The NPR Politics Podcast - Obamacare Repeal Efforts, Revised Travel Ban and Trump's NFL Controversy

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Republicans' Obamacare repeal efforts are still alive, but hanging by a thread. Also, a revised travel ban and the President's comments on the NFL. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Scott Horsley and congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Find Ask Me Another on the NPR One app or wherever you get podcasts. This is Kate Azar calling from the Long Beach Public Library, winner of the National Medal for Museum and Library Services. This podcast was recorded at... Monday, September 25th at mid-afternoon. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. All right, here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Republican Obamacare repeal efforts are once again hanging by a thread. There's a new revised travel ban. And over the weekend, President Trump went to war with the NFL. So yeah, there's a lot to talk about as we record early Monday afternoon. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horslake.

I cover the White House. Shaping up to be an exciting NewsPact week. So let's start with health care. There's a lot of news in 2017 that's disorienting or confusing or just totally new. But this particular storyline is getting to feel very familiar. And that storyline is a Republican effort to repeal Obamacare appears to be short of the votes it needs to pass. And Sue, amidst all this, we have a new version of the bill being released today. The language has been changed a bit. What is the status right now?

The closest analogy that I can explain this with is it's like a poker game and all the cards have been dealt and we're just waiting for final bids. And there's all different kinds of elements of bluffing going on. And we don't really know who's going to win. The momentum right now is not in the bill's favor, despite a last minute sort of frenzy and flurry of dealmaking that is very clearly aimed at convincing some combination of Republican holdout senators to get on board. So in terms of holdout senators right now at the moment, and again, this is a timestamp moment where this might change by the time you listen to it. John McCain is a no. Rand Paul is a no.

Susan Collins is a very likely no, but not an official no yet. Who else are we looking at? And who else has yet to weigh in here? The fourth name that we've been focusing on pretty exclusively is also Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. One of these last minute dealmakings that we're seeing and this story is still unfolding and there's still a lot of details to learn about the revised versions of the bills that have not been formally released yet. But we do know that the efforts of these revised versions of Graham-Cassidy, named after the senators that have co-authored the bill, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, is aimed at lessening the blow of expected Medicaid cuts

to states like Alaska and Maine. Now, Senator Ron Johnson, who's also one of the chief sponsors on the bill, was on Morning Edition today, And he was asked specifically about how this new math seems to benefit states like Maine and Alaska. And he kind of just said, well, you know, we're constantly revising the bill. And that's just the way it turned out in the end. That's a rather convenient, convenient win for Alaska and Maine. But here's the tough politics of that. It's so obvious that those decisions are being made to get those senators on board. And the bottom line is both states are still facing, if this bill becomes law, less Medicaid dollars going to their states than under current law. Lee Simerkowski and Susan Collins in the past have both said that that is a fundamental issue for them. And also the politics of, doesn't it just kind of look like a buy-off?

And that's tough for senators. And Scott, we've said this, maybe triple digits on the podcast this year, that Republicans can afford to lose two votes, they can't lose three votes, or the bill won't pass because no Democrats are voting for it. The problems that John McCain and Rand Paul

and Susan Collins have with this bill do not seem to be problems that can be tweaked with revised language from Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham. No, I mean, John McCain's problem was about the process and how it come about. We thought maybe that they would have appealed to John McCain by having this hearing this afternoon before the Senate Finance Committee. But that doesn't really amount to a regular order. It was sort of a fig leaf. You know, when Sue talks about bluffing and the poker game, there was an interesting move last week when the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a sit down with Lisa Murkowski and right after that came out and said, we're going to have a vote on this bill because he'd earlier said, we're not going to have a vote unless I've got the yes votes in my pocket. So it sort of looked to the outside world as if, huh, I guess Lisa Murkowski is on board and she's going to come around. And it seemed like he had the momentum. But maybe that

