Past as prologue: Does the ACA battle of 2010 offer Democrats a way out of the GOPs health-care...
FRIDAY, MAR 17, 2017 08:15 AM EDT
Past as prologue: Does the ACA battle of 2010 offer Democrats a way out of the GOP’s health-care mess?
Howard Dean's plan to expand Medicare was scuttled by the noxious Joe Lieberman — but it remains a terrific idea
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
If you’re a Democrat, watching the GOP tie itself up in knots over its health care bill can’t help but evoke a strong feeling of schadenfreude. After all, the Republicans have spent the last seven years screaming from the sidelines about the horrors of Obamacare. The House voted to repeal or alter the program 60 times in that period. And apparently they were so busy casting those votes they never had time to create the replacement bill they promised. The one they finally threw together and released this month is a royal mess. And because this is 100 percent a GOP program it’s also 100 percent a GOP problem.
On Thursday, the House Budget Committee managed to keep the Republican defections down to only three votes and passed the bill on to the Rules Committee, where Speaker Paul Ryan will have the opportunity to make some changes to get him to 218 votes in the full House. At the moment, the Washington Post estimates that 37 House members oppose the bill — which is 16 more than Ryan can afford to lose. And they are all opposed for different reasons: The Freedom Caucus wants to obliterate the whole thing and let the invisible hand of the market decide whether people should live or die, while slightly more sane Republicans recognize that killing or bankrupting their own voters might not be a popular policy. As much as Ryan wanted to deliver this reeking pile of offal to the Senate before his people have to face the voters over the extended spring break, it’s not looking good.
The Senate is just as divided. Most Republican senators would like nothing more than to see this thing buried in the House so they don’t have to deal with it. The problem is that they all promised to repeal the hated Obamacare and their loyal voters took them seriously. If they don’t pass the bill Ryan produced to go through the reconciliation process with a 51-vote majority, they need to get some Democrats on board to break a filibuster. To put it mildly, that’s not happening.
We know President Trump doesn’t care. As I wrote the other day, he thinks he’s got a clever strategy: He can make the Affordable Care Act implode and then blame the Democrats. Maybe he’s right that his voters won’t hold him responsible for it, but they’ll definitely blame Paul Ryan and the GOP Congress. Right-wing media is already on it, starting with Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s former crew at Breitbart News.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/17/past-as-prologue-does-the-aca-battle-of-2010-offer-democrats-a-way-out-of-the-gops-health-care-mess/
