I don’t think there is any formal list of the members of the House Freedom Caucus, but it appears to have about 30 members. At the moment, there are 240 Republican members of Congress and 194 Democratic members, with one seat vacant due to the resignation of Jason Chaffetz of Utah. Assuming all members are voting, the Speaker needs 218 votes to pass a bill.
If the roughly 30 members of the House Freedom Caucus refuse to support a bill, that gives Speaker Ryan about 210 votes. On some issues, he might be able to find eight to ten Democrats who will support him, but that’s simply not the case on a bill to repeal or replace Obamacare.
Now, there are some bills that absolutely need to pass. Foremost among these are the appropriations bills that fund governmental operations. Without these bills, the government shuts down. This can be resolved for a while by passing temporary bills to keep the government funded at previous levels, but then the Freedom Caucus needs to support those continuing resolutions, too, or the Speaker still needs to go to the Democrats for votes. Another prime example of a must-pass bill is one that raises the borrowing or debt limit of the federal government. During the Obama administration, Speaker John Boehner had to go to the Democrats repeatedly to get the votes he needed to pass these kinds of bills. Eventually, this irritated the House Freedom Caucus enough that they forced Boehner into retirement and replaced him with Ryan.
We’re rapidly approaching a new situation in which the House Republicans will have a different kind of must-pass bill on their plate. This will be a bill that becomes necessary if the Senate cannot pass any version of their Better Care Reconciliation Act.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is not happy about talk that Senate Republicans might give up [the] effort [to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act] and instead work with Democrats on legislation to shore up troubled insurance markets.
“If we’re waving the white flag on something that we’ve campaigned against for many years, it is not a good sign for what comes down the pipe. How many white flags will we raise just when the going gets rough?” Meadows told The Hill in an interview.
“It’s incumbent on us to work, to negotiate and find a happy medium that gets 51 votes in the Senate, 218 votes in the House and send it to the president,” he added.
Meadows is reacting in part to comments [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell made Thursday that suggested he might be getting closer to throwing in the towel on the healthcare effort.
“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to private health insurance markets must occur,” McConnell said at a Rotary Club meeting in Kentucky.
What McConnell is saying is that the Republicans don’t have the option of leaving the insurance markets the way they are. If they can’t pass a replacement bill, they’ll have to pass a different bill that shores up the insurance markets, and they’ll have to do that with a 60-vote majority which will require that at least eight Democratic senators agree not to filibuster. Any bill with that level of buy-in from Democrats will not be acceptable to the House Freedom Caucus and it’s highly unlikely that their members will vote for it.
This situation, should it develop, gives the Democrats in both the House and the Senate tremendous leverage because their votes will be needed. McConnell is using the threat of this unhappy scenario to try to pressure his members to rally around his bill. But he’s not lying about what will happen if they don’t.
The House Freedom Caucus and folks in the Senate like Ted Cruz are in deep denial about this and they have come up with something that they think can serve as an escape hatch.
Meadows said House conservatives could also be amenable to a straight ObamaCare repeal bill that has a longer transition of three years instead of the two-year implementation schedule in the 2015 repeal measure that the Senate and House passed but former President Barack Obama vetoed.
A straight repeal vote, even one with a three-year delay, will not have the votes in the Senate for a variety of reasons, including that too many Republican senators are committed to protecting people with preexisting conditions and/or the Medicaid funding that their state has accepted by agreeing to expand Medicaid eligibility. But even if the Republicans did have the votes, they still couldn’t repeal all of the Affordable Care Act using the budget reconciliation rules that are in effect to allow passage without the threat of a filibuster. The House Freedom Caucus chairman Meadows recognizes this, which is why he has a fallback position.
The Senate healthcare bill includes a $50 billion short-term market stabilization fund covering years 2018 through 2021 but that is only palatable to conservative lawmakers because it would provide a bridge to new marketplaces with less federal regulation.
Talk of spending billions of dollars on the insurance marketplaces to keep the broad structures of ObamaCare in place is a non-starter with Meadows and allied House Republicans.
