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Tag: center for american progress
Pelosi: Trump Could Be Impeached For ‘Obstructing Justice’ And ‘Cover-Up’

Pelosi: Trump Could Be Impeached For ‘Obstructing Justice’ And ‘Cover-Up’

At an event hosted by the Center for American Progress on Wednesday, Pelosi said that Tump is “obstructing justice and is engaged in a cover-up, and that could be an impeachable offense.”

Refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas, as Trump has ordered his administration to do, was one of the articles of impeachment of President Nixon, Pelosi noted.

“So it’s not just the substance that we’re after, that we want to have to give the truth to the American people,” she continued, “but in striving to get that, the intervention, the obstruction that the administration is engaged in is, as they say, the cover-up is frequently worse than the crime.”

Pelosi’s comments echo a growing number of Democratic lawmakers who say that Trump’s attempts to stonewall congressional investigations are leaving them no choice but to launch an impeachment inquiry in order to get the information they are seeking and perform their constitutional duty of oversight of the executive branch.

So far, at least 34 members of the House and Senate have called for an impeachment inquiry to begin. And five of those lawmakers have gone as far as saying Trump should be impeached.

Pelosi’s “cover-up” comments and Democrats’ calls for an impeachment inquiry have gotten under Trump’s skin.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump held an impromptu news conference in the White House Rose Garden in which he threw a temper tantrum and vowed not to work with Democrats on legislation to help the American people unless they stop investigating him.

Prior to his outburst, Trump reportedly stormed out of a planned meeting with Democratic leaders — who had traveled to the White House to discuss infrastructure — claiming the Democratic-led oversight investigations were unfair to him.

His complaints are not likely to stop those investigations, but as Pelosi and other Democrats have suggested, his refusal to cooperate only increases the likelihood that impeachment proceedings will begin.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

5 Things The GOP Won’t Tell You About Obamacare

5 Things The GOP Won’t Tell You About Obamacare

This article originally appeared in USA Today.

When it comes to repealing and replacing Obamacare, many have compared the GOP to the dog that caught the car, or the ambulance.

Republicans know better than anyone that Democrats paid a steep price for insuring millions of people. Now, after televised scenes of furious Americans rallying against repeal even before the new president took office, they’re beginning to see that uninsuring millions won’t be as much fun as slamming snout first into a bumper at full speed.

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Donald Trump told The Washington Post a few days before he was sworn in.

You can bet no one has any idea what that actually means. That includes Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, who dodged details at a confirmation hearing on Tuesday. It also includes Trump, who has yet to demonstrate that he actually knows what’s in the Affordable Care Act, let alone how he would replace it.

Health care reform isn’t a branding problem you can tweet away with strategic misspellings, huge empty promises of “something terrific,” or even a meeting with Family Feud’s Steve Harvey.

Health insurance isn’t a wall you can pretend to build.

You don’t need a fact-checker to tell you that you’ve been uninsured. And there will be no President Obama around to blame when Trump voters can’t pay medical bills because an insurance market Republicans have promised to fix suddenly begins to crumble.

Here’s what Republicans won’t tell you about the mess they’ve gotten us all into:

1. If they go through with any substantive repeal of the Affordable Care Act, they probably won’t be able to replace it — ever.

If you want to cover “everybody,” you either have to establish some meaningless standard for coverage that evaporates any time you have an ailment bigger than half a hangnail, or you have to spend money — even more than the billions of dollars Republicans are eager to give back to the richest Americans. “If you end it in three years without a replacement, what Republican is going to vote for a tax increase to fund it?” asked Senator Bob Corker (R-TN). “I don’t know any.”

2. Repeal isn’t inevitable.

“Right after the election, Republicans vowed to have a repeal bill on Trump’s desk on January 20,” Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress, told me. “That timeline has already slipped, and is slipping even more as we speak.” Senate Republicans have shown they have the simple majority they need for repeal, but about a half dozen of their 52 members have expressed concerns about repealing Obamacare without a decent replacement. That’s more than enough to create uncertainty.

3. If Trump has an actual plan to cover everybody, Republicans would be his problem.

“Most fundamentally, [Republicans] have no idea how to keep their promise to cover as many people as the Affordable Care Act,” Spiro explained. “That’s because it’s a false promise: Expanding and maintaining coverage is not, and has never been, their goal. But they just can’t seem to come out and admit that they don’t care if people lose coverage.” Trump told The Washington Post, “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it.” The “circles” he’s referring to are better known as “The Republican Party.”

