OPINION: And now Trumpcare, courtesy of the president’s fellow Republicans

March 08--On behalf of The Sacramento Bee's editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter. Please sign up for it here.

Our take

Editorials

Trumpcare would use euthanasia to cure a cold: The Republican answer to Obamacare has been unveiled in all its dogmatic glory, and we are forced to wonder: Was anyone in that room at all listening to the thousands of voters who have packed town halls nationwide, demanding that Congress leave their health care alone?

California cities and counties should act scared of rising pension payments: CalPERS contributions will be increasing after it reduced its investment return forecast. The League of California Cities is urging its members to start preparing, and says some may have to consider hiring freezes and service cuts. Sacramento's new city manager is being frugal in putting together his proposed budget.

Columns

Marcos Breton: Rep. Tom McClintock deserves credit for facing hostile crowds at town hall meetings, but really, he's just fulfilling the most basic role of a legislator.

Gregory Favre: Despite recent hateful attacks, there is a growing form of generous and caring responses that represent a growing sentiment that we cannot allow the cruel acts of a few to become the legacy of a generation. We must lift our voices in support of an open and compassionate society.

Op-eds

Henry Li: Sacramento Regional Transit sets goals and initiatives that will improve efficiencies, increase service and frequency, focus on customers first.

Take a number: $257.85

The story by Ann E. Marimow begins: "She called the police. Then ATF. After that, the FBI. Janet Delana was desperate to stop her mentally ill adult daughter from buying another handgun." But no one paid heed. The gun shop sold the gun and ammunition to Delana's daughter for $257.85. Delana's daughter shot and killed Delana's husband, and now is in a state hospital, having pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Meanwhile, Congress passed and President Trump signed legislation at the NRA's behest that will make it more difficult to deny guns to people who are mentally ill, as The Kansas City Star's editorial board wrote the other day.

Takes on Obamacare

Los Angeles Times: The House GOP leadership's proposal for repealing and replacing Obamacare would actually leave much of the 2010 Affordable Care Act intact -- except for the parts that make it work. Instead of fixing the problems Republicans have been complaining about, it would make them worse.

Chicago Tribune: House Republicans delivered a long-promised Obamacare replacement Monday night. It's a strong bid to replace an increasingly feeble law.

USA Today: The plan to replace Obamacare offered by House Republicans stretches to more than a hundred pages. It deals with an impossibly complex subject, with myriad unintended consequences. It has not been "scored" by the Congressional Budget Office for its price tag and impact on those who have insurance. So what are Republicans planning to do? Rush it through.

Santa Cruz Sentinel: It's not exactly a repeal, or even a full-fledged replacement. But, at long last, Republicans have a health care plan to call their own. It's just that it's more a revision -- a reform, if you like -- of the existing Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Investor's Business Daily: Seven years after vowing to repeal Obamacare, Republicans have labored to produce a plan that replaces Obamacare with ... Obamacare. This bill would end up putting Republicans on record as supporting all the key elements of Obamacare.

Their take

San Diego Union-Tribune: President Trump's extraordinary Twitter allegation that the Obama White House wiretapped him during the presidential campaign dominated headlines all weekend. Despite the lack of evidence for Trump's allegation, it apparently will be folded into the expected congressional investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian government agents. Wild goose chases are not normally smart uses of a government's time, but the claim is so serious that it demands an independent-minded probe.

San Francisco Chronicle: Unlike the gold mining craze of California lore, sand mining is a low-drama, high-volume affair that isn't likely to capture the public's imagination. It is, however, capturing much of the public's coast.

Orange County Register: The federal government is putting a hold on funding that would aid the California high-speed rail project, but the state apparently didn't get the memo.

Syndicates' take

Kathleen Parker: Do women Marines count in the Devil Dogs lore? The question arises as the Defense Department begins an investigation into revelations about the Facebook group, Marines United, which posted nude photos of female Marines.

Dana Milbank: Reports mostly say that President Donald Trump had made the groundless claim that Obama had the phones at Trump Tower tapped, but never mind that. The White House defense isn't that what Trump said was true. The defense is that "I think he firmly believes" it.

Leonard Pitts Jr.: Ben Carson, the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development, just described slaves as "immigrants." But the slaves were no more "immigrants" than rape is making love. Nor is it difficult to tell the difference.

Ruben Navarrette: Things were bound to get tricky when a senator whose job requirements include meeting with foreign dignitaries began moonlighting as a top adviser to a presidential candidate with a bizarre soft spot for all things Russian.

David Brooks: The dating market becomes a true market, where people carefully appraise each other, looking for red flags. The emphasis is on the prudential choice, selecting the right person who satisfies your desires. But somehow as people pragmatically "select" each other, marriage as an institution has gone into crisis.

Mailbag

Can we assume that Hollywood elites will be forced into the same (universal health care) program as commoners? How about legislators? Is Senate Bill 562 truly universal health care, or just a fake title? -- Richard Shoemaker, Orangevale

Take the apology

For politicians, good issues that stir up the base are hard to find and harder still to leave behind.

As reporters watched, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León sought out Sen. Janet Nguyen, R-Garden Grove, at the pro-Nguyen rally outside the Capitol the other day. He wanted to directly apologize for the terrible decision by another Democrat, Sen. Ricardo Lara, to have sergeants at arms remove Nguyen from the Senate floor for trying to speak her mind two weeks ago about the late Sen. Tom Hayden. Nguyen was violating Senate rules, but that hardly justified the penalty.

At the rally, Nguyen seemingly avoided de León, who already had said the mistake will never be repeated. "The rub here is that she doesn't want to move on," de León told The Take. At this point, he's done trying.

___

(c)2017 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.)

Visit The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.) at www.sacbee.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.