“To suggest that we’re going to bail out insurance companies when we’re not repealing or replacing ObamaCare — that’s what it would be,” he said.
If the Senate healthcare bill grinds to a stalemate, Meadows said he and other House conservatives would be willing to consider market stabilization measures attached to legislation that replaces as much of ObamaCare as possible under Senate rules.
“If we only have a repeal without a replace can I see a market stabilization measure being put forward in the Senate and the House, yes,” he added.
But to stabilize markets to keep ObamaCare on the books is unacceptable to House conservatives, he explained.
To pass this bill with no Democratic votes, the Republicans will have to find a sweet spot where the House Freedom Caucus is satisfied that the bill “replaces as much of ObamaCare as possible under Senate rules.” That’s not quite the same thing as replacing as much of ObamaCare as is possible considering the need to win fifty out of fifty-two Republican votes in the Senate.
The key thing to remember is that the Senate will need 60 votes to pass a market stabilization plan if they can’t succeed in passing McConnell’s reconciliation bill. And that is where things appear to be headed.
At that point, the House Freedom Caucus will have to decide whether or not they’re willing to [as they put it] “bail out insurance companies when [they’re] not repealing or replacing ObamaCare.” The chances that they’d be willing to do this are exceedingly low, but the Republican leadership would consider such a bill absolutely necessary.
This would then create the same kind of tensions that led to Boehner’s resignation as Speaker.
Pretty much the same type of thing will happen again when it comes time to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. If the House Freedom Caucus won’t provide the votes for these things, it will force the House leaders to go to Nancy Pelosi for votes, and those votes will come with conditions.
In the past, Pelosi was willing to accept very bad deals because she didn’t want Barack Obama to get blamed if the government shut down or we defaulted and destroyed our credit rating. But this time around, it would be President Trump who would take those hits. She’d want to ask for a lot more, especially considering that agreeing to provide votes for the debt ceiling allows the Republicans to avoid taking responsibility and then they’ll run against the “big-spending” Democrats who acted responsibly in their stead.
In other words, during the Obama administration, Pelosi was given a ransom note. This time, she’s the one who gets to set the terms.
All of this is happening because the Republicans decided to pursue a legislative strategy this year that required them to vote as a unified bloc and would not necessitate making any concessions to the Democrats. They set up a dual budget reconciliation process that was supposed to enable them to repeal Obamacare in the Senate with 50 votes and then pass a tax reform through the Senate, also with 50 votes.
But they can’t vote as a unified bloc in large part because the House Freedom Caucus makes unreasonable demands.
They’re about to get their comeuppance on all of these issues, and it will be interesting to see how they respond. Last time, they responded by ousting their leader. This time, they’ll have the White House added to the mix. At some point, the White House will have to take sides, and if they come down on the side of the leadership, things will get pretty tense.
I read this story yesterday and marveled at the delusions Rep. Meadows is engaging in here. The rump of the House majority Caucus is now publicly bullying the Senate majority?
I mean, you could speculate that this is an attempt to establish a negotiation position, or that this is some type of kabuki that is worked out, but I think the most likely explanation is that Meadows and his Caucus think the American people are fully behind them.
The people who are showing up at town halls and Congressional offices and answering poll questions are apparently illegitimate and irrelevant. Those adjectives might also be the ones that Meadows would use to describe the Americans who would be maimed and killed by his preferred legislative outcome.
Meanwhile, there are people in this community who came here during the general election campaign to organize voters against Clinton. A few of these people even wrote during the campaign that Trump was likely to be better than Clinton on some issues. They own a big piece of what is going on in Washington D.C. and at the G-20 right now.
These people have astonishingly bad judgement, and many of them remain some of the most belligerent community members here, claiming the right to dictate what the movement and the Party should be doing moving forward.
NO. These people deserve ridicule, not a solicitous ear. They’re not trustworthy.
The discussion of what congress might do would go better without you throwing in all your grudges from last year. If you want a blog where loyalty to the Party and its anointed candidates is required go to dKos.
WTH?
It’s ongoing.
.
