Jeff Yarbro, a Tennessee state senator, makes a point which Congressman Goodlatte would do well to consider.

Goodlatte is chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is supposed to monitor federal law enforcement and the activities of the executive branch. But Goodlatte’s continuing indifference to the Trump campaign’s attempted collusion with a hostile foreign regime, the Trump administration’s abuse of power and the Trump family’s abuse of the public trust for private gain stands in sharp contrast to his obsessive efforts to prosecute Hillary Clinton for a more dubious cause.

In May Goodlatte said he approved of the decision to appoint former FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Apparently he considers this a good excuse for maintaining silence about the ever-increasing number of scandals surrounding President Trump, his administration and his family.

So I hope he’ll at least summon the minimal courage it would take to disagree with Trump’s attorney.

A member of Donald Trump’s legal team says he does not believe the president will have to testify under oath to special counsel Robert Mueller, whose Russia investigation the president believes is part of a “witch hunt.”

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl asked lawyer Jay Sekulow on “This Week” Sunday whether the president is including the special counsel probe when he talks about a “witch hunt.”

“Yeah,” Sekulow said on “This Week.” “When he talks about the scope and nature of the investigation, he’s concerned about the nature of what’s going on here.”

Responding to a 2010 request by The Richmond Times-Dispatch to explain his position on climate change, Congressman Goodlatte wrote:

There is no doubt that the earth’s climate is changing. The earth and its climate are dynamic, and have changed throughout history even without human activity. We have reached a point where some experts concur that the earth is once again warming. Regardless of the reason, the debate over climate change should remind us that we should be good stewards of our planet. America has made great strides towards preserving our environment and has arguably the most comprehensive and protective environmental standards in the world, but more must be done.

Not exactly a full grasp of the enormous dangers posed by increasing global temperatures, rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, but at least an acknowledgement that (whatever the cause) something worthy of attention may be happening to the climate.

So it’s worth noting that when Goodlatte had a chance to act this week on what he claims to believe– he didn’t.

Goodlatte voted for an unsuccessful amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have blocked a study into the 20-year impacts of climate change on the military and would have removed language from the law that recognizes climate change as a “direct threat” to the national security of the United States.

Forty-six other House Republicans, including almost all of the GOP members of the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus, joined Democrats to defeat the amendment.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a member of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, spoke out against her fellow Republican’s amendment. “We would be remiss in our efforts to protect our national security to not fully account for the risk climate change poses to our bases, our readiness, and to the fulfillment of our armed forces’ mission,” Stefanik said on the House floor.

In her remarks, Stefanik was echoing the statements made by Richard Spencer, Trump’s Navy secretary nominee, to a Senate committee on Tuesday. Spencer said climate change represents a real threat to the military, Politico reported. “The Navy, from my briefings to date, is totally aware of rising water issues, storm issues, etc.,” he said.

Regardless of what he actually believes, it’s unfortunate that Goodlatte put his support for the politics of climate change denial ahead our nation’s military preparedness.

In the wake of reports about a meeting last year between between Donald Trump Jr, other Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer, Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York has called on Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte to schedule hearings to investigate the matter.

Nadler, a ranking Democrat on the committee, said:

Donald Trump, Jr.’s subsequent response, including the released excerpts from an email exchange, suggest incriminating evidence of collusion with Russia by the highest levels of the Trump campaign. Donald Trump, Jr. confirmed interest in, and expressed support for, working with Russian officials who offered allegedly incriminating evidence against Hillary Clinton for the purpose of assisting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This revelation is significant, both for the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as new investigative territory that relate to President Trump and his associates.
…..
The criminal investigation by Director Mueller and the House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigations must, of course, continue. However, when it comes to investigating the sweeping nature of the current allegations, the firing of FBI Director Comey, the potential criminal activity by the Trump campaign, and the attempt by a foreign power to undermine our elections – it is clear that we must have open hearings with the jurisdiction and authority to fully conduct an investigation of this matter. The House Judiciary Committee should immediately conduct hearings to investigate, and I call on Chairman Goodlatte and the Republican leadership to allow the public interest to be served.

So far Goodlatte, like most Republicans, has not said a word about the latest revelations concerning Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with close connections to the Kremlin, and an email exchange in which he responded to a promise of damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton by writing, “I love it.”

Just imagine Goodlatte’s outrage if, say, Chelsea Clinton had attempted to aid her mother’s campaign by trying to collude with a hostile foreign power promising damaging information about Donald Trump. The only possible conclusion is that Goodlatte has made a cold political calculation to put party above country and misplaced loyalty to President Trump above courage and integrity.

He may be surprised how bad a calculation that turns out to be.

On his Facebook page, Congressman Goodlatte reported on his July 10 visit to the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC) in Harrisonburg, to “talk with residents and staff.”

“Thanks for your questions and hospitality!” Goodlatte wrote.

It would be good to know what the questions were and how he answered them. Unfortunately we are unlikely to find out from the congressman, who prefers to keep his planned visits in the Sixth District– and the contents of those visits– closely-guarded secrets.

Did Goodlatte get any questions about his support for repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with the American Health Care Act? Many residents of the VMRC depend on Medicaid to meet their living expenses, as the VMRC Foundation reports:

At any time, there are approximately 38 residents in Complete Living Care or Assisted Living who must depend on others for financial support, including Medicaid…

As The New York Times reported, Medicaid pays for most of the 1.4 million people in nursing homes. But the Republican-backed AHCA, as well as the Senate Republicans’ version of the bill, would make deep cuts to Medicaid.

Under federal law, state Medicaid programs are required to cover nursing home care. But state officials decide how much to pay facilities, and states under budgetary pressure could decrease the amount they are willing to pay or restrict eligibility for coverage.

“The states are going to make it harder to qualify medically for needing nursing home care,” predicted Toby S. Edelman, a senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “They’d have to be more disabled before they qualify for Medicaid assistance.”

States might allow nursing homes to require residents’ families to pay for a portion of their care, she added. Officials could also limit the types of services and days of nursing home care they pay for, as Medicare already does.

It would be nice to think Goodlatte could have provided assurance to all the residents of the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community that they will be allowed to remain there as long as necessary, even if the Republican bill passes. But it’s hard to see how he honestly could have done that.

Timothy Jost, Emeritus Professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on government health care policy. I asked him to respond to some of Congressman Goodlatte’s statements in reply to an interviewer’s question on June 27 on radio station WIQO about the the Congressional Budget Office’s report that more than 20 million Americans stand to lose health insurance if Congress approves Republican legislation to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act:

Congressman Goodlatte is simply repeating here standard Republican health care talking points. It is not clear that he has read either the House or Senate bills or the Congressional Budget Office Reports or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Actuary’s report on the bill. By avoiding actually meeting with his constituents in town hall meetings, and rather limiting himself to interviews with reporters who are incapable of or unwilling to challenge his statements, Goodlatte avoids having to confront the actual damage the Republican proposals would do. Let’s examine each statement:

“Overall, let me just say about the number of people who may not be covered, a large percentage of those people are people who will voluntarily decide that the don’t want to purchase health insurance.”

The CBO report on the House bill that Goodlatte voted for projected that 23 million fewer Americans would have health insurance under the House bill than under the current Affordable Care Act. Goodlatte is correct that the CBO report estimates that 14 million fewer people would have coverage in 2018 under the Republican bill than under current law, and that many of these would drop or not renew coverage because of the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. This number is probably too high. But by 2026, the CBO projected that 23 million would lose coverage. About 14 million of these would be people who lose Medicaid coverage because of the Medicaid cuts and about 8 million who would lose coverage in the individual market because tax credits are cut and because the coverage becomes much skimpier and not worth the trouble of buying for many people.

“And remember, there are 30 million people today, even though they are mandated under what I think is a faulty Supreme Court ruling of a few years ago, 30 million people who chose not to get health insurance even with a law mandate that they must get health insurance or pay a fine. So that’s one part of it.”

It is true that, even though the Affordable Care Act has reduced the level of uninsured to historically low levels in the United States, 25-30 million people remain uncovered. It is hard to see how this is an argument for increasing the number of uninsured by another 23 million, but apparently Congressman Goodlatte seems to think that is the case. So why do people remain uninsured?

First, about 16 percent of those uninsured are undocumented immigrants whom Goodlatte has no intention of helping. Another 12 percent live in states like Virginia that have not expanded Medicaid and thus can’t afford healthcare but are not offered the help the ACA intended them to receive. Many of the remaining uninsured are eligible for Medicaid or for premium tax credit assistance, but do not know that this is the case. Many of these qualify for one of the exceptions to the individual mandate, such as having income below the filing limit. Some pay the penalty. Obviously, what is needed is more aggressive outreach to tell people that coverage is available, and additional help for those who can’t afford coverage, but Goodlatte would rather take coverage away from those who already have it.

“The other part of it is that people who will come off of this are the states that expanded Medicaid. That will be another large percentage of this 22 million that CBO says will not have health insurance. Since Virginia did not expand, we’re not going to experience that aspect of the problem.”

It is true that millions who will lose coverage will be from Medicaid expansion states, and that since Virginia never expanded Medicaid, these losses will not directly affect Virginia. But the logic here is bizarre. It is like saying that refugees who are starving to death in a refugee camp that has received no relief supplies should count themselves lucky that they will not be affected by the cut-off of relief supplies to another refugee camp that was receiving help. Of course, if the ACA remains in place Virginia could expand Medicaid in the future. That course of action will be cut off by the House or Senate bills. Moreover, both the bills cut Medicaid dramatically in the future. The Senate bill would reduce projected Medicaid spending by 26 percent in 2026 and 35 percent in 2036. It is clear that cutbacks of this magnitude will not just affect the expansion population, but also traditional Medicaid recipients— the elderly, disabled, children and their families, and pregnant women— who will lose services, access to providers, and even eligibility.

“Finally CBO has gotten this wrong year after year after year with Obamacare. So I’m not sure I trust their analysis with how this new law would work.”

It is true that the CBO’s projections of coverage under the ACA did not come out exactly right. Predicting what will happen with expenditures and coverage far into the future is difficult. It is particularly difficult to predict developments like a Supreme Court decision that would cut the legs out from under ACA Medicaid coverage and that surprised virtually all Supreme Court observers. But in fact the CBO has done better than anyone else in predicting developments under the ACA. And for better or worse, the CBO is Congress’ own nonpartisan scorekeeper, and Goodlatte cannot simply accept their projections when he agrees with them and reject them when they don’t support his case.

“What I do know is this will save the taxpayers a lot of money, it will give consumers more choice, it will lower health insurance premiums by up to 30 percent, which will make a big difference, which will encourage people to get health insurance.”

Specifically, the legislation will save very wealthy taxpayers, like Goodlatte, a lot of money. The House bill would have cut taxes by about a trillion dollars over ten years, with a quarter of that going to taxpayers making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, and most of the rest to big corporations. The CBO projected that enactment of the House bill would initially raise premiums by 20 percent over current trend, but that by 2026 premiums would fall to 30 percent below current levels. The specific reason for this, however, was that coverage would become much skimpier— with higher deductibles, fewer benefits, and in some cases exclusion of preexisting conditions. Overall, the premiums for buying a plan equivalent to today’s marketplace coverage under the Senate bill would increase 74 percent by 2020.

“And they’ll have choices they can afford, whereas right now a federal bureaucracy tells every insurance company what needs to be in every plan. And in order to make the plans affordable they provide people with extraordinarily high deductibles– $7,500, $8,000, $10,000 deductibles. For a lot of people that’s almost meaningless except when it comes to a catastrophic illness. It’s not insurance in their minds.”

This claim is simply bizarre. What the House and Senate bills do is to allow insurers pathways to offering fewer benefits with higher cost sharing. In fact, under the ACA many insureds have high deductible policies. But people with incomes below 250 percent of the poverty level get cost-sharing reductions that dramatically reduce their actual cost sharing while many insurers offer basic services, like doctor visits, before the deductible kicks in. All analyses agree that deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing would go up dramatically under the Republican bills. In particular, older people would have to pay much higher premiums to get coverage like they get today. Insurers would not be able to offer services before the deductible.

“In addition we think we’ll have lower-deductible, affordable policies.”

This is simply not true. No responsible analysis projects this. It is possible that insurers will offer policies that exclude preexisting conditions and do not cover mental health services or prescription drugs and that have low-annual limits for lower premiums. But if you find this kind of coverage, make sure you never get sick.

“But for those who want high deductibles, we will have a vastly improved medical savings accounts program that will allow people to double the amount they put into their plans tax-free.”

Health savings accounts are a great tax shelter for wealthy people, who have extra income to invest in a tax-free account. They do little or nothing to help lower-income Americans who have benefited from the ACA. But the Republican legislation is all about helping the wealthy, and making life harder for the poor.

Congressman Goodlatte has the week off this week. He should spend it meeting with his constituents and learning how the ACA has affected their lives. Unfortunately, he is too cowardly to do so. He would rather spend his time on foreign junkets and meeting with wealthy donors. Perhaps if he talked to real people, he would learn that the talking points he is repeating do not reflect reality.