I wouldnât be celebrating just yet. Theyâre still trying to buy off Murkowski.
Yup. Not holding my breath either.
They have modified it to try to bribe the holdouts. More money for Murkowski and Collins. Of course, itâs only short-term, but enough to get them both past another election. Letâs see how stiff their spines are now. And/or how many others jump on the bandwagon and make new demands for their states. If it gets too unwieldy, it may again be problematic.
And how many people would this bill help/be good for? Trump. A Party of One.
More money for Murkowski and Collins.
Yesâand McCain and Paul as well, plus new deregulations to entice Cruz and Lee:
Itâs become an exquisite corpse of a bill.
A real Frankenstein, so to sayâŚ
Is there any point where they will remember that they work for us?
Nope.
The âBuy Off Republicans by Ensuring their Re-elections and Screw the Blue States and All Americans Who Need Health Care Top 1% Tax Cut Act of 2017.â It started off as just the Top 1% Tax Cut Act of 2017, but it has morphed a bit.
What I particularly like about this article is that it makes explicit the catastrophic electoral consequences that await the GOP if this billânet-net worse than the original oneâpasses. And all the GOPers know it. If it was going to be so easy to bribe a few obvious beneficiaries and put it through, rest assured that even if Graham* and Cassidy werenât smart enough to include the bribes in their first bill, Mitch would have told them to do it.
The guy from Cook Report is right about the lost jobs. Iâll bet if asked whether the GOP is so self-destructive as to hand us dozens of House seats on a silver platter, heâd say no. So would his boss Charlie Cook.
Thatâs been the situation since the beginning, and itâs the situation now. Making the bill worse was no way to get it passed, and Mitch is smart enough to know it.
*heâs not stupid.
Well, and those Republicans whose base voters are rabid enough about repealing Obamacare that theyâd threaten to primary them next year if their reps voted against repeal. But really: things have to have reached the point by now that that number is so vanishingly small that to cast votes solely to curry their favor constitutes a tyranny of the minority.
Gerrymandered districts taketh, and they taketh away.
In related news, this morningâs WaPo has an article where the Commander-in-Cheat says the GOP will triumph on healthcare âeventuallyâ, but Heâs âalwaysâ been focused on taxes anyway. Those grapes are kinda high up, arenât they Mr. President?
Meanwhle Graham says heâs on th Budget committee and heâs not going to vote for a resolution there that âdoesnât allow the health care debate to continueâ. Welcome to Plan Bâor is it Plan 9?
So much winning.
I generally do not comment on Republican attempts at passing health care reform bills because I never thought they were very serious attempts. This one has me worried because it has the incentive of rewarding their base in red states while screwing over liberal states.That changes the price they may pay at the polls. They were never going to win in NY and California anyway, but by rewarding red states, the damage at election time may be somewhat muted without real pain felt in red states. Add in some propaganda/messaging, they may not suffer widespread backlash from voters except in areas they could care less about. This bill feels different to me, Iâm no longer so sure itâs all political theater.
The House GOP should remain on the hook over ACA repeal. Even if this version fails. Do not let them forget this was a Day One priority.
He da man. Not that it wouldnât have been delicious to see the Turtle go down bigly.
TPM: your articles on this bill should point out that funding for healthcare falls off a cliff after 2026.
Congress might have rules about measuring the 10-year impact, but TPM doesnât. The overwhelming majority of your readers and the US population will still be alive in 2027 and beyond if the hothead leaders of the US and North Korea can keep their spat non-nuclear.
The House passed a crappy plan that they fully own, no matter what happened in the Senate afterward.
Yeah, keep calling until the vote has passed
I donât think Murkowski, McCain, or Collins will budge. The thing about bribes is that theyâre secret, and this is so far out in the open and obvious that accepting it just says to everyone that you can be bought. Beyond that itâs just insulting. Thereâs something very sleazy about this entire process.
Thereâs something very sleazy about this entire process.
Since weâre talking about Republicans: feature, not bug.
Even if this attempt to kill the ACA fails, I think itâs like Jason in Halloween: regardless of how many times he seems to have been finally killed off, he somehow reanimates. Itâll be that way unless/until Dems take back at least one house in Congress, because there is literally nothing more important to Republicans than tax cuts for the Koch bros and sticking it to the black guy who used to honor the Oval Office.