was just a wily bluff by the majority leader to sort of create the illusion of momentum when it wasn't really there. And who should torpedo it but old John McCain? Potentially. Potentially torpedoed it because they still, by the math, could have the 50 votes they need. They don't have if they don't lose anybody else. One more Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski coming out as a no would do it. So, Sue, usually votes are not held where the bill fails the vote because the majority party controls what vote comes up or not. And usually they just don't have a vote if they don't have the votes to do it. And that's why this summer the last repeal effort failing was such a big deal. What are the political arguments for and against just going

forward with this anyway, and having a vote on Friday or Saturday, even if more than three Republicans are no's at that point? It's still unclear. And we should say that Mitch McConnell's office said last week that they intend to vote on the bill this week. They never actually committed to a vote that is sort of Senate speak, but it does matter. There's two arguments here. You talk to some Republicans who say part of this effort is proving to people that they did everything they could to repeal and replace Obamacare and they came up short. There is another argument that says what political benefit do you get by consistently and constantly reminding your base and reminding your donors that you can't do the thing that you promised them that you were going to do? I don't know which way Mitch McConnell is going to come

down on that. And we we have consistently made fun of the it's two weeks out a time frame on so many different things this year because it's such a constant. But two weeks ago, we were told, two weeks out, this week, the week of the 25th, was going to be tax reform week. They were going to roll out the tax reform process. It's all anyone's talking about, right? And here we go yet again. It's going to be a week of Obamacare drama. And even if they roll out the framework of tax reform, it's not going to be the main story. Which may be partly because the framework is not much of a framework. We don't expect a whole lot of detail in this framework.

So maybe if that gets overshadowed a little bit, it's not that big a deal. So Susan Collins this weekend said she was basically a no. It's very difficult for me to envision a scenario where I would end up voting for this bill. I have a number of serious reservations about it. But she said she was going to wait to make up her final mind until after the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with its analysis. We expect that later this afternoon, a.k.a. between now when we're talking and when you, the listener, are listening to this podcast. But it's going to be kind of a skinny CBO analysis because they're not going to include a forecast of what this means for insurance coverage.

And it was that headline number from the CBO, you know, umpteen million people are going to lose coverage, that was the kiss of death for earlier Obamacare repeal efforts. This time the CBO has told us up front, we aren't going to have that kind of forecast. We didn't have time to prepare that. But we have seen other forecasts from other outlets that once again, if you believe the folks at Brookings, for example, 32 million more Americans would be left without health insurance by 2027 if this bill became law. Which again, like I know we talked about this before, but I still keep coming back to this idea that such a constant criticism that Republicans have had and ran campaigns on was the idea that Obamacare was rushed. That quote from Nancy Pelosi, that paraphrase, if we have to pass the bill to know what's in it. And here they are. Like, it is really remarkable that something that could massively change the way that people get their health care might be passed through without a

clear indication of what it would do. I think that's also when we get past all the kabuki theater that's going on this week. Part of why I say the momentum is not in this bill's favor. Senators get that. And I think that there is a significant wariness at the ferocity and the pace of this bill, especially when you consider whatever the CBO says today could already be moot because they are revising the bill in real time. So if they do intend to vote on this bill this week, they will be voting on a bill that does not have a CBO score. And I know that sounds small, but senators are well aware of the fact that health care makes up one sixth of the economy. And they also are very aware of what this bill might do to their

states. And so where last week the momentum seemed in the bill's favor because holdouts were holding fire, because Lisa Murkowski has been in active negotiations, the things that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and their overall relationship. You had Trump endorsing Luther Strains this weekend, but maybe it's a mistake. Who knows? I don't know this guy. What happens? Does does attempt number four failing change the relationship, strain the relationship in a way that attempts one, two and three failing already didn't do? Does this make things worse or is hard to tell? That's a really good question. And I think the fact that health care, this health care showdown is also coming at the same time as that Alabama special election. It's kind of confusing a lot of the politics, right? Because the president has gone all in on Luther Strange or mostly in on Luther Strange, who's the incumbent. But the insurgent candidate, the anti-establishment candidate, Roy Moore, might win.

