Anyone who thinks Trump's meetup with Republican Senators yesterday went well? Hear what one Republican Senator told the New York Times:
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan — and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.
Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal’s tax implications, the staff member added.
In case you've been dead for a month, the reason the Senate healthcare bill was written in secret, the reason it's details are still foggy, the reason it cuts Medicaid, is because if the Republicans don't find the money for the massive tax cuts they plan, they'll come up against the tried and true deficit hawks in their own party. They found the money in Medicaid.
So they have to do the healthcare first to have the budget money for their tax cuts. Trump himself said so in April:
"We will save, perhaps, 900 billion dollars" by repealing the ACA, Trump told Bartiromo. "You know, if you look at the kind of numbers that we're talking about, that's all going back into the taxes."
He continued, "And we have to do health care first to pick up additional money so that we get great tax reform."
Hey Trump voters! Do you understand that repealing the ACA and leaving you with no access to health care is a portent of how "tax reform" will work? All those Goldman Sachs guys aren't in the administration for nothing. Your healthcare is what will pay for their tax cuts.
Which makes me wonder, if he understood the connection between robbing the treasury via healthcare cuts in APRIL, but he's confused by that NOW, what's going on with Donald Trump?
