President-elect Trump on the campaign trail made grandiose promises to voters to bring down costs quickly, to end the war in Ukraine before he even took office and to use tariffs to bolster the U.S. economy and manufacturing.
Since winning November’s election, Trump has indicated delivering on those promises may not be as simple as advertised.
Trump in a recent “Meet the Press” interview said he could not guarantee tariffs would not lead to higher consumer prices.
Month: December 2024
Don’t blame insurers for what doctor and hospital cartels did to US health care
The murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has touched off a wave of anger that’s easy to understand. “Deny, delay, depose” comes from the lived experiences of thousands of Americans. But how much does health insurance actually cost us? According to the American Medical Association, it’s just 6 percent of health care spending.
In other words, if insurers were to donate every cent of profit they made, your health care would become just 3 percent&...
Fiscal concerns should not hold up tax cuts
When Republican lawmakers check in with the small businesses in their districts during the Christmas recess, they will likely hear one overriding message: Pass tax cuts now. According to Job Creators Network's new national poll, small businesses support extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which took effect in 2018 and expires next year, by a 5-to-1 margin.
These tax cuts have been a lifeline for small businesses nationwide that have dealt with four years of challeng...
Biden administration withdraws birth control rules
The Biden administration is withdrawing a set of proposed rules aimed at expanding access to contraception that would have made it more difficult for employer-sponsored health plans and insurers to exclude coverage of birth control.
The move, announced late Monday in a Federal Register notice, will leave in place Trump-era rules allowing employers to cite "non-religious moral objections" to the Affordable Care Act's requirement to cover contraception.
The Depart...
Shutdown chaos has Republicans worried about moving Trump agenda
Republican lawmakers say Congress’s near brush with a government shutdown shows that House Republicans do not have a functional majority, giving them a bad feeling about how difficult it will be to pass President-elect Trump's agenda in 2025.
While Republicans in both chambers broadly agree on the need to secure the border and extend Trump’s expiring tax cuts, GOP senators fear that passing legislation to accomplish those goals, as well as raising the debt limit and cutting fe...
Biden ‘AWOL’ amid shutdown fight: ‘He’s completely disappeared’
President Biden and his administration were largely absent from the onerous negotiations on government funding that gripped Capitol Hill this week.
Instead, President-elect Trump and his allies were the ones wrestling with lawmakers over a continuing resolution as a government shutdown appeared increasingly inevitable.
The White House on Friday blew off a host of questioning over Biden’s absence from the talks, insisting they were staying out of it in part because it...
ACA enrollment marks another record year
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The GOP’s little House of horrors
Can the fragile GOP majority in the U.S. House Of Representatives bear the weight of Donald Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda? Will this version of Republican control of the peoples’ House be even more ineffectual and unstable than it was in the last two years? The early returns are not favorable for the future of the second Trump administration.
Trump doesn’t need a mandate because he has the power if he keeps Congress and the Supreme Court in line. But that’s a b...
Chris Matthews on Elon Musk: ‘This guy is an elephant in a china shop’
Former MSNBC anchor and political analyst Chris Matthews railed at Elon Musk on Friday for tanking the House continuing resolution (CR) that had been negotiated between Republicans and Democrats, and encouraging the GOP to take a hard line despite the rising risk of a government shutdown.
“You’ve heard of a bull in a china shop — this guy is an elephant in a china shop,” Matthews said during a Friday appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
“These negotiations between t...
A pragmatic antitrust vision for the new administration
President-elect Trump recently announced the nomination of his former National Economic Council member Gail Slater as assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Department of Justice and chose current Federal Trade Commission commissioner Andrew Ferguson to head that agency.
Trump’s antitrust enforcers’ priorities will include prosecuting market power abuse by “big tech,” supporting consumers and “little tech,” and enforcing “clear rules...