“I’m concerned we’re just perpetuating a bad process,” Hatch told TPM. “They want to do it for another two years. I’d rather face the problem now.”
Ok Orrin, what do you have in mind? You think you have a better approach to actually solving the problem? Show it or shut up.
I think your cynicism is well-founded. In order for Paul Rayn to assemble a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to get the job done, Rayn would have to be a leader. Paulie isn’t a leader – it’s pretty clear he’s never had a good idea in his life (not a requisite for leadership, but helpful), and it’s not at all clear that he can recognize a good idea when one is brought to him (and that is a requisite for leadership).
What Paulie is is a GOP partisan hack. He is the leader of front man for the dead-end kids in the GOP caucus. I believe he’ll do whatever the Republican Study Group and the Freedumb Caucus tell him to do.
HT to @daveyjones64 below
Psst…he isn’t even a leader of that. He is merely the guy that they order to do their bidding. The HFC tells Ryan what’s what, not the other way around.
While this bill would pass as a stand alone, as part of a budget bill it’s more problematic. And I don’t know if Ryan would bring this bill to the House floor.
The GOP is going to struggle to pay for tax cuts by whacking medicare. If they do go through with it in a mid-term election cycle year, I don’t think the GOP would survive in the majority in both houses of Congress. Certainly no incumbent Dems would be at risk and it would be a 2006 scenario to see if we could beat the gerrymanderers.
Removing people’s health care is urgent, restoring it is not. I don’t understand, though, why Alexander can’t do the markup in his own HELP committee.
Hatch:
“I’m concerned we’re just perpetuating a bad process,” Hatch told TPM. “They want to do it for another two years. I’d rather face the problem now.”
You have insurance, asswipe, so you really don’t have a problem.
Hatch already voted for repeal and failed, This is his 579th try at the brass ring.
Not if you’re the Mob.
I still wouldn’t bet one thin dime either way on whether this bill (or something very much like it) ends up passing and becoming law or not.
I don’t see it passing the House as a stand-alone bill. In its current form, I’m not sure you’d get enough Republican votes to pass it, even with all the Democrats voting for it. And if it did, I doubt it would be anywhere near a veto-proof majority.
Meanwhile even getting it to the floor for a vote means either Ryan suspends the so-called Hastert Rule (so far his rhetoric suggests that’s unlikely for the bill in its current form) or else the bill has to have the support of a majority of the GOP caucus before it moves forward.
I don’t see the latter happening without major concessions to the Freedom Caucus nuts, concessions that would then function as poison pills that would force Dems to vote against it in the House, and doom it in the Senate as well.
So I wouldn’t rule of the possibility that the House GOP’s end game is to try to turn the bill into Obamacare Repeal Lite, and make the Democrats kill it.
Maybe it could pass if it’s folded into a must-pass spending bill, as has been suggested. Again, that depends heavily on McConnell and Ryan’s “leadership.” In other words, it’s far from a slam dunk.
So the only reason I wouldn’t bet the other way (why I wouldn’t bet on failure either), is that from a policy standpoint, from an avoiding catastrophe and actually addressing a problem standpoint, it IS a slam dunk. No sane, reasonable, intelligent Congress could vote against this thing on policy grounds. It doesn’t cost money, it actually saves money. It can help stabilize the markets and helps lower income and middle income people get lower co-pays and deductibles.
There is literally no reason not to pass it…except base-fellating GOP politics. But that could very well be enough.
