Thursday, August 10, 2017

Trump tweets slam Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - Fox News


By Brooke Singman
Published August 10, 2017 Fox News
Sen. McConnell hits Trump for having ‘excessive expectations’
President Trump's Twitter assault on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continued Thursday, as the frustrated commander-in-chief resumed his criticism of the Republican leadership for not advancing the GOP agenda.
Trump's Day II morning tweet criticized McConnell, R-Ky., for failing to pass a plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and came hours after a tense 10-minute phone call between the two.
"Can you believe that Mitch McConnell, who has screamed Repeal & Replace for 7 years, couldn't get it done. Must Repeal & Replace ObamaCare!" Trump tweeted Thursday.
The day before, while much of the media focused on the threat North Korea poses to the United States, Trump lashed out at McConnell on Twitter.
“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?” Trump tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
The president’s tweet was seemingly in response to comments McConnell made in a Rotary Club meeting in his home district earlier this week.
McConnell explained to constituents the “complexity of legislating” in response to questions regarding the lack of a “repeal and replace” of ObamaCare.
TRUMP TARGETS MEMBERS' OWN HEALTH PLANS AFTER OBAMACARE REPEAL FALLS FLAT
“A Congress goes on for two years. Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things [that] need to be done by a certain point,” McConnell said Monday. “Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”
The president has repeatedly expressed his discontent with Republicans in both the House and the Senate for their failure to pass a plan to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a new health care plan. The administration was left without a major legislative win before the August recess, with lawmakers, seemingly, willing to shift their focus from health care to tax reform when they return to Capitol Hill.
And after fighting Republicans tooth-and-nail for years on their repeal and replace message, Democrats have started touting a slew of proposals aimed to improve the ailing health care system.
DEMS SUDDENLY SCRAMBLING TO COME UP WITH OBAMACARE FIX
Some Senate Republicans have welcomed Democrats to the process. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said they needed to “stick with” health care and bring it to a resolution.
“The end is going to be sitting down with our colleagues from the other side of the aisle and getting something passed,” Flake said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
Senate hearings to discuss health care, in a bipartisan fashion, are set to begin September 4.
Brooke Singman is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

The U.S. Oil Industry Is Pushing Back on Sanctions Against Venezuela - TIME Business

The U.S. Oil Industry Is Pushing Back on Sanctions Against Venezuela
Posted: 09 Aug 2017 07:26 PM PDT
(CARACAS, Venezuela) — The Trump administration’s decision on Wednesday to slap sanctions on eight members of Venezuela’s all-powerful constitutional assembly brings to 30 the number of government loyalists targeted for human rights abuses and violations of democratic norms since anti-government protests began in April.
But even as the list of targeted individuals grows longer, promised economic sanctions have yet to materialize amid an outcry by the U.S. oil industry that a potential ban on petroleum imports from Venezuela — the third-largest supplier to the U.S. — would hurt U.S. jobs and drive up gas costs.
The sanctions announced Wednesday focused on current or former Venezuelan government officials accused by the U.S. of supporting President Nicolas Maduro’s creation of a special assembly charged with rewriting Venezuela’s constitution — a move the U.S. says is an attempt by Maduro to shore up his grip on power.
Since its election last month, the 545-member assembly has declared itself superior to all other government institutions and ousted Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, a vocal critic of Maduro.
The U.S. Treasury Department took the unusual step of sanctioning Maduro himself last month, freezing any assets he may have in the U.S. and blocking Americans from doing business with him.
The newest additions on Wednesday include Adan Chavez, the older brother of Hugo Chavez, who is credited with introducing the late president to Marxist ideology in the 1970s, and a national guard colonel lionized by the government after he physically shoved congress President Julio Borges during a heated exchange caught on video.
Former Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez, who is leading the assembly but has so far escaped being sanctioned, said the latest U.S. action seeks to “spread fear” among delegates and please government opponents she described as “criminals” and “unpatriotic.”
While most Venezuelan officials wear U.S. sanctions as a badge of honor — and are frequently rewarded with promotions as a result — Maduro faces a far greater threat if Trump follows through on economic sanctions against the OPEC nation.
For all of Maduro’s anti-capitalist rhetoric, Venezuela, which sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, remains highly dependent on oil exports to the U.S., especially for importing food and medicine — items in short supply as crude prices have fallen and triple-digit inflation wreaks havoc on the economy.
The Trump administration warned last month that it would take “strong and swift economic actions” against Maduro if he went ahead with plans to seat the constitutional assembly.
But since the election last month, no such action has materialized, leading some of Maduro’s opponents to wonder whether the U.S. president has lost his nerve.
The prospect of an import ban has alarmed U.S. oil companies that rely on Venezuelan crude.
Nine companies, including Chevron, Valero, Citgo and Phillips 66, currently process Venezuelan crude in more than 20 U.S. refineries, most of them located along the Gulf Coast, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Many of these refineries are designed for the type of heavy crude that Venezuela exports and replacing those supplies would be disruptive and costly.
An influential industry group whose members include the nine companies has written two letters to Trump warning there is no guarantee that other key sources of U.S. heavy crude imports — Canada, Mexico and Colombia — could provide enough additional supply to replace the Venezuelan oil. Many refineries would likely turn to Saudi Arabia but the higher costs associated with such a shift “could significantly impact fuel costs for U.S. consumers,” according to the letter by the American Fuel & Petrochemicals Manufacturers.
“We want to make sure that we don’t have the unintended consequence of doing more harm to U.S. refineries than the Maduro regime,” said Chet Thompson, the CEO of the group, which represents 95 percent of the U.S. refining sector.
He added that he is hopeful his lobbying is gaining traction.
“We think we’ve come a long way from early July when these sanctions were first being kicked around. … We think folks are a lot smarter on this issue than they used to be,” he said. “We certainly have not received any commitments or promises as far as what they are going to do. But we have done our job.”
The oil industry is finding allies in the U.S. Congress, particularly among lawmakers from the Gulf states.
Six Republican congressmen from three of the states that process Venezuela’s heavy crude — Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana — recently wrote a letter to Trump warning that banning Venezuelan oil imports would do more harm than good. While applauding the president for his efforts to counter “the disturbing decline of democracy” in Venezuela, the lawmakers, led by Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, said that it could jeopardize 525,000 refining-related jobs along the Gulf Coast.
“We fear that potential sanctions will harm the U.S. economy, impair the global competitiveness of our energy business and raise costs to consumers,” according to the July 28 letter, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press by a senior Venezuelan official and whose authenticity was confirmed by one of the signatories, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana.
Some Senate Republicans could soon join the chorus. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who sits on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, is preparing a letter to Trump raising similar concerns about the impact on the U.S. fuel market, according to his spokesman, John Cummings, who said the senator is rounding up signatories.
Energy analysts, however, have been more circumspect about the effect on global markets and prices at the pump. A recent analysis by Wells Fargo Securities concluded that one impact would be to raise foreign heavy crude prices by about $3.50 a barrel. However, the ban would not affect demand for gasoline or reduce the overall supply of crude on the global market, as Venezuela would likely redirect its shipments to countries in Asia and elsewhere, albeit at a painful discount.


“We do not believe there would be significant impact on retail prices to U.S. consumers given that the net availability of worldwide crude oil volumes would be unchanged,” the Wells Fargo report said.