The ability to hold signalling votes, which force the republican members in marginal districts (think the 7 who just voted to re-open the government) is really powerful. That republicans “voted against defending protections for preexisting conditions, which were struck down by a republican lawsuit” is a powerful message, and great for a 30 second advertisement.
seven Republicans voted to fund the government (voting against Trump and for Pelosi’s bill). They were: Upton (mi), waldon (or), Hurd (tx), Fitzpatrick (pa), and king, Katko, and Stefinik (ny). All are the type of folks that these “messaging” votes are aimed at.
Evidently more republicans were going to break from Trump on reopening the government, but Pence called around and got them to take a bullet.
While this may largely be a symbolic move, the Democratic leadership in the House is drawing a line in the sand. Keep it up!
To be able to run on “we are protecting your health care, republicans are tying to take it away” they need to start now to have the votes to run a campaign on. The right wing nut job O’Conner’s ruling is a gift to the democrats. They hope that its pending before the US supreme Court come 2020.
The House has filed papers seeking to intervene in the case,
Democrats announced Friday, which by itself is unlikely to have
a substantial impact on the litigation. The House action’s
greatest impact is likely to be political.
Fuck you AP …
Sending in those who would seek to protect the People from
those who would withdraw support for life saving care is hardly
just symbolic —
Why don’t you wait and see what happens in the Court before
you shit all over it ? ? …
[ I know … I know … ]
Storming
Towards
Fantastic
Upheaval
Hey Donnie, Read between the lines…
During that debate, Republicans offered a non-binding measure saying lawmakers should produce legislation protecting consumers with pre-existing conditions. Democrats blocked it.
Can someone more savvy in legislative maneuvering explain that bit to me?
- Why would GOPs offer that measure?
- Why would Dems block it?
I was wondering too, I would guess the non-binding thing causes some procedural problems.
No idea. I was unsurprised it was non-binding, because as much as GOP members want to seem like good and reasonable public servants, there’s no way in hell they will ever allow anyone or anything to compel them to lift so much as a finger to do good for anyone other than their wealthy paymasters.
Yep, once again the AP frames this entirely as a struggle for political dominance, with no suggestion that side R is willing to let tens of thousands of people die easily preventable deaths while side D would rather they live.
One thing I don’t get, can’t Pelosi just pass a bill that reinstates the individual mandate penalty at some level? Even if it were a dollar, wouldn’t that cut the legs off of the Texas judge’s ruling?
Seems like a much more simple fix than the route they are going now. I think we should be passing as many bills as possible that make Mitch have to explain why he won’t allow them.
If the GOP House was one of the plaintiffs in the original suit, wouldn’t the new House’s opposition going forward eliminate the GOP’s standing in this case ? It would seem to me to undermine the lawsuit completely ? Kinda like a Rosanna-Rosanna-Danna “Never Mind!”
R’s did it so they can go out and say “we ran on protecting pre-existing conditions and the Dems voted against it.” Which they will do, but now the question is can they get any news to feature their claims when right now eyes are on the new D majority.
As to why D’s blocked it? First of all a little cross-the-aisle “fuck ya’s all” is in order, just to remind R’s the only influence they’ll have in the minority will be what Pelosi allows them. Apart from that D’s made a calculus as to the believability of the R’s claims to the public at large, they know R’s did run on that message but few believed them after they made such a big stink about voting to repeal it some 45 times or whatever. The rest is D’s feeling confident of dominating the news cycle in the coming weeks so they could afford to brush the R’s off.
Unfortunately they’re putting a lot of trust in the media not to feature three R’s on some talk show pressing that point with no D to rebut it, which some shows will undoubtedly do, and not just Faux News either. But on the whole I think D’s made the right choice, time will tell how much traction the R’s will get with that complaint, to most folks it’s inside baseball so won’t move the needle one way or the other.
Is that like a “Donald Trump promise?”
You know, “Believe me” until “well, you knew who you elected” kind of thing, is it?
TPM is nothing if not fair and balanced, so, after a morning of publishing uncritical “retweets” from Trumpp’s twitter feed, TPM shows fairness and restores balance by throwing in some AP pieces that avoid discussing the import of the policy battles to tens or hundreds of millions of Americans, because the facts might be more favorable to one side than another.
Not a constitutional lawyer, by several light years, but, I assume that the Democratic position is that the judge’s ruling is absurd and will be overturned.
Until higher courts rule that no penalty means no ACA, there is no reason for Dems to try to restore the mandate and penalty (which the Senate might not pass or even take up, and which Trumpp would veto). In fact, trying to restore a penalty now might be viewed as acknowledgement that the judge’s ruling was correct.