Politicians & Pundits: Lindsey Graham

Unconstitutional 20 Week Abortion Ban Comes To The Senate

Emily Aden, Director of American Bridge’s Protect Women’s Health Careinitiative released the following statement in response to Senator Lindsey Graham’s introduction of legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks in the Senate:

“This bill punishes women, criminalizes doctors for doing their jobs, and is based on completely fake science. It’s a repugnant piece of legislation that would drag our country backwards and represents one of the greatest attacks on women’s rights in recent history. It must be stopped.”

Read more after the jump.

Bridge Project Releases Fact Sheets Showing Dire Graham-Cassidy-Heller Impacts in Six Key States

Bridge Project today released fact sheets showing how dire the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson plan would be for people living in six key states: Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Senate Republicans are attempting to push through the dangerous so-called health care bill that has not even been scored by the CBO. The analyses that are available, however, show that the Graham-Cassidy-Heller plan is even worse for the states than previous Republican bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It would cause 32 million Americans to lose their health care coverage, deeply cut Medicaid and other health care funding for states, eliminate or weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and increase out-of-pocket costs for tens of millions of Americans. The plan would also be disastrous for older Americans.

“Republican Senators like Dean Heller […]

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Bridge Project Launches New Ad Against Cassidy-Graham-Heller-Johnson Bill In Key States

To help bring transparency and accountability to Republicans’ latest dark-of-night attack against the American healthcare system, Bridge Project is releasing a new digital ad blitz targeting 6 Republican Senators, highlighting the excruciating impacts the Cassidy-Graham-Heller-Johnson legislation would have for average Americans and urging these Senators to vote against the bill.

With the backing of Donald Trump, Republicans in the Senate are rushing a bill that was written in secret by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) to the floor for a vote  before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office can even determine what its full impact on American families would be. They are doing this because, as independent studies of the bill’s substance confirm, it would be a nonstarter with the American people. Polling shows all of the last Trumpcare attempts decisively rejected by the public – and Republicans want to keep […]

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THE KEY QUESTION FOR SENATE REPUBLICANS ABOUT CASSIDY-GRAHAM-HELLER

“How will you justify supporting this attack on Americans’ healthcare when you meet your constituents again?”

Republicans are yet again trying to force a Trumpcare bill down the American peoples’ throats that would increase health costs, gut the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people suffering from preexisting conditions, and end Medicaid as we know it.

The GOP is moving forward with this disastrous bill despite the fact that the largest patient advocacy organizations in the United States – including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Physicians – have called on Senators to stand against Cassidy-Graham-Heller-Johnson.  So has the American College of Physicians, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the American Association of Retired Persons.

In response to the warnings from these various groups, American Bridge President Jessica Mackler posed the following question to every Republican senator considering this legislation:

“The top nonpartisan patent advocates in the country have warned – in the strongest terms – that this […]

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American Bridge Statement on Senators Graham, McCain, Johnson, and Cassidy’s Press Conference

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah released the following statement responding to a healthcare press conference held by Senators Graham, McCain, Johnson and Cassidy:

“It’s tough to take this rhetoric seriously considering recent history. If Senators McCain, Graham, Johnson, and Cassidy are sincere about working in a bipartisan fashion, they need to vote down this bogus ‘skinny repeal’ bill. Full stop. Hedging their bets on some bogus assurances that they may get from Speaker Ryan won’t cut it. House Republicans aren’t working in good faith and no one should think otherwise.”

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Republicans Still Unwilling To Protect Voting Rights and LGBT Equality One Year After Supreme Court Rulings

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One year after major Supreme Court decisions on the Voting Rights Act and the Defense of Marriage Act, conservative leaders are still denying equal rights for all Americans by failing to address the issues raised by these cases.

After the Supreme Court struck down a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act, or VRA, there has been little appetite among conservatives in Congress to fix the sections of the law that have been almost universally considered the most successful part of the landmark civil rights legislation. The VRA enjoyed bipartisan support when it was reauthorized in 2006; House Speaker John Boehner said at the time that the law had been “an effective tool in protecting a right that is fundamental to our democracy.” However, in the face of extreme opposition from the Tea Party, conservatives have either questioned the need for a legislative fix or ignored the issue entirely.

Sadly, the inaction on this issue – which has led to the passage of voter suppression laws in several states – is almost certainly politically motivated. As Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, bluntly stated in 1980, “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” In fact, analysis has shown that election fraud, particularly the in-person voter impersonation that supposedly prompted tougher voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent. In addition, the voters who are disproportionately affected by voter ID laws – the poor, students, Africans Americans and Hispanics – all tend to vote for Democrats.

Read more after the jump.

Senate Finance Committee Republicans To Continue Cruz’s Crusade

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On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on the October launch of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. While the committee’s Republicans are expected to keep up their extreme, Ted Cruz-led attacks calling for the wholesale repeal of Obamacare, it’s worth remembering that a number of them sang a different tune during the problematic implementation of Medicare Part D in 2006.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), for example, now the Finance Committee’s ranking member, said of Medicare Part D in 2006 that “any program of that size and magnitude will have problems initially!” Hatch also commended a CMS administrator for doing a good job with “this very, very difficult to implement bill that we saddled you with.” And fellow Finance Committee member Mike Crapo (R-ID) argued in 2006 that glitches shouldn’t outweigh the benefits of positive public policy, saying of Medicare Part D that “we should not let these problems overshadow the fact that every day there are folks who are paying far less for their medications than they were before.”

But the similarities between the rollout problems facing the Affordable Care Act and Medicare Part D are unlikely to buy Obamacare any leeway from a Republican Party that has been bent on destroying health care reform from the outset. Like their counterparts in the House, who have voted nearly 50 times to repeal or defund the health care reform law, Senate Republicans have introduced dozens of bills designed to chip away at the law and repeatedly tried to use political tactics to undermine its viability. Yet the GOP’s blind devotion to sabotaging the health care law at any opportunity ignores the millions of Americans who would suffer if the legislation were repealed, including those with pre-existing conditions and seniors who fall into the prescription drug “donut hole.”

Wednesday’s hearing follows several similarly themed events held in recent weeks by other Senate and House committees, at which Republicans berated witnesses from CMS and HHS and used the opportunity to attack Obamacare as a whole. With the Finance Committee’s Ted Cruz-led Senate Republicans likely to pile on, it’s clear that the GOP’s real interest is partisan grandstanding, not fixing the glitches in the law.

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Barriers To Reform: The Anti-Immigration Policies And Extremist Money Blocking Progress In The Senate

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As immigration reform moves forward in the Senate, the success of any legislation will depend on the cooperation of conservative lawmakers with troubling histories on the issue. However, it is not only their past policy positions and quotes that are disturbing. These key conservative senators also share a history of campaign contributors who also fund extremist anti-immigrant organizations, including those labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Each of the Republican senators in the immigration “gang of eight” have supported extreme positions and aligned themselves with anti-immigrant forces. Beyond the “gang,” leading conservatives such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, David Vitter, and Ted Cruz will figure prominently into the fate of immigration reform despite having similarly concerning records.

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