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Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:47 pm
by paperburn1
Things are going to get sporty on the trade deal after this happened. Winnie the Poo is going to be pissed

https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-wil ... xpert-says

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2018 3:06 am
by williatw
House approves spending bill with $5.7B for border wall

The House of Representatives Thursday approved a bill that would fund most of the federal government through early February -- and provides $5.7 billion for President Trump's long-promised border wall, increasing the chances of a partial government shutdown later this week.


Eight Republicans joined all 177 voting Democrats to oppose the measure, which passed 217-185. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is certain to fall short of the 60 votes needed for passage since the chamber's 49 Democrats are against funding the wall. That, in turn, makes it more likely that parts of the federal government, including nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, will cease operations at midnight Friday. The vote came hours after Trump told House GOP leaders that he would not enact a Senate-passed package that does not provide money for the barrier.



https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house- ... order-wall

They are saying that the bill passed the House (with the border funding intact) but hasn't a prayer of getting the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate. Okay; anyone here care to explain to me why the Republicans can't invoke the "nuclear option" and pass it with just 51 votes? Or just 50 votes and VP breaking the tie passing it? No one seems to be even mentioning that option yet, don't know why.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2018 3:33 am
by paperburn1
Reconciliation (nuclear option) is a legislative process of the United States Congress that allows expedited passage of certain budgetary legislation on spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit with a simple majority vote in both the House (218 votes) and Senate (51 votes). Senate rules prohibit filibustering and impose a 20-hour cap on the total time for debate, motions and amendments related to reconciliation bills.
Reconciliation bills can be passed on spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit] once a year per topic unless Congress passes a revised budget resolution for that fiscal year (under section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act).what has happened is budget resolution's reconciliation instructions affect both spending and revenues, so no further reconciliation legislation can occur on these topics in the same fiscal year without a revised budget resolution.
So this imposes the requirement of 60 votes to pass this legislation.
I think I got that right.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2018 6:05 am
by williatw
paperburn1 wrote:Reconciliation (nuclear option) is a legislative process of the United States Congress that allows expedited passage of certain budgetary legislation on spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit with a simple majority vote in both the House (218 votes) and Senate (51 votes). Senate rules prohibit filibustering and impose a 20-hour cap on the total time for debate, motions and amendments related to reconciliation bills.
Reconciliation bills can be passed on spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit] once a year per topic unless Congress passes a revised budget resolution for that fiscal year (under section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act).what has happened is budget resolution's reconciliation instructions affect both spending and revenues, so no further reconciliation legislation can occur on these topics in the same fiscal year without a revised budget resolution.
So this imposes the requirement of 60 votes to pass this legislation.
I think I got that right.

Ahead of Shutdown, GOP Senator Floats ‘Nuclear’ Option to Build Trump’s Border Wall

Sen. Steve Daines pitched rules change after House GOP voted to amend spending stopgap

Image
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is advocating for changing the rules to pass a bill funding the border wall for President Donald Trump.
When senators make their way back to the Capitol Friday to go back to the drawing board on government funding, there are sure to be some calls to change the rules to help get President Donald Trump the border wall.

Maybe even from Trump himself.

Sen. Steve Daines, a member of the Appropriations Committee, is floating using the “nuclear option” to effectively change the Senate’s rules to make it easier to agree to the latest House-passed spending bill that provides in excess of $5 billion in funds for the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“House just passed a bill that fully funds government and enables @realDonaldTrump to secure our border/build the wall,” the Montana Republican tweeted. “Senate can do same by eliminating the filibuster. 51 votes, same as we do for judges!”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has long said the support does not exist for extending the simple-majority threshold to limit debate to the legislative calendar, and back in January a senior Senate GOP aide said the votes did not exist within the Republican Conference for such a move.


Senators are expected back in town for possible votes Friday afternoon, hours ahead of a government funding deadline with what seems to once again be an inevitable lapse in funding.

There is no reason to think that has changed, especially with Democrats about to take over control of the House of Representatives.

The “nuclear option” is so named because it involves having a majority of senators change Senate precedents in order to effectively change the rules without the two-thirds that would be required to invoke cloture on changes to the standing rules themselves.

Even though it is beyond a long shot, President Donald Trump himself has pushed for the setting of a simple-majority threshold, and there should be every expectation that he could again on Friday.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ ... order-wall

This would be a nice Christmas present for Trump (and America) if this comes to pass..

