In A Metaphor For The GOP, Senate Republicans Will Vote On Unknown Bill Today

So Republicans seem intent on voting to move forward on some kind of health care bill today, although no one has a clue what exactly the bill will look like. In so many ways, this is a superb metaphor for the Republican party as a whole, essentially promising to vote on a slogan but having no real details beyond that, but at the same time demanding that their members just vote yes anyway.

The fact that the Senate parliamentarian has blown the original bill apart by saying that defunding Planned Parenthood, banning coverage for abortion, mandating a 6 month lockout for non-continuous coverage, and mandating the continuation of CSRs, the subsidies for insurers, are all ineligible for consideration under budget reconciliation and would require 60 votes has not seemed to dent Republicans enthusiasm for moving forward.

Right now the GOP plan is simply pass a motion to proceed which will allow Senators to propose their pet amendments and McConnell to start wheeling and dealing to find some kind of bill that will pass. How that wheeling and dealing would be any different than what McConnell has been doing up to this point is beyond me. But the theory is to simply get the ball rolling and then figure which way it will go.

In order to get this done, they are bringing John McCain back from his brain surgery to help them get to that motion to proceed. As Jeet Heer writes, “They are willing to kill John McCain so he can help them kill thousands more. Seems appropriate somehow.” More importantly, it is hard to see why any of those supposed moderates concerned about the effect of massive Medicaid cuts on their states, people like Senators Collins, Murkowski, Capito, and Heller, would even consider going down this path that leads to the unknown. But the pressure on them is obviously enormous.

Another complication is that it appears that the GOP Senate leadership has already reconciled itself to the fact that any bill the Senate actually passes would probably not be taken up and passed as is by the House. That would mean that the House and Senate versions of the two bills would have to reconciled and then voted on again. For those moderates, that means that not only is moving forward on a motion to proceed leading them into the unknown but that even if they end up satisfied with whatever the Senate concocts, which is highly unlikely, it is virtually guaranteed that the bill will be modified, probably radically so, when it is merged with the House bill. Again, why any of those moderate Senators would even start down this path is beyond me.

Obviously, today is yet another day when the resistance must rise up with overwhelming force. Republicans will never give up on repealing the ACA, and gutting Medicaid in order give massive tax cuts to the rich which means that we must be prepared to fight this battle every single day until Democrats gain at least one lever of power.