Senate GOP Goes For Yet Another Obamacare Rollback

The Senate has plenty of work to do before they adjourn again for the election. There is the important task of putting together some sort of budget deal in order to keep the government from shutting down at the end of this month. Then there is the question of coming up with a clean bill that will finally create some funding to combat the continuing Zika crisis. In addition, Republican Senators have to keep on dodging questions about the latest outrages coming from Donald Trump. So you’d think they might want to take care of these issues or even possibly introduce some legislation that advances their vision for the future. Of course, you’d be thinking incorrectly. Apparently, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate have so few ideas that they have had to borrow the one idea that the House has managed to produce in the last four years – that’s right, roll back Obamacare. McConnell actually has two bills ready, one that eliminates the individual mandate if there is only one option for Obamacare coverage and the other eliminates the individual mandate if a state’s average Obamacare premium rises by more than 10%.  Of course, neither of these will address the relatively few real problems with Obamacare and are intentionally designed to actually weaken the law. I guess Senate Republicans are so desperate to get out GOP voters in order to save their majority that they’ve had to stoop to this. Of course, neither of these bills are going anywhere as Democrats are sure to filibuster them and Obama will veto them even if they ever do get to his desk. But such is the dysfunction of our Republican-led Congress these days.