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:41 am
by choff

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2018 5:10 am
by choff

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 11:52 am
by williatw
williatw wrote:Can't vouch for the truth of this:



Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Retire from the US Supreme Court in January, 2019

Speaking privately, a law clerk says the Justice's Cancer has come out of remission

https://www.smobserved.com/story/2018/0 ... /3658.html

January 29, 2019

Ruth Bader Ginsburg watch nears the end of its second month
It has been 54 days since the public laid eyes on the 85-year-old Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and her absence is prompting calls for proof of life. The last time she was seen was on December 6, 2018, when she heard arguments in person at the Court. Since then, she underwent surgery on December 21 of last year after two cancerous growths from her left lung were discovered and removed. All official statements have been issued by people close to her and meant to assure the public that she is recovering quietly.

However, RBG has missed oral arguments this month for the first time in her 25-year career on the bench, and it is raising anxieties about how well and if she is recovering. It has been reported that the White House is taking steps toward preparing a short list of Supreme Court nominees in the event of Justice Ginsburg's death or departure. Adding even more fuel to the speculation, Fox & Friends "accidentally" showed a memorial graphic that claimed that Ginsburg is dead. The show apologized shortly after and blamed it on a "control room error," but it's worth noting that the graphic even being made and loaded is a disturbing, macabre preparation.

She was scheduled to attend a function called "An Evening with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg" in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening at the Skirball Cultural Center, but the event was "regrettably canceled" because she is still recuperating from her recent surgery. A second engagement on February 6 with her and philanthropist David Rubenstein in New York City was also canceled.

The reason her absence is so monumental is that if her health has compromised her ability to do her job as a member of the highest court in the United States, her removal will give President Trump his third justice nomination of his first term. This would be an apocalypse to the liberal Democrats, who would be faced with the most conservative Supreme Court in modern history for decades to come. If you thought the Kavanaugh nomination was rough, imagine if Democrats doubled their efforts the third time around.

Could this be why Nancy Pelosi is so defiantly postponing the president's State of the Union address – because it might reveal to the world an empty seat where RBG is supposed to be? Although the justice didn't attend, in protest, President Trump's first State of the Union in 2018 and Supreme Court justice attendance is by no means required, it would be terrible optics as the nation wonders where and how she is.

Some left-leaning voices have condemned the calls for proof that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is still capable of performing her duties as justice. In a display of hypocrisy that is now too common, here is an article from CNN demanding the same confirmation after First Lady Melania Trump avoided the public for 19 days after a minor operation.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/29/politics ... index.html

One wishes Justice Ginsburg a speedy recovery and a healthy future, with the sincere hope that she can make it to the president's State of the Union address next week.






https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/20 ... Nw.twitter

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:18 am
by choff
I have very serious concerns about a Starbucks CEO becoming POTUS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_FOdCiaJgI


:D

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 12:29 am
by williatw
How Team Trump is bringing drug prices down

By Alex Azar February 7, 2019 | 7:50pm


Image
When you go out and make a major purchase for yourself or your family, do you ever do it without first knowing what it’s going to cost you? Of course not.

Yet that is what our health care system asks of millions of Americans every day, when they make health care decisions without knowing what they will cost or show up to the pharmacy counter to pick up a drug they need without knowing the price.

Take prescription drugs: Patients are often in the dark about what their medications will cost them until they get to the pharmacy counter. But more than that, they also often have no idea about how that price of their drugs was calculated in the first place.

President Trump has exposed the dirty secret of drug pricing: There is a shadowy third player in the transaction ­between patients and their pharmacists: middlemen who have taken a big kickback from the drug manufacturer, which may or may not be reflected in patients’ out-of-pocket costs.

As Americans heard Tuesday in the State of the Union Address, the president is committed to improving fairness and transparency in health care. These back-door deals in health care undermine his ­vision for drug pricing and are completely unacceptable.

We have already gotten started. Last week, the Trump administration proposed what could be the single biggest change to the way Americans’ drugs are priced at the pharmacy counter, ever. Under the president’s plan, the current system of kickbacks to middlemen would be replaced with transparent, up-front discounts, delivered directly to patients.

Each year, more than $150 billion in rebates are passed around the drug-pricing system — and ­patients are entirely in the dark about it. In 2017, there were more than $29 billion in rebates in the Medicare Part D program alone, which pays for medication for ­­elderly Americans.

Under the president’s proposal, kickbacks in Medicare Part D would be eliminated and replaced with ­direct discounts that are passed on to seniors at the pharmacy counter.

