Who's to Blame for the Trumpcare Debacle, Donald Trump or Paul Ryan? By Jonathan Chait

[DonViejo]

Donald Trump’s health-care strategy has been in mortal peril since before his inauguration. (Once Republican Senators indicated in early January they wouldn’t support repeal-and-delay, forcing the party to draw up its own plan, the best chance to repeal the law was already gone.) If there was a moment when the final demise became assured, it was in Trump’s with Tucker Carlson, when the president declined to mount even a perfunctory defense of the existing bill:

Link to tweet

Whether or not he realized it at the time, Trump was essentially filming an attack ad that could be used against any member of Congress who votes for the bill. The plan cuts taxes for the rich and lays waste to health-care access for the poor and middle class. Trump’s response is, “I know.” He replies that the bill is “very preliminary,” and when told it’s not consistent with the message of his election, says, “a lot of things aren’t consistent.” Why would any Republican vote for a bill knowing they can be hit with an ad showing Trump admitting the plan harms their voters?

Health care has risen to the top of Trump’s vulnerabilities. A new Fox News poll shows that the public disapproves of his handling of health care by a 22-point margin. His allies have mounted an aggressive effort to shift the blame for this debacle from Trump to Paul Ryan. Hilariously, the pro-Trump spin depicts the president as a dupe for the wily House Speaker, and Trump’s aides are trashing the bill in private. Of course, the lack of presidential support drives the chance that the bill can pass the House even lower. The Obamacare repeal debacle is already moving out of the how-a-bill-becomes-a-law stage and into the blame-shifting stage.

The truth is that Ryan and Trump are both at fault. At one level, blaming Ryan for the legislation’s demise is absurd. Trump agreed to the process Ryan carried out, as well as to its substance. His administration collaborated on the design of the House bill and the legislative strategy. To be sure, Trump almost certainly lacks even the faintest grasp of the workings of the law he agreed to, but it’s hardly Paul Ryan’s fault that the president is a television junkie who can’t read anything longer than a single large-type font page with a handful of bullet points. Ryan would not have produced a bill in the first place if Trump didn’t authorize him to do it.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/whos-to-blame-for-the-trumpcare-debacle-trump-or-ryan.html

[world wide wally]

1. Some things are created equal