Campaign Action
Democrats are having no part of popular vote loser Donald Trump's efforts to shift the responsibility of his latest attempt to blow up Obamacare on to them and his efforts to force them into negotiations to help him destroy the law. Steve Bannon just gave them a hand, telling the whole world Trump isn't doing this for any reason other than destroying what President Obama built.
Senate Democrats are making their position very clear: they will fight to preserve the law, and all the damage Trump is knowingly doing to Americans' health care, he will own.
"In this, politically, he's in much worse shape than we are," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on a conference call with reporters Friday. "The American people, even a large number of Republicans, are on our side in terms improving the system, not destroying it. So I don't think he has much leverage to threaten or bully." […]
Democrats argue that if Trump was so concerned about the constitutional arguments against the payments, he would have stopped them as soon as he took office, rather than after watching congressional repeal efforts collapse multiple times.
"This is just creating uncertainty and instability in the markets and it's going to raise premiums and I think that everyone knows that Republicans are going to own this," a Democratic staffer of the Senate HELP committee told TPM.
There are more than a few congressional Republicans who understand the damage Trump is doing not just to the law, but to their 2018 prospects. It doesn't help when you've got Steve Bannon publicly declaring at the Values Voters Summit that the only thing Trump had in mind here is blowing the law up.
"Then you had Obamacare," Bannon said. Trump is "not gonna make the [cost-sharing reduction] payments. Gonna blow that thing up. Gonna blow those exchanges up, right?"
So much for that whole "the government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments" legal charade from the Trump team.