, it is simply reality.  The backstory on our prior explanations are HERE and expanded HERE.
After listening to conservative groups at a White House meeting yesterday, it became obvious to POTUS  those group leaders/members did not understand WHY no other approach to repeal is possible.   POTUS asked Speaker Ryan to put this together and deliver it today:

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Most of you already know this outline because you’ve understood the bigger picture.  Hopefully this message will reach the 99% who don’t understand that “reconciliation” doesn’t allow for substantive structural add-ons to ObamaCare, until step #3.  Again, HERE and HERE.

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FACT: ObamaCare was passed, using the original legislative vehicle, at 1:38am on 12/24/09 with 60 votes in the Senate (see below).  The House then approved that Senate Bill without changes; and in February 2010 created a secondary bill which created the opportunity for the Senate to modify ObamaCare using “reconciliation” for a lower vote threshold of 51 votes.
Literally under the cloak of darkness Democrats rammed their holy grail of a socialist construct down the throat of every American. We no longer needed to imagine having usurping representation that did not represent the will of the people – we saw it.
[Understand the full construct by reading HERE]  If you do not understand how legislation is created; if you do not understand the difference between the Senate and House; if you do not understand the way ObamaCare was created, you really need to read this first.
A clean repeal bill, meaning a law to repeal the entire ObamaCare construct only, would require another 60 vote hurdle in the Senate.
Republicans, while in the majority, only control 52 seats.  Without 8 Democrats voting to approve a “repeal bill”, any House (Or Senate) bill that repeals ObamaCare cannot pass the Senate.
This is why Mark Levin is a con-man; selling snake oil as outrage to keep a listening audience angry, yet clueless and hopeless.   That’s what I don’t like.
A complete repeal of ObamaCare is currently impossible.  The House Freedom Caucus can push all the repeal bills they want, but they cannot get a clean repeal bill through the Senate because they cannot get the 60 votes needed. Period.
Additionally, despite claims to the contrary, the GOP has never passed an Obamacare “repeal bill”. Ever.  What they did previously pass was a “defund bill” using the lower vote reconciliation process. President Obama vetoed it.  A defunding bill was possible because of the financial pathway which falls under reconciliation rules.  The current Ryan bill is almost identical to the 2016 defunding bill everyone is mistakenly calling a prior “repeal bill”.
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Tread carefully, this is a Paul Ryan announcement which inherently means the various GOPe elements, legislative authors, are most likely the primary sources.

WASHINGTON—House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) issued the following statement on introduction of the American Health Care Act:
“Obamacare is rapidly collapsing. Skyrocketing premiums, soaring deductibles, and dwindling choices are not what the people were promised seven years ago. It’s time to turn a page and rescue our health care system from this disastrous law. The American Health Care Act is a plan to drive down costs, encourage competition, and give every American access to quality, affordable health insurance. It protects young adults, patients with pre-existing conditions, and provides a stable transition so that no one has the rug pulled out from under them.
“Working together, this unified Republican government will deliver relief and peace of mind to the millions of Americans suffering under Obamacare. This will proceed through a transparent process of regular order in full view of the public. I want to thank all of our members who have contributed their ideas, especially Chairman Walden and Chairman Brady, as well as Secretary Price and the Trump administration, for their commitment to keep this promise and get this right.”

Links To Bill – LINK #1 and LINK #2

 

During an interview with Fox News Brett Baier, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan explains [06:00 portion] how the ObamaCare replacement bill is currently being written:

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Staying out of the weeds – why this is important. Inherent within this Ryan outline is the admission there was never a replacement bill for Obamacare before today.
Why is that important?
Because the admission proves that prior to President Trump there was no ACTUAL republican intention, an actual legislative position, to remove Obamacare.
Oh yeah, and it also proves Ryan lied to Hannity when he said the bill was currently being scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Huh, funny that.
Again, this evidences what we previously outlined when we said to repeal ObamaCare you must first remove The Big Club.
The Big Club, lobbyists and bureaucrats, actually write the legislation. The politicians simply sell the legislative constructs written by Lobbyists who are part of the Big Club.
The Big Club didn’t expect to lose the 2016 presidential election; either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton would have maintained the legislative priorities of the Big Club. Now, as a specific outcome of Trump winning, Paul Ryan is actually having to create/write legislation that is necessary only because President Trump is looming over his shoulder.
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The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, adding two more Cabinet leaders to President Donald Trump’s administration.
Secretary Carson passed with a senate approval vote of 58-41; and the vote for Secretary Perry was 62-37.

The Democrats continue using the confirmation process as a slowdown gimmick to stall the Senate from voting on any legislation. The larger Democrat objective is to obstruct any legislative accomplishments as they continue their highly coordinated actions to undermine and attack the Trump agenda.
The Democrats are joined by their UniParty republican colleagues toward that specific endeavor. The aggregate DC swamp is a UniParty of self-interest now openly defending itself -across party lines- from the existential threat that is the Trump ‘swamp draining’ agenda.  Additionally, the recent DC narrative against Attorney General Jeff Sessions is simply a variant approach toward the same objective.
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