Special shoutout to the ones in the TownHalls and streets.
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Ryan is a very dangerous man. He wonât be happy until Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the ACA are things of the past. It is of vital importance to flip the House in 2018. He must never be in the line of succession when Trump and Pence are âperp walkedâ out of the White House.
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I donât understand what Judisâ point is. If the bill had passed and Ryan had âdeem and passedâ it in the House and Trump signed it, then the ACA would have been killed for sure. Now unless Congress acts to actually fix it, itâs in the hands of Trumpâs inept misadministration. The fight certainly isnât over, but I donât see how any good could have come from this bill becoming law. I donât have any mixed feelings about this.
Forcing Trump to break it through executive action is far and away the better outcome. After all, itâs much easier for a new administration to change things done by the previous executive than it is to fix things mandated by Congress as evinced by Trumpâs attempted rollback of Obamaâs executive legacy. Given their propensities, maybe theyâll even screw up their attempts to undermine the ACA.
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Only slightly OT, WaPo has an article out about how spectacularly the WH attempt to hold Alaskaâs economy hostage to threaten Murkowski backfired:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and the stateâs other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, to threaten that the Trump administration may change its position on several issues that affect the state to punish Murkowski, such as blocking energy exploration and plans to allow the construction of new roads. âThe message was pretty clear,â Sullivan told the Alaska Dispatch News.
Nevertheless, Murkowski persisted. In fact, she took it one step further and demonstrated that she has more leverage over Zinke than he has over her. As chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski indefinitely postponed a nominations markup that the Interior Department badly wants.
If she wants, Murkowski can make Zinkeâs life so unbelievably miserable. He has no idea. (The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.)
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The cynic in me says that McCain could have prevented all this by either not coming back for the proceed vote, or standing his âprincipled groundâ and voted no WITH his speech about regular order.
If Iâm being charitable, perhaps this was a long game for him to actually kill the repeal and replace crap. Because if he had only delayed the proceed motion, it may have come back up. This way, there seems to be no other choice than going back to committee or giving up.
Unfortunately, to me, this looks like maybe he was really stung by the derision heaped on him for flying in (literally) to save the proceed motion and so decided to vote no to try to save his imageâŚrather than really voting his beliefs.
We may never know the truth of the matter
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Schumer lit up like a Christmas tree.
Well, maybe like a menorah.
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McCain wants a bipartisan committee on healthcare. The legislative achievement heâs always been most proud of is the McCain-Feingold Act to limit the role of money in our elections. Iâm guessing heâs hoping for a replay of something analogous to that in healthcare.
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What will Sarah P. say ?
Well before the vote, Democrats on the floor were smiling, and Republicans looked grim. That was a pretty good tell on how the vote would go. McConnellâs just deserts landed hard on him last night, and Iâm brimming with schadenfreude today. Last night, I was so keyed up I couldnât fall asleep until around 4am.
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While I think that McCain deserves some credit for finally growing a spine, Murkowski and Collins deserve the real credit. Without them, McCainâs principled stand would have been merely symbolic and largely meaningless. Of course it may be meaningless regardless. Dump and Price will kill the ACA through systematic malfeasance and misfeasance and Congress wonât lift a finger to stop them.
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If they do, I hope he lands on Brownback.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall, to watch the sweet, salty tears of Cornyn, Pence and McConnell. âOxygen thieves,â every one of them, stealing good air the rest of us could be breathing.
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I was disappointed by McCainâs yes vote on MTP, but, in the end, allowing the votes may have been good, though risky business. GOPers wanted to vote, and they got their chance and lost, which puts a period at the end of the process for the time being. Theyâll have to come up with something different, probably in a more open process, or decide to work with Democrats.
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Good job, Tierney! You make it look easy.
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Yep, I have no doubt that he this is his ego and not his principles. Not that Iâm complaining, lol.
What gets me about the whole âno Republicans voted for itâ thing is that at the time, the Democrats had 59 senators. At 60, even the rules of the Senate concede that youâve got as much of a consensus as you need.
Add into the equation that Democrats might have passed the ACA earlier, with 60 votes, had a) Obama not spent so much time trying to woo Republicans that we ended up losing Kennedy, and b) the Minnesota GOP not gone all-out to delay Franken from taking his seat, and the entire argument seems like total hogwash.
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I know itâs not his intention, but to me Judis is effectively a concern troll. That post said absolutely nothing that most of us donât already know about the administrationâs sabotage plans (already well underway, in fact) and the need for Dems to be in control in order to get a solid fix to the health care system (or anything else; duh). I usually scan his stuff, but honestly, I rarely get even a glimmer of fact or insight I hadnât already found better expressed elsewhere, or even in my own head.
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Heh; the perils of running government as if it were some Mafia operation. Stupid thugs.
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Very nice write-upâŚbest writing Iâve read. Excellent! I felt as if I were thereâŚ
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Eventually, Pence approached the huddle, shook McCainâs hand and hugged the female senators.
Pence canât have a meal â which doesnât necessarily involve any touching â with a woman who is not his wife (unless âMotherâ is also present), but he can hug female senators?
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