There are other benefits to bringing this new transparency to drug markets. As it is, drug companies regularly raise prices on many medications, because the higher prices ­allow them to make larger kickback payments, in the form of rebates, to the drug plans that ­decide which drugs are covered by insurance.

Without these kickbacks, the single biggest incentive to raise prices every year will be eliminated, and prices can come down. Eliminating today’s kickbacks will also open up more choice and competition for patients. Today, kickbacks are used by drug companies to ward off competition, depriving patients of options they may have never known about.

Proposing direct discounts at the pharmacy counter is just part of the Trump agenda for fairer, more transparent prices in health care. Like so many Americans, he is outraged by the practice of surprise billing, where patients ­receive sky-high bills from health care providers that they didn’t know weren’t covered by insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services, which I lead, is already examining what can be done to address this abusive practice.

More broadly, Americans ought to know the price of a health care service, and what they’re going to owe out-of-pocket, before they get that service. The president has ­required hospitals, for the first time ever, to post their standard set of charges online.

That was just a first step. We are now looking at all the tools we have to provide Americans with the information they need to be ­effective consumers of health care — information to which we believe they have a right.

When prices are transparent and competition is encouraged, consumers win. We believe that can prove true in health care as it has in every other area of the American economy.

Delivering such a health care system will mean some disruption to the status quo. But anyone who wants to defend that status quo will have to explain why they want to keep prices high and ­patients in the dark.

The president is going to keep charging ahead with delivering better care at more transparent, lower prices. That’s what it looks like to put American patients first, and that’s what he will deliver.

Alex Azar II is the US secretary of Health and Human Services


https://nypost.com/2019/02/07/how-team- ... ices-down/

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:05 am
by paperburn1
I have a friend in the health care provider industry and he has stated that all this will do is remove the middle man and raise the profit margin of the drug company industrial complex. as he has been right about the pas ten years of what every major change would and has done as far as pricing. I hold little faith in the price drop prediction will come true and the pharmaceutical companies will just reap larger profits because the middle man was eliminated as he has forcast.

but we can always hope, he can't always be right...can he?

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 2:06 am
by williatw
paperburn1 wrote:I have a friend in the health care provider industry and he has stated that all this will do is remove the middle man and raise the profit margin of the drug company industrial complex. as he has been right about the pas ten years of what every major change would and has done as far as pricing. I hold little faith in the price drop prediction will come true and the pharmaceutical companies will just reap larger profits because the middle man was eliminated as he has forcast.
By itself no...but whenever you are trying to reduce costs of just about anything one of the first steps is looking at all the hands between the producer (the one who make the product or provides the service) and the end user/recipient. Eliminating as many of those "hands" that is middle men as possible is always a good start. Of course there inevitably will be push back against it that is to be expected; but as I said looks like a good start.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 2:31 am
by williatw
More on Ruth Bader Ginsburg:


RBG's SOTU absence spurs health concerns, unclear if she'll appear at SCOTUS public session

Published on Feb 7, 2019

The absence of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the State of the Union address continues to fuel concerns about her health. One America's Jennifer Franco takes a closer look at why her recovery is being questioned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5Ns4K294x0


It mentions that in both of her recent alleged "appearances" one at an event sponsored by her daughter-in-law and a supposed spotting at a gym no photographs confirming such have been brought to light. Hard to see that in our current smart phone/camera era. Make of that as you will. As for her lack of appearance at the SOTU she notably didn't appear at Trump's last one either; she tends to skip ones done by Republican Presidents supposedly.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 3:09 pm
by paperburn1
williatw wrote:
By itself no...but whenever you are trying to reduce costs of just about anything one of the first steps is looking at all the hands between the producer (the one who make the product or provides the service) and the end user/recipient. Eliminating as many of those "hands" that is middle men as possible is always a good start. Of course there inevitably will be push back against it that is to be expected; but as I said looks like a good start.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... -in-mexico
Despite the hype to the contrary in my travels I have found this to be true. We as americans are getting reamed but good for health care.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:33 am
by hanelyp
NPR => fake news.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:28 pm
by paperburn1
hanelyp wrote:NPR => fake news.
Personal experience in traveling the world. This rings true.
While it is undebatable NPR leans far left, there are certain issues where they are very correct and informative. This happens to be one of them where they are correct as proven though personal experience. Like all news sources a grain of salt is necessary in the new age of yellow journalism. Fox included.
I prefer to form my own opinions rather than let someone else spoon feed me the information they want me to know.
Right now in the internet age we have the collective sum of knowledge of the known universe at are fingertips and we use it look at cat pictures and argue with strangers - unknown :D