More dispatches from Trump's America: The emperor has no clothes

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 Donald J. Trump has been in the White House - courtesy of a victory in the Electoral College and (allegedly) a little help from his friends in Russia - for 63 days and counting. In that short (but seemingly endless) period of time, Mr. Trump has managed to become the least credible and most unpopular person ever to sit behind the Resolute desk in  the Oval Office.

 Despite a small uptick in his approval ratings - Gallup shows that 41% of Americans think he's doing well in the latest poll - Mr. Trump still has not cracked the ceiling of 50% approval (or better) since he took the oath of office on January 20. No amount of braggadocio, no vast volume of executive orders, no huge batches of Twitter tweets or campaign-style rallies can hide the fact that Mr. Trump is both incompetent and dishonest.

  Consider this: according to various news sources, Mr. Trump suffered yet another setback on his way to repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The dismantling of "Obamacare" (a label that I hate using) has been a top legislative priority of Republicans in Congress since it was passed into law seven years ago, and Mr. Trump jumped on the repeal-and-replace bandwagon when he became the GOP candidate in 2016. 

 You'd think that with a party that controls both the executive and the legislative branches of government, erasing President Barack Obama's biggest political legacy item would be easy peasy. I mean, those Republican representatives and Senators who were committed to this mission had seven years to come up with their own alternative to the ACA. You know...something that lazy reporters and angry liberals could mockingly call "Trumpcare." 

Well, the GOP didn't have anything amazingly good prepared before the election, but House Speaker Paul Ryan and Mr. Trump's minions cobbled together a monstrosity called the American Health Care Act...and yes, it got stuck with the inevitable moniker Trumpcare. 

 Supposedly, Trumpcare is better than the ACA because it eliminates the individual and employer (if the employer is a large company, anyway) mandates. It also doubles the amount of money individuals can put in health savings accounts and repeals - conveniently - several ACA-related taxes for the wealthy.  (How this helps the average American, I have no idea. But if I were a gazillionaire, I wouldn't have to pay a 3.8% tax on investments or a 0.9% tax on individual income of $200,000. So yeah, I can see why the Party of the Wealthy would love Trumpcare!) 

 Trumpcare bites the big burrito for the 99%  of Americans who don't have mansions with memorable names or golf courses all over the world. the AHCA doesn't give any tax credits for out-of-pocket expenses. These are replaced by age-based refundable tax credits for premiums. 

 Worse still, Trumpcare gets rid of the ACA's expanded eligibility for poor people or the matching federal bucks to states for any insurance client that qualifies. And there are no provisions to pay for drug addiction treatment, which is something Mr. Trump promised - personally - to Mr. Kraig Moss during last year's campaign. 

 Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, even this "achievement" is proving to be more daunting than he bargained for. 

 Already smarting from FBI Director James Comey's public assertion that President Obama did not wiretap the phone systems (or install cameras in the microwave ovens) during last fall's Presidential campaign, now he has to deal with the bad news that Speaker Ryan gave him earlier today.

 Per the British Broadcasting Corporation, there is so much public opposition to Trumpcare that there are not enough Republican members of Congress who are willing to vote for it. 

 A debate on the American Health Care Act is taking place in the House of Representatives, with the crucial vote scheduled for later on Friday.
Mr Trump needs a minimum of 215 Republicans to vote for the bill. If 22 join the Democrats, the bill will fail.
But US media tallies suggest between 28 and 35 Republicans still remain opposed.
House Speaker Paul Ryan visited the White House on Friday to give Mr Trump an update on the numbers, with US media reporting that there were not enough.

Maybe Speaker Ryan will convince the reluctant Republicans in the House to come around and give Mr. Trump his cherished victory. But those representatives know that their political survival is at stake; with mid-term elections less than two years away, they realize that they need to decide between their party or their fellow citizens' best interests. 

As for his die-hard supporters, I hope that they can stop looking through their rose-colored glasses of conservatism, anti-liberalism, white supremacy, and nationalism and come to grips with this reality:

 The emperor from Trump Tower has no clothes. 


Sources:

 http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/08/what-the-gop-health-plan-really-means-for-taxes/?utm_term=.3ca5c2d14620

 http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/health/opioid-trump-supporter-medicaid-health-care-reform/

 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39383950

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