TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: His two attempts to craft legislation replacing Obama’s law have collapsed for lack of GOP support. Republican opposition seems likely to doom a vote next week on his Plan C, a bill simply repealing much of Obama’s statute. Along the way, conservative Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., accused McConnell of a “serious breach of trust” by telling moderates that proposed Medicaid cuts would not occur. His fellow Kentucky Republican, Sen. Rand Paul, was a constant thorn and the most vociferous opponent of McConnell’s effort. And Utah Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, gave party leaders little advance word when he and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, deserted the bill late Monday, effectively killing it in the dark of night. “This has been a very, very challenging experience for all of us,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. McConnell faced a difficult environment. Polls have consistently shown Obama’s statute was far more popular than the GOP effort to repeal it, making his bill a tough sell to colleagues. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings and zigzagging engagement haven’t helped. And facing unbroken Democratic opposition, McConnell needed to win over at least 50 of the 52 GOP senators, a .962 batting average he’s been unable to achieve. “Mitch has a tough, tough job and frankly I cut him a lot of slack on this. He can only do so much,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Democrats, who often grudgingly marvel at McConnell’s moves, kept waiting for him to pull a rabbit from what turned out to be an empty hat. They said he overreached by turning a bill reshaping Obama’s law into one that also cut nearly $1 trillion in taxes over a decade and sliced almost $800 billion from Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, disabled and nursing home patients. They say he boxed himself in by rushing to deliver on his party’s seven-year-old overpromise to repeal Obama’s law. That proved an arduous task that angered tens of millions who’ve benefited from the statute, especially with much of McConnell’s work performed behind closed office doors. “I don’t have any sympathy for him,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., his party’s No. 2 Senate leader. “I assume he felt duty-bound as the Republican leader” to pursue repeal of Obama’s law. But he said McConnell should have known that “rewriting the health care system of America on the fly and in secret was not going to work.” McConnell seemed to be trying to turn lemons into lemonade with next week’s likely rejection of a simple repeal of much of Obama’s law. By losing, GOP leaders would send a message to conservative voters that they tried to obliterate the law, while signaling to Republican senators that the votes aren’t there and it is time to move on. A senator for 33 years, the 75-year-old McConnell has a reputation for weaving compromises that avert onrushing political disasters. He cut several such deals during Obama’s years in the White House, including major budget pacts in 2011 and 2013. But once Donald Trump won the presidency and Republicans took House and Senate control this year, it became McConnell’s job to play offense. In particular, he is quarterback of the Senate GOP drive to repeal Obama’s law. But dismantling the law is not going to happen, at least in the immediate future. Assessing Democrats as unwilling to help them scrap Obama’s law — which they were — McConnell ignored them from the start. That tactic ignored his own advice from his 2016 memoir, “The Long Game,” in which he criticized Democrats for passing Obama’s 2010 statute “without regard for the views of the other side.” “Once you only have 52 votes and you try to do a bill just with Republicans, you set yourself up for a nearly impossible task,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. McConnell’s latest bill would cut Medicaid, letting insurers sell policies with negligible coverage and rolling back Obama taxes on the health care industry. Getting GOP votes for it is a Rubik’s cube-like problem because conservatives and moderates have mutually exclusive demands, like whether to slash Medicaid or erase Obama regulations protecting consumers. “You have first- and second-term twerps that think they know the solution to everything,” said former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who retired in 2007. “This was always going to be a difficult process and I’m not sure how we would have handled it differently,” said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas. Movement conservatives who have often accused McConnell of not being an aggressive enough champion of their causes do fault him. “Mitchcare collapses,” read a statement by Ken Cuccinelli, who heads the Senate Conservatives Fund, which has clashed with McConnell. Cuccinelli called the bill’s demise “an embarrassing defeat for someone who portrays himself as a strategic genius.”

SOLUTION: Crumbling health bill dents McConnell image as top tactician.

PROBLEM: "Ohio Sen. Rob Portman has been busy in Washington touting the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act in response to a shocking number of heroin overdoses in Ohio. The bill just passed in the Senate, 94-1. (Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse was the sole ""nay,"" saying he believes that fighting addiction is a local issue.) Ohio ranks high on the list of states reeling from the national epidemic. In Montgomery County, which encompasses Dayton, Ohio, heroin-related deaths increased 225 percent between 2011 and 2015. Back in the 1970s, the heroin on U.S. streets was the ""black tar"" variety, and much of it came from southeast Asia. In 2010, 80 percent of the heroin in the world came from poppy fields in Afghanistan, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. So when Portman said that most of the heroin in America comes from Mexico’s border, we were skeptical. Portman, it turns out, has done his homework. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment of 2015 says that Mexico is the primary supplier of heroin to the United States. ""Southeast Asia was once the dominant supplier of heroin in the United States, but Southeast Asian heroin is now rarely detected in U.S. markets,"" the report state. ""Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Colombia dominate the U.S. heroin market, because of their proximity, established transportation and distribution infrastructure, and ability to satisfy U.S. heroin demand."" The report also says that Mexican ""transnational criminal organizations,"" (the DEA’s term for drug-dealing gangs) ""pose the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them."" The National Drug Threat report notes that Colombian gangs were traditionally the suppliers of wholesale cocaine and heroin to Mexican and Dominican groups. But cartels in Mexico are ramping up their roles on the supply side -- opium production in Mexico increased by 50 percent in 2014. Mexican labs also produce fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl is sometimes mixed with heroin or substituted for heroin, and the DEA reports more than 700 overdoses attributed to fentanyl between late 2013 and early 2015. Drugs get past the U.S. borders mostly ""by land, not by sea,"" said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in the same March 8 hearing with Portman. And a 2015 Washington Post series on the surge of heroin puts the border detection rate at a scant 1.5 percent. Smugglers’ creativity defies gravity: One successful bust came when agents caught two men flying a drone carrying 28 pounds of heroin from Mexico to California. Our ruling Portman said that heroin is coming to the United States primarily from Mexico. He hasn’t been studying drug facts for nothing."

SOLUTION: We understand that this heroin is primarily coming from Mexico, over the border.

PROBLEM: Distressed travelers who were trapped in capital Bogota during an obligatory isolation drill over the long weekend were unsuccessfully looking for seats on buses out of the city so they could spend the quarantine at home. “I’m scared because I need to get home,” said Fernando Lopez, 50-year-old disabled man who traveled to Bogota from his home in Palmira for a medical appointment. “I don’t know anyone, what will happen to me if we can’t travel? My family is waiting for me.”  The quarantine will run until April 13. So far the country has reported 306 cases of the disease and three deaths. The government of President Ivan Duque has ordered Colombians to stay in their homes, blocked international and national flights and restricted the use of long-distance public transport. People are allowed out under 34 exceptions which include travel for medical staff and delivery workers. One person per household is allowed to go buy food and medicine. Violation of the measures can mean up to eight years in prison and large fines. “I have to look for a way to get out because everything I do is for them,” said 22-year-old Venezuelan migrant Gabriela Martinez, gesturing at her two young children. Martinez, who fled her country two years ago, recently lost her job in Bogota and was evicted from her home. She was searching for a bus to Tocancipa, where she has family. She had the equivalent of $8 in her pocket. Some have already begun to protest the measures. In the central Plaza Bolivar, hundreds of street sellers, migrants and some homeless people gathered to demand the government honor promises to help the most needy. Duque has promised to make extra payments to welfare programs this week. The military is ready to help patrol streets in large cities to ensure compliance with the quarantine, Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said. Operations against leftist guerrillas and criminal gangs will continue, he said. Outside a Bogota bank dozens of people waited in a drizzle to withdraw money. “I came out to get a bank card so I can withdraw cash,” said a visibly annoyed Jose Romero, 57. “What I’ve actually probably got is the disease.”

SOLUTION:
Colombians scramble to get ready for coronavirus quarantine.