McConnell Again on Healthcare
“Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate are not satisfied with the Tom Price appointed CBO chief, who insists that there are four fingers in front of his face and apparently won’t make numbers up to help take away health insurance from 22 million people.
So Mitch McConnell and the Republicans will rely upon, and I am not making this up, “ALTERNATIVE SCORING” to further the Ted Cruz amendment to Obamacare repeal through the Senate. Republicans are expecting it will take weeks to get the scoring from the CBO.”
Repubs are running out of time to repeal the ACA and achieve tax reform under reconciliation. The budget year ends EOM September. If the ACA is not repealed by then, it has to wait until next budget year. You can not do two reconciliations in one year and the other one is tax reform.
McConnell To Use Alternative Scoring for Healthcare Bill, Crooks and Liars, Frances Langum, July 13, 2017
And he’s apparently telling “moderates” not to worry about medicaid because a future Congress will prevent the cuts.
Personally ( think the whole House and Senate “repeal/replace” is a ruse to keep the faithful base thinking they mean it, but since if it were to pass they’ll almost certainly (I would say absolutely) lose a Senate majority and even more seats in the House in the mid-terms and they can’t afford for that risk with a conservative dumbo in the white house.
So it appears to be something the conservative right want’s to pass but the GOP in composite can’t afford to let it pass so it won’t. McConnell is a master politician, don’t forget. The excuse will be “xxxxx” and that will suffice. It will be brought back out in another modified but won’t pass form again in the campaign for the mid-terms in July next year.
That’s been my assumption since day one of the new administration and majority GOP senate. It’s still my assumption. It’s a ruse.
LT:
It may be a ruse just to disrupt and get people to think in a negative manner too.
If the GOP wants to sacrifice Trump in 2020 to a Dem president, then they’ll pass a draconian health care bill after the mid-terms in 2019 and let the next congress and president try to fix it again, which will be nearly impossible unless the 2020 election pulls a House and Senate Dem majority again with a Dem President .. which, imo, is unlikely until at least 2024.
So they’ll pass some draconian health care bill in 2019, since imo, Trump can’t win another election anyway (if he even survives his first term). Besides they can always impeach Trump and install Pence anytime they want… which is what I think they’ll do before the 2020 campaign season begins.
Think big picture. And who is in the Dem arsenal for a Presidential candidate in 2020? When does the next potential Dem candidate become apparent? Bernie’s too old & too far left to win a general election. He’s a perfect cheerleader to keep the left in hopes, but not a general election winner imo…. besides he’s a northerner.
Everyone always talks about the president, the president, the president . . . No one ever looks at the reality. California is under represented by 14 House Representatives. The filibuster and supermajority vote used so successfully in the Senate is unconstitutional and denies the main role of the Senate to pass law based upon a majority.
In the Senate based upon equal representation for each state, there is a small state and lower population bias. In the House with Representatives assigned by populations for Congressional Districts with populations ranging from 586,000 to > 1 million because Congress locked the number of Reps to 435 with each state having at least 1 Rep. This is not what the framers intended for the House or the Senate. It too has a small state bias now and it grows. It is hilarious keep looking at the popular vote to solve the issue.
HRC would have been president if the House was apportioned properly, EC votes awarded by percentage of popular vote, with no Congressional district being > 120,000 (framers though 50,000 was the number). Gerrymandering would disappear, Congressional people would truly rep their constituents, special interests would be stymied, lock stepping in blocs of votes would be minimized, etc. It would be near impossible to sway over 2000 representatives. 66% percent of the population live in 15 states and they are held hostage by the other 34% of the population in The House. The House needs to go back to a population based institution, as this is the main issue, and the EC will follow.
And the Senate? No longer would a minority be granted the power to stop a majority which is what is forcing Repubs to squirm today and which blocked the Dems during Obama’s reign.
That is the big picture.
LT,
Did you ever hear of Bernie before he ran for Pres? Anyone not named Clinton will win. The key is the congress. Always has been. Always will be.
We are witnessing a new day. It is entirely possible that the Senate will pass a bill with the Cruz amendment deregulating the insurance industry in spite of the fact that the amendment was very firmly denounced by the Health insurance lobby AHIP.
This is way beyond a party obeying instructions from rich people and concentrated interests. This is a party so ideological that they might force deregulation on an industry which argues that it won’t do it’s job without the regulation.
This is also an interesting collective action problem. Health insurance companies acting through their representative AHIP demand that they be regulated. They know that if they aren’t they will be forced by shareholders to cherry pick.
A lobby clearly advocating regulation of the industry, because it is in the public interest is extraordinary. A party so insane that it will ignore that advocacy is appallingly extraordinary.
Note I assert that I understand the motivations of AHIP. I assert (with no doubt at all) that they are sincere and (at least this once) the argument that their preferred policy (anything but Cruz) is in the public interest is based on the fact that it is, they know it, and they do care enough to say so.
The utter pathology of The Republican party is also genuinely new. It wouldn’t make Marx admit that his theory was wrong (goes without saying he never ever did) but it is proof that his basic theory of politics and history is wrong.
Robert:
I read that also. A special interest group not wanting a law repealed freeing them from the shackles of regulation. Congress is broken . . .
Here is yesterday’s Jennifer Rubin on Republicans:
“‘It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a [party’s] mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing.’ Again, to borrow from Brooks, ‘beyond partisanship the GOP evidences “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code.’”
“For seven years, the party vilified Obamacare without an accurate assessment of its faults and feasible alternative plans. ‘Obama bad’ or ‘Clinton bad’ became the only credo — leaving the party, as Brooks said of the Trump clan, with ‘no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code’ — and no coherent policies for governing.” The GOP’s moral rot is the problem, not Donald Trump Jr.