And I think, one, we tend to overthink the outcomes of special elections. But I also think the outcomes of special elections can really dramatically shape the politics on Capitol Hill, like they did when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary. And that completely changed the calculations in Congress on immigration. I don't know if they can't get health care done and a candidate that Trump has endorsed loses, how lawmakers will interpret what that means and what it means going forward. The one thing I am told consistently over and over again is that if they fail on health care, the burden to pass a tax cut will increase tenfold and that there will be tremendous pressure from lawmakers and from voters to get that done. All right. So we are going to take a quick break. We will come back. We will talk about the new travel ban and the Trump NFL situation

that happened over the weekend. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. And the Trump administration updated its travel ban yesterday, just hours before the old one was set to expire. The new ban includes major travel restrictions on people from eight countries, including five that were in the original ban and three new ones. And unlike that first ban, which went into effect almost immediately, this one has some lead time. It would take effect on October 18th. Scott,

the other big change that jumped out to me is that now this is not exclusively focused on Muslim majority countries. That's right. Now, the administration argues that it would never based its original travel ban on religion or antipathy towards Muslim, that these were countries that have been singled out by Congress and by the Obama administration for special scrutiny. Of course, that ignores an entire presidential campaign where it was framed as a Muslim ban. And the legal opponents of the ban have made a lot about not only the comments the president made during the campaign, but comments that he and his aides have made since they've been in office as well. But with this new proclamation, they have added

two countries, North Korea and Venezuela, that are not majority Muslim. And that may be a way to improve their legal standing, to make the case that, look, this is not about religion. This is about the information that we get from the sending governments. It may also be seen by those same legal critics as just a smokescreen. And North Korea and Venezuela are obviously two countries where there's enormous tension with the United States right now. But is there any evidence or any concern about people coming from Venezuela or North Korea into the United States to launch terror attacks? There's very little visitation from North Korea to the United States as it stands

now. And in terms of what they're doing with Venezuela, they're only limiting travel by Venezuelan government officials and their family members. So if there were a threat, this would not necessarily address it. It's really just another way to sort of ding the Venezuelan government for what the U.S. describes as a slide away from democracy and towards dictatorship. With North Korea, obviously tensions between the U.S. and North Korea are very high. And the basis of all of this revised travel ban is supposed to be going after countries that don't supply the United States with adequate information to vet the people that want to come here from those sending countries. Obviously, we don't have a lot of information exchange with the government of Kim Jong-un. Scott, the original travel ban was challenged in the courts. Is this meant to circumvent impending Supreme Court action? Where does this fall with what the Supreme Court's going to do? 2.0, which came out in March. This is not really designed to short circuit that court case. The representatives of the Justice Department say that they plan to continue to vigorously defend

the original travel ban 2.0. That original travel ban was always finite in length, though. It was a 90-day freeze on travel from those six countries, now five countries, that was designed to give the government time to give the government time to review the information and the vetting procedures. That 90-day period lapsed this past weekend. So they needed to do something, and this is a way to do it. But the Supreme Court and courts in general are always so focused on the idea of standing, that if something's an irrelevant situation anymore, they might just not bother to hear it. And often you've seen the court use that as an easy out on complicated stuff. Could that happen? Could the Supreme Court hear this case and in the

end just say, eh, it's not in effect anymore, move it on? They could certainly decide that this is a moot issue and we don't have to come to a ruling. There are other parts of the travel ban though, for example, the piece that applies to refugees, that clock has not run out. So the Supreme Court will still have to wrestle with that part regardless. So Chad, North Korea and Venezuela are new. Sudan is off the list. Why? Sudan was one of the initial countries. And the administration now says we are getting the level of information from the government of Sudan that we can appropriately decide.

