The Susan Collins ‘Reasonable Dance’ begins. Let’s see what she eventually votes for.
I’ve seen her so often start out pretending to be reasonable, and then voting exactly the way Mitch McConnell tells her to vote. Why should this time be any different?
bait.
If the Senate takes more than 2 weeks (highly likely), Trump will go crazy on Twitter—and then he’ll forget, as his mind, memory and sanity recede further into his own past.
Susan Collins is the voice of reason in the GOP. Unfortunately, she is not the vote of reason, so her words means nothing.
Shorter, Senator—
If you have to ask, you’re screwed.
She will fall in line. Her dissenting votes only happen when the Republicans are guaranteed to win without her.
“The Senate is starting from scratch,” she said. “We’re going to draft our own bill. And I’m convinced that we’re going to take the time to do it right.”
Translation: By the time we are done, the ACA should be on its last legs and will need emergency legislation to save America from its death spiral. It will take some time for us to write a bill and have a lengthy reconciliation session with the House. The insurance companies will send the ACA down the tubes with the uncertainty we are providing prior to the new enrollment period. They will literally stampede out of the exchanges. Like the song says, time is on our side, yes it is. Mitch might even let me vote against against it if he has enough votes to pass it anyway. I can then claim to be a moderate again. Winning!
Lady, your goose is cooked. How do you sleep?
If they take the time to do it right, they will never pass it. Only a really horrible, murderous, evil bill can pass the Freedumb Caucus.
Hopefully some cagey Democratic Senator will string her along for a year, extracting maximum concessions w minimal commitment, fucking up R schedule until the vote takes place in the middle of 2018 election, and of course vote “NO”. Return the favor for 2010.
Reince Priebus on Sunday nevertheless claimed Trump will make sure consumers with pre-existing conditions are “taken care of.”
Pinned. I plan to refer to this often over the next 3.5 years.
“Taken care of” might have a slightly different meaning to Trump’s Russian Mob connections.
Here we go again.
Charlie Brown never did get to kick that football, right?
This is going to sound silly perhaps, but I’ll go for it anyway.
We keep hearing from people like Sen. Collins , "“We’re going to draft our own bill. And I’m convinced that we’re going to take the time to do it right.” Excuse me, there is already a law that does many things right, but also has some significant problems. Its called the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Why are Republicans trying to reinvent the wheel, particularly when their result is more angular than round.
Of course, we all know why. All of them, including so-called moderates like Collins have been foaming at the mouth for seven years or more that they musy destroy Obamacare – “repeal every word” – and so forth. As any thinking person knows – and I may be asking a great deal out of the Repubs – these incessant rants about repeal are nothing more than the infantile perambulations of all the children who now control Congress and the White House.
Why oh why cannot some more sensible people (listen up Democrats) simply propose fixing the problem issues with the ACA? Would not this be to the better benefit of the American people?
I know. This is where I get silly because I know the reason. This will never occur so long as our government is controlled by racist ideologues who still cannot abide the fact that our first black President just might have accomplished something good for our country . . .quite a few good things in fact. The Repugs are so obsessed with this that they are willing to do great harm to millions of people just to satisfy their own prejudice.
And just like in the Civil War, we all lose.
I am not making predictions on how long this takes. Largely because I see very few pressures on the Senate to slow walk this thing, and quite a few to get this thing over with pronto.
They can’t kill it outright, or stick in committee until there is more dust than paper. The 12 that McConnell has pointed to, to work on it, includes a number of prima donas who want major face time in front of the cameras. As you point out, Trump and the WH are going to throwing tampers, and Ryan and the HFC will continually be lobbing firebombs their way.
Politically, the sooner they get something done, the better their chances that it will fade from the public’s memory…that is, as long as they cause the implementations to start no sooner than 2019. And of course, the sooner is out of the way, the sooner they can take up their tax cut fetish in full.
The only pressure I see to slow this down is, to do it right. And considering who we are talking about, that really isn’t a pressure they feel. They just want to soften some of the blow, and considering they already have everyone freaking out about the House bill, even slight changes will give the perception of that. And that’s all they need…the perception combined with a implementation after the midterms.
That neither she (or any female senator, for that matter) nor Cassidy is a part of the Senate drafting team should tell you all you need to know.