The choice in the general election was between Clinton and Trump. It’s one thing to organize against a candidate during the primary. It’s another thing to look at the spectre of Trump, to look at the very liberal campaign planks Clinton put up, and decide “Fuck it, another Two Minutes Hate session against the Clintons is the path I choose again today.” From August to November, that’s what was on the agenda for some here.
We’re in the extraordinarily hazardous place we are today because Clinton lost by the narrowest of margins.
Some of the people who organized against Clinton’s general election campaign remain here, and want us to take their advice and accept their judgment.
NO.
We’re in the extraordinarily hazardous place we are today because Clinton was the candidate.
She was and is as unacceptable as Trump.
I AM NOT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S SERF!
Instead you’re the Republican party’s useful idiot.
Which is saying quite a lot, really, idiot-wise; Republicans being so low on the ‘useful idiot’ food-chain.
OK,
You win the day on the intertoobs.
.
Thanks but my joy is tempered by the apprehension that the ‘useful idiot’ queue is apparently growing longer, wider and deeper. As ‘conventional wisdom’, such as it is, loses currency and everyone becomes an expert on everything some of the premises of democracy suffer erosion. This is structurally bad news for non-authoritarians.
I would hazard a guess this usually tendency arises among cohorts who bear the least consequence of their unwisdom, which at this point would still be most of us in the comfortable West. As always, we should listen closely to the voices of those who bear the consequences of our juddgement and draw our conclusions accordingly; but their voices are indistinct among derp, disinformation and cat gifs.
Our social media infatuation, and the postmodern identity patterning which accompanied it, is a luxury we could only afford when it doesn’t interfere with our civic judgement.
I was for Sanders; most, if not all, of Sanders supporters who were actually Democrats moved on to support Clinton, who, too late, ran an increasingly impressive campaign. Very few saw this coming. No regrets, let’s move on to saving the Republic.
Holy shit,
That’s a great post.
.
“She was and is as unacceptable as Trump.”
Well, there you go.
I think this judgment of yours, a judgment held months into the Trump Presidency and months into the support it has gotten from Congress, is a very, very bad judgment. I don’t trust you to provide a worthwhile point of view on how the movement and the Party should proceed.
Or even how to live a life worth living, really.
.
for CDS*:
This is not a rational, Reality-Based individual who might conceivably be reached or convinced by factual evidence and/or logical argument.
The Hate is strong in this one, Luke.
(*Clinton Derangement Syndrome, obviously!)
I think it is all blackmail to achieve their goals, like ending any and all progressive taxes and programs, and drown the government in their bathtub. The most difficult problem is like being in the room with a terroist with an explosive vest on. Do these crazy people really want to blow us all up? How should the rest of the human race respond to them, Democracy is not well,suited to irrational people who will seemingly go to any lengths to get what they want.
“Meanwhile, there are people in this community who came here during the general election campaign to organize voters against Clinton”
Not one of those, but i did hold my nose and vote for her. I’m not a fan of hers. I wont go into details why because of my next point:
We are losing. It’s just the truth.
So first we need to pull together to stop the ship from sinking. One thing that will help is to no longer rehash old battles between allies. And thats what we are.
Thats what the Democrats are. A coalition of allies.
Allies who don’t necessarily all LIKE each other. It’s very important to understand that. We don’t all like each other. But we don’t HAVE to. We just need to focus on the one thing that keeps the coalition together. And that one this is ……..? Who knows eh?,
We are losing. And aside from a Hail Mary impeachment trump is going to be a 2 termer. But we can turn this thing around by first establishing that we are a group of different people who come together for a singular purpose. Then we can start inviting others to join us again.
We just need a purpose. My suggestion is Universal healthcare. But whatever it is, lets get to it.
Enough of the infighting. I want to win again.
Sanity … excellent! Thx
We need to have a broadly acceptable explanation for why we are losing. The opinions here and elsewhere on that subject diverge significantly.
What you’re wanting to cut out is the real discussion which needs to happen so we can decide how to move forward more successfully. That’s the subject of the infighting. Or at least it should be.