4. Repeal could weaken everyone’s insurance.

Obamacare removed both yearly and lifetime caps on insurance, something you only probably noticed if you or a family member has had a serious illness. As Spiro notes, it also expanded free coverage of preventive services like colon cancer screening, mammograms, and flu shots. And it put a limit on what insurance companies can charge for out-of-pocket costs. All of that affects even those who get insurance at work.

5. If a replacement plan did pass, it would leave Republicans open to the fiercest attack they made on the ACA.

Having no ability to repeal the law gave Republicans the freedom to attack Obamcare for offering their favorite kind of insurance — high-deductible plans that force consumers to think about price as they make medical decisions. GOP proposals “offer threadbare, catastrophic coverage with enormous deductibles,” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote. “The English vernacular term for the kind of insurance Republican health care plans would offer is ‘crappy.’ ”

Trump promised us “something terrific.” He just didn’t explain it was a terrific mess that could end with Americans finally discovering how much they had gained, right as he takes it away.

IMAGE: House Speaker Paul Ryan hands the pen to Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s HHS nominee, after signing a bill repealing Obamacare at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Hillary Clinton Touts Family Issues And Hints At 2016 Domestic Agenda

Hillary Clinton Touts Family Issues And Hints At 2016 Domestic Agenda

By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton joined some of the most powerful women in Congress on Thursday to push for advances on affordable child care, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage that could create greater economic progress for women.

Clinton, fresh off her campaign-style weekend visit to Iowa and her summer-long book tour, used Thursday’s panel at the Center for American Progress to focus on issues that could form part of her domestic agenda should she run for president in 2016.

Clinton noted that women hold two-thirds of the minimum wage jobs across the country and three-quarters of the jobs that depend primarily on tips — meaning that many of them are working full time but hovering at or below the poverty line.

“We talk about a glass ceiling,” said Clinton, who ended her 2008 campaign by proclaiming that she and her supporters had put 18 million cracks in it. “The floor is collapsing.
“These women don’t even have a secure floor under them.”

The former New York senator and secretary of state noted that she had just read a Bloomberg story listing eight things in a new poverty report that “will make women mad.” Although there was a slight improvement in America’s poverty rate, she said, “for women there’s a lot less to cheer about.”

“Gender inequality in the workforce remains a reality; we ticked up from 70 cents on the dollar for women, versus men in the work force, to 78 cents; and we know that women are more likely to be impoverished even if they are working,” Clinton said.

She praised her colleagues on the panel — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut –for pursuing policy changes to give women “a fair shot.” (Pelosi and Clinton engaged in some good-natured sparring over whether California or New York was more progressive on women’s issues, with Pelosi touting the recent 10th anniversary of paid family leave in California).

The panel was led by the center’s president, Neera Tanden, who introduced Clinton by noting that Clinton’s “flexibility” as a boss when Tanden worked for her had allowed Tanden to balance a demanding job and raising young children. Clinton’s former congressional colleagues all spoke with frustration throughout the panel about how Democratic efforts to raise the minimum wage and expand paid family leave have stalled in Congress.

Joining the panel was Shawnta Jones of Maryland, who emphasized the importance of subsidized health care after she became a teen mother at 17, and Rhiannon Broschat, a 25-year-old Chicago retail worker who said she lost her job at Whole Foods after she had to leave work early to pick up her son on a day when his school closed in a weather emergency.

The most animated speaker was Gillibrand, who condemned opposition to expanding paid family leave across the country.

“We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have paid leave,” Gillibrand said, her voice rising in indignation. “Pakistan and Afghanistan, which don’t even educate their girls, have more paid leave than America. That is outrageous.”

Clinton noted that the economy has not fully recovered from the 2008 crash, though she praised her onetime rival President Barack Obama for “getting us out of the ditch we were in.”

Clinton, who has said she will announce her own plans next year, issued a call to arms to women in the looming 2014 midterm elections. “Political candidates and officeholders do pay attention when people vote on issues that are of concern to them,” she said. “When we can turn an issue into a political movement that demands people be responsive during the election season, it carries over.

“These issue have to be in the lifeblood of this election and any election,” she said. “The more we can do that — harnessing 6 million, or however many we can … bus tours, storming the gates…. Whatever it’s going to take.”

AFP Photo/Oliver Lang

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