They wanted two pieces of information. One, to be sure that they could confirm the identity of would-be travelers and also match those names against local records of criminals and potential terrorists. And they say they get that level of information from Sudan. So the limits that were in place on Sudanese visitors have been lifted. So, Scott, a couple of confusion and a lot of legal back and forth about the idea of a bona fide relationship, a bona fide connection between somebody trying to get into the country and somebody already here. Has that been narrowed or changed at all in this latest version? The administration is attempting to narrow it. You're right. When the administration issued Travel Ban 2.0 in March, some of the challenges were that this was infringing not on the rights of those would-be travelers,

who after all are foreign nationals and have limited rights under the U.S. Constitution, but that it was infringing on the rights of Americans who had a stake in letting those people come to the country. That might be a family member or an employer or an educational institution in this country. So the critics were saying, and the legal challengers were saying, you're infringing on our rights by putting these limits on visitors from these six countries. And it went through the district courts, the appellate courts. Ultimately, the Supreme Court came down and said, travel ban 2.0 can go into effect, but they left a carve out for certain people with a direct connection to an American citizen who could bring those complaints.

And there's been further litigation as to how direct that connection could be. Do grandparents qualify, for example? Do in-laws qualify? Do second cousins once removed qualify? Well, in their new proclamation, the administration has left room for some exceptions for people with that kind of bona fide connection to American citizens. However, they say that those exceptions are narrower than what was dictated by the Supreme Court under Travel Ban 2.0 and the court case there. That may be a source of additional litigation. I mean, it could be that the critics say, well,

the Supreme Court has said already that you need to give us this big a carve out. You can't narrow the carve out now by executive fiat. And that was my last question. The last few times you've seen a rush to the courthouse from groups like the ACLU, from Democratic attorneys general. Are we seeing that with this latest executive order yet? We haven't seen the rush to the courthouse steps probably only because it doesn't take effect until October 18th. So the lawyers have some time now, the luxury of polishing their briefs. They don't have to do it on an emergency basis.

But I would be surprised if we don't see more litigation challenging this new proclamation. All right. And when those challenges come, we will probably talk about it on the podcast. We're going to shift gears. We can channel Weekend Edition here and say now time for sports, except it's sports. Sports time. Or not. Two weeks ago, less than 10 NFL players

protested during the National Anthem. This weekend, more than 250 did. And here's why. Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He's fired. He's fired. So that was President Trump on Friday night at a

rally for Alabama Senator Luther Strange. It's got a lot of people in the NFL angry. The protests, of course, began last year, first with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was protesting police violence and the shootings of unarmed black men. The protests had mostly died down until this weekend because the NFL responded in force. You had owners, coaches, players, all mostly on the same page. And to underscore just how upset this made the NFL, here's a statement from Bob Kraft, who not only is the owner of the New England Patriots, but is a really close personal friend of President Trump. So this is Kraft's statement. I am deeply disappointed by the tone of the comments made by the president

on Friday. I am proud to be associated with so many players who make such tremendous contributions in positively impacting our communities. So that's the initial wave of response. And you saw similar statements from just about every every owner in the league, I think. So what's the best way to characterize what happened this weekend? Because you had President Trump tweeting and tweeting and tweeting and continuing to make this a thing. And then you had players go out in force. You had some entire teams not even participating in the national anthem. I think for this, it is really important with Donald Trump to remind people that his relationship with the NFL goes back a very long time, far before he ever entered into politics and is rather complicated, which you sports fans know even better than I.

But, you know, Trump in the early 80s tried to start a rival league to the NFL. He's always been sort of engaged in the politics and intrigued by NFL politics. And then on Colin Kaepernick and that issue of kneeling specifically, this is something he brought up during the 2016 campaign as well. This was not he was talking about Colin Kaepernick days before the election in 2016. I don't think it's a stretch or hard to understand that this is a pretty obvious and pretty easy play to base level politics. The constant need to be in a fight, the constant need to have somebody that you're going up against. And here you're going up against those ungrateful NFL players who disrespect our country, to paraphrase that argument of this whole thing. Says the president who's criticized prisoners of war and Gold Star families. Yes. And I think what's happened here is you've seen the league rally around players, not because they necessarily agree with Colin Kaepernick or the others who have been taking a knee, the minority players who've been taking a knee. But this is now like when somebody on the other team takes a shot at, say, the punter on your team. And maybe

nobody in your locker room even really liked the punter, but that's okay. We stick up for our punter. And so now you saw every team sort of closing ranks around the members of their team that felt strongly about this and wanted to take a knee. And it went from Colin Kaepernick being a lightning rod in a thunderstorm that was kind of dying down, that was kind of going away, to Donald Trump now inserting himself as a lightning rod and just ratcheting up the volume. And again, the NFL, including owners, many of whom contributed to Donald Trump's campaign or his inauguration, rallying around their players. Yeah, but you know what? I think you should also point out in the raw politics of it, there's a big chunk of the country who does think it's wrong to kneel during the national anthem, who does think these players are wrong to do it, and who probably got pretty worked up by Trump picking this fight. And do you know where a lot of those voters are? In Alabama. Right. I mean, this is this is the thing about this is that he he started this at a campaign rally in Alabama for Luther Strange.

The concerns that they have about Luther Strange, the incumbent being able to win this race, is a low enthusiasm, low turnout, special election in an off year. So if you want to really excite your base, and there's a lot of base Republican voters in the state of Alabama, what better way to do it than with a controversy that gets at the most culture worry of issues. And this issue gives it all in one little neat package. And not only did he say those comments on Friday, but this is the message that the president drove all weekend long, including again into this morning. And what I think this weekend showed, too, is that when the president wants to ignite a social debate, no one can do it better. The office of the presidency weighing in on those

kind of issues. And I think the NFL and football is sort of a core American value to a lot of Americans, right? Like it really is to households across this country. Like football is God. It is religion in so many ways. It is a break, though. And you're right, Scott. This is a president who always wants to have an enemy, wants to have somebody else. But it is a break from the tradition to have a president stirring up a hornet's nest with the NFL, which is about as American an institution as one can have, because he needs a punching bag, because he needs somebody to be taking a hit. It really is a break from the tradition of a president trying to unite the country.

This is a president deliberately trying to divide a country for his own political ends. And, you know, he was asked about this by reporters over the weekend. And what he said was, you know, we have great people representing our country, especially our soldiers, our first responders, and they should be treated with respect. Obviously, people can have different opinions about what Colin Kaepernick and the other players have done. But I don't think in general, the ballplayers who were taking an E yesterday were showing disrespect to soldiers or to first responders. They were showing disrespect to President Trump. That's who they were mad at. And Trump is trying to align himself with soldiers and first responders who are broadly popular, more popular than the president is right now. I think some folks will say, you know, Mr. President, you don't get to

drape yourself in the mantle of the military and first responders, which are institutions for the whole country at a time when you are taking a divisive stance like this. Last wrinkle we need to kind of work in here was this wasn't just the NFL. Trump also tweeted Saturday morning that the Golden State Warriors, who won the NBA championship last year, no longer invited to the White House. He said that because it was clear the Warriors weren't interested in going. Steph Curry, their star player, had expressed reservation. So there was a quote I just wanted to read from Steve Kerr, who's the coach of the Golden State Warriors.

Kerr, pretty politically active liberal. He's been criticizing the president a lot during the campaign as well. But he talked to Sports Illustrated and he said, look, I'm a basketball coach and what I do obviously pales in comparison to what the president does, but our jobs are similar in at least one respect. If you want to be an NBA coach, you need to be prepared to be criticized. There has to be an inherent understanding when you enter into any public position of power that this is what happens. People are going to take shots at you, and it's incumbent upon you to absorb those shots. Maybe you respond diplomatically, but you maintain a level of respect and dignity. What you can't do is just angrily lash out.

Good overall leadership advice, I think. Something that President Trump clearly has not taken as advice. And traditionally, the NBA has been a more politicized league than the NFL. And that's partly because the demographics of the market for those two leagues. The NFL is traditionally a very conservative, kind of apolitical, I mean, conservative in the sense of, you know, sort of business conservatism, trying to be inoffensive, not trying to take sides in this sort of thing. So for them to get in this public spat with the president, I think is a real statement. All right, that is a wrap for today. We will be back on Thursday with our weekly roundup. In the meantime, keep up with all our coverage on NPR.org,

on your local public radio station, and on the NPR Politics Podcast.