What you’re wanting to ignore is that there are some people who continue to make clear that they would rather sink the ship than participate in a compromise path forward. Any path we move forward on will be a compromise path. That’s what solidarity with a governing coalition means.
To my dismay, the American people do not support the tax increases that would be needed to finance a healthy single payer health care system. That has been keenly displayed by the outsized squealing in response to the very progressive set of taxes contained in the ACA, progressive taxes which are hated by the most politically important conservatives and utterly ignored and unappreciated by too many liberals.
That opposition to increased taxes is keenly displayed now in California, where the people engaged in trying to move SB 562 want us to ignore the inconvenient part of the poll they are flogging. That poll shows that when people are asked if they would be willing to pay more taxes for a single-payer system in the State, support nose-dives to 43%. California laws require that a single payer health system would have to be approved by voter initiative. Not even Californians are truly down with that yet.
We need a better health care system. I’m ready to engage in the formulation of and argumentation for those policies. It’s my #1 policy interest. I believe we can, and in fact will, defeat Trump if he runs in 2020. But we won’t defeat him by highlighting single payer. We’ll get beat.
I want my fellow liberals to engage in very clear-eyed thinking about what we’re facing. Running single payer while simultaneoulsly defunding our political campaigns would be like walking blindfolded into a slaughterhouse.
“We need to have a broadly acceptable explanation for why we are losing.”
The reason is because we are too caught up in being angry at our “enemies”. So angry that we can’t possibly invite them to join us.
The question is what will they be joining us to do? Promising good government isn’t enough. It’s enough for me, but i’m already here.
We need a grand idea. And we need a villain who is blocking us from having the awesomeness we deserve.
Thats why I say Universal Healthcare. Don’t do the Clinton thing and get caught up in the weeds of “How are we gong to pay for it”? Thats actually irrelevant for this part. First lest establish the concept that Healthcare is a RIGHT not a PRIVILEGE. And that the majority of our nations allies already have that right.
Dems should in unison argue for the rights of Americans to have at least the same level of healthcare that the nations allies, whom we protect btw, are enjoying. And if you vote for the Democrats you are voting for your rights as a human being. This is a higher ideal. You can’t snap your fingers and implement it tomorrow anyway. So you don’t need the perfect plan in place. You just a grand idea for everyone to shoot for. Then you can set the wonks and commissions loose to come up with a series of plans for implementation.
Have to became the party of big retail ideas again. Healthcare on the horizon and a chicken in every pot. Otherwise you end up arguing about who is better at making the trains run on time.
And who gives a shit about that?
McJobs abound, you haven’t had a raise and your dollar doesn’t buy what it used to even 5 years ago.
It’s time for the big ideas.
Btw i understand this:
“To my dismay, the American people do not support the tax increases that would be needed to finance a healthy single payer health care system.”
I just believe that where we are at now is that we need to clearly articulate a future for America.
Articulate in a simple way.
Hero: Dems who are standing up for your rights as humans
Villain: Repubs want to block your god given right to healthcare.
Solution: Help dems defeat villain so that you get tangible clearly definable treat/ reward.
Thats what they do to us with tax cuts btw. Even that $200 bush tax check in the mail means something. It’s tangible. It spends. It’s your reward. And you can even pretend that it’s helping to spur the economy. Win-win!
Healthcare is a human right. Pound that concepts until everyone knows thats what Dems stand for (like repubs on tax cuts) AND THE POLLING WILL FOLLOW.
Sometimes you just have to say that Gay Marriage is the right thing to do, even if the polling isn’t there. Making it a moral argument and taking a stand flipped the polling on that overnight.
Healthcare is different. But it IS a human right.
The gay marriage issue wasn’t won in the executive and legislative branches at the State and Federal level. To the degree that Democrats tried to lead political campaign on this as a civil right issue, they were remarkably unsuccessful. Candidates from the Democratic Party running on the issue lost elections throughout the 2000’s, and almost every State that put it to a public vote voted to deny same-sex couples this civil right. It was several Circuit Courts, and then finally the SