| McConnell's New Last-Gasp Effort to Repeal Obamacare Appears Certain to Fail |
| Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=39831"><span class="small">James Hohmann, The Washington Post</span></a> |
| Tuesday, 18 July 2017 15:55 |
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Hohmann writes: "Mitch McConnell pulled the second draft of his health-care bill last night after two more Republican senators came out against even bringing it up for debate on the floor: Utah's Mike Lee and Kansas's Jerry Moran."
McConnell's New Last-Gasp Effort to Repeal Obamacare Appears Certain to Fail18 July 17
“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” the Senate majority leader said in a statement sent at 10:47 p.m. He announced that he’ll bring the bill that already passed the House up for consideration “in the coming days,” and the first amendment the Senate would take up would be for the full repeal of Obamacare (with a two-year delay for implementation). But to get that vote on repeal, conservative critics must vote to allow debate on the broader bill. If the clean vote for full repeal failed, as it almost certainly would, senators could continue making additional amendments that may make the measure even more unpalatable to conservatives. GOP lawmakers have voted repeatedly to repeal Obamacare, and the Senate even passed a bill with this exact same language in 2015. But Barack Obama was president then, and it was a safe vote because everyone knew he’d veto it. This would no longer be a show vote. -- Sean Sullivan explains that the wily Kentuckian’s announcement amounts to a dare: “McConnell practically challenged conservative critics of the bill to vote against moving the process ahead. … If hard-right conservative senators vote no on proceeding with the bill and it collapses, McConnell can come back at them and say, ‘Well, you had your chance at the ‘clean repeal’ you demanded. And you decided not to take it.’ He will have shifted some of the blame onto others and given himself a new talking point to counter the ‘clean repeal’ crowd — which includes President Trump. If they vote yes — hey, they’re suddenly back on track, at the table debating legislation with at least some chance of passing.” What’s less clear at this point is McConnell’s end game. “If this doesn’t work out,” Sean wonders, “will he move on to other matters? Follow through on his threats to work with Democrats and narrower reforms, which were seen as ways to try to pressure conservatives not to let this fail? … There are no longer any good outcomes for McConnell — politically speaking. There are bad ones and less bad ones. And putting the onus on other senators means there will be more blame to go around when this all ends.” -- The Republican conference remains deeply divided. While Lee announced that he’s against the bill because “it doesn’t go far enough,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) opposed the measure because it goes too far. There are several senators on each side of that divide. “We must now start fresh with an open legislative process…,” Moran said in his statement announcing opposition to the latest version. “This closed-door process has yielded the BCRA, which fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address healthcare’s rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one. … We should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy.” Sen. John McCain, recovering from surgery in Arizona, called on Republicans to begin working with Democrats to fix the system in a statement sent at 10:16 p.m.: “One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote. As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to Obamacare’s failure. The Congress must now return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation's governors so that we can produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to quality and affordable health care.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), likely to face a primary from his right in 2020, encouraged McConnell to take up an alternative plan he released last week with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.):
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had hinted yesterday, before McConnell pulled the bill, that he might vote against advancing the measure to floor debate, as well. He publicly expressed frustration with comments by McConnell, intended to reassure senators like Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, that the bill’s deepest Medicaid cuts are far into the future and are unlikely to ever actually go into effect. Johnson said he read about these private comments in The Health 202 last Thursday and then confirmed them with other senators. “If our leader is basically saying don't worry about it, we've designed it so that those reforms will never take effect, first of all, that's a pretty significant breach of trust,” Johnson told the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “And why support the bill then?” -- Reporters who are following the debate most closely don’t think McConnell’s gambit will work.
From one of The Post’s political reporters:
From a Washington Examiner reporter who covers Republicans:
From a Politico reporter who covers Congress:
A Bloomberg News reporter who covers the Senate noted that the Congressional Budget Office has already scored straight repeal:
A Democratic operative who has been focused on the health-care fight rounded up quotes from GOP senators saying that straight repeal wouldn't work:
-- But, but, but: Pressure from conservatives and the White House could still make the repeal vote very tough for some senators. Trump re-endorsed straight repeal last night:
So did the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus:
-- The mood on the Hill will continue to be tense in the coming days. The person who broke into Republican Sen. Dean Heller’s Las Vegas office over the weekend left a threatening note related to the health-care bill. The person asserted that he would lose his health care and die if the bill passes and would take Heller with him, per the Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston. (Amy B Wang and Ed O’Keefe) Protests yesterday led to the arrests of 33 people at the Capitol. “The alliance between elected Democrats and protest groups, fragile just a few months ago, has strengthened even as protests have become more disruptive,” David Weigel and Perry Stein report. |
itch McConnell 