Absurdity Of GOP Repeal And Replace Reaches New Heights

The Senate is apparently prepared to vote on the skinny repeal bill in the next 24 hours. There is no bill that anyone has seen yet. The bill would effect one-sixth of the American economy. There are at least six Republicans who are willing to say on the record that the bill will increase premiums and cause at least 16 million people to lose health insurance next year. There are probably many others who know that is true but aren’t willing to say it. Yet many of these Senators will vote for this bill anyway. The reason they are willing to vote a bill that they know is a disaster is to say they simply passed something and then hope they can cobble together a bill that can pass in conference, a bill that they have not been able to come up with on their own in the last seven months or, in fact, the last seven years.

The problem is that the House may simply take the skinny repeal that passes the Senate and pass that bill itself, essentially making it law. So now four GOP Senators, Graham, McCain, Cassidy, and Johnson are demanding that Paul Ryan guarantee that the bill they pass will go to conference and not be passed into law by the House. The House, for its part, says that it can’t make that guarantee until it sees the bill which, of course, no one has seen.

GOP Senators are now in the surreal position of promising to vote for a bill as long as the House promises to not make it law. In addition, they are again breaking another governing norm by trying to craft a bill in a conference committee in secret and without any hearings. That is not what a conference committee is for.

I’m guessing that Ryan will cave on this demand in the end. Neither the House or the Senate want to be the party that puts the final nail in the seven year Republican lie of repeal and replace and get blamed for it. Each of them will spin the process out as long as they can in order to avoid what seems like the inevitable.

The Republicans can not even state what the goal of their healthcare legislation is. There is no principle behind it other than gutting Medicaid and providing an enormous tax cut for their plutocrats. But even those “principles” have apparently been abandoned in the latest Senate bill. Right now, Republicans are essentially slaves to a slogan. They still fear their base more than the millions that will lose healthcare and the hundreds of thousands that will die. And they are led by a President whom they neither fear or respect and is clueless about policy. Are you tired of winning?