Legislation can be crafted bottom up or top down. In bottom up you ask, What problems do voters have and how can they be addressed. In top down, you ask, What problems do elite politicians have and how can they be addressed?
The House Republican health care bill is a pure top-down document. It was not molded to the actual health care needs of regular voters. It does not have support from actual American voters or much interest in those voters. It was written by elites to serve the needs of elites. Donald Trump vowed to drain the swamp, but this bill is pure swamp.
.. There was no core health care priority that Republicans identified and were trying to solve.
.. There were just some politicians who wanted a press release called Repeal.
.. They could have drafted a bill that addressed the perverse fee-for-service incentives that drive up health costs, or a bill that began to phase out our silly employment-based system, or one that increased health security for the working and middle class.
.. They were more concerned with bending, distorting and folding the bill to meet the Byrd rule, an arbitrary congressional peculiarity of no real purpose to the outside world. They were more concerned with what this internal faction, or that internal faction, might want.
.. It would boost the after-tax income for those making more than $1 million a year by 14 percent
.. this bill the Republican leadership sets an all-time new land speed record for forgetting where you came from.
Ivy League “Assortive Mating”
Why, it would be like telling elite collegians that they should all move to similar cities and neighborhoods, surround themselves with their kinds of people and gradually price everybody else out of the places where social capital is built, influence exerted and great careers made. No need — that’s what we’re already doing! (What Richard Florida called “the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated and highly paid Americans to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and a corresponding exodus of the traditional lower and middle classes from these same places” is one of the striking social facts of the modern meritocratic era.) We don’t need well-meaning parents lecturing us about the advantages of elite self-segregation, and giving the game away to everybody else. …
.. reminding us of her de facto royal status.
The Conventional Threat to Trump
Republican orthodoxy might co-opt him.
His candidacy combined utterly conventional Republican positions with a few signature policy heterodoxies and a flame-throwing populist message. If it’s comforting that he doesn’t seem intent on waging war on his own party in Washington, the opposite risk is that he loses some of his political distinctiveness in the grinding legislative wars to come.
.. This is why the Democratic approach to Trump so far, besides being insane, is wrongheaded. The Democrats are preparing to fight what they consider a kleptocratic handmaiden of Vladimir Putin, an unprecedented threat to the American republic that justifies cockamamie schemes like calling for the Electoral College to ignore the results of the election.
.. There is no doubt that Trump is unlike any prior president. But Democrats will in all likelihood find their opposition to Trump running in a familiar rut — Republicans are heartless tools of corporations and the wealthy. They don’t care if people lose their health insurance. They are cutting taxes for the rich. They are deregulating bankers. Etc., etc. This is the critique that Hillary Clinton didn’t make of Trump, opting instead to emphasize his outlandishness.
.. The candidate who issued thunderous jeremiads during the campaign against a globalized elite that had literally stolen from small-town America has assembled a Cabinet that by and large could have been put together by Ted Cruz or, for that matter, Mitt Romney.
.. What’s the point in having a populist Republican in the White House if congressional Republicans can’t find a way to couple some replacement measures with their Obamacare repeal to give people other options for getting health insurance? Or if congressional Republicans can’t make their tax plan more oriented toward the middle class, perhaps including a cut in payroll taxes?
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443307/donald-trump-republican-normalizing
Steven Mnuchin’s Defining Moment: Seizing Opportunity From the Financial Crisis
Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary made millions buying failed IndyMac and has résumé at odds with president-elect’s campaign rhetoric
Like other Trump cabinet picks, Mr. Mnuchin has a résumé that is at odds with much of the president-elect’s populist rhetoric on the campaign trail.
.. Mr. Trump is building a cabinet that combines traditional Republican Party leanings with unconventional elements, including people who made their fortunes by taking big investment risks. IndyMac was the defining deal of Mr. Mnuchin’s career. He knew that the government needed to sell the failed bank—and he played hardball.
.. Mr. Mnuchin, 53 years old, has no experience in government or running a large organization, though he was a campaign loyalist and fundraiser for Mr. Trump.
.. In the interview, Mr. Mnuchin said the new administration’s goal would be to achieve annual economic growth of 3% to 4%. He said his top policy priorities would be to overhaul the federal tax code, roll back certain financial regulations, review trade agreements and invest in infrastructure.
.. He said Mr. Trump won’t hesitate to call up corporate chiefs to lean on them about jobs, factory closures and other matters.
Sen. Ron Wyden .. Mr. Mnuchin has a “history of profiting off the victims of predatory lending.”
.. Mr. Mnuchin, whose father spent his entire career at Goldman
.. He made partner in 1994 and oversaw Goldman’s mortgage-trading desk before becoming chief information officer.
.. Messrs. Mnuchin and Trump were soon in the same philanthropic and social circles, attending dinner parties at each other’s Manhattan homes and mingling at the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala... he said he has been a registered Republican for “as long as I can remember,” yet he also gave a total of $7,400 since 2000 to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaigns... Mr. Mnuchin donated to the campaigns of Democrats Barack Obama,John Edwards,John Kerry and Al Gore. The only Republican presidential candidate Mr. Mnuchin gave money to was Mitt Romney in 2012... In 2002, Mr. Mnuchin left Goldman and wound up running an investment fund set up by billionaire investor George Soros... Mr. Mnuchin assembled an all-star cast drawn from his years on Wall Street, including Mr. Soros, hedge-fund manager John Paulson, billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm and several former Goldman executives, including J. Christopher Flowers. They signed up on the basis that Mr. Mnuchin would personally run the bank.. The FDIC also agreed to protect the buyers from the most severe losses for years. That loss-sharing arrangement turned out to be a master stroke... Banks often go out of their way to avoid losses, even when borrowers are in violation of loan terms. The loss-sharing agreement took away some of the disincentives, since future losses would be borne partly by the government... CIT agreed to buy OneWest for $3.4 billion, a bounty of more than $3 billion, including dividends. Mr. Mnuchin’s take was several hundred million dollar.. After the sale, newly discovered accounting problems forced CIT to take a $230 million charge.It inherited another problem from nearly $40 million of loans.. Mr. Mnuchin left CIT amid a management shake-up announced last year, receiving a $10.9 million severance payment. His exit came just as Mr. Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination was gaining momentum. “The timing worked out well,”
.. Mr. Mnuchin helped write a tax-cutting plan and tried to rein in some of Mr. Trump’s populist rhetoric, including his vow to not “let Wall street get away with murder,” people familiar with the matter said.
.. Mr. Mnuchin, who divorced his second wife in 2014, brought his fiancée, Scottish actress Louise Linton, on the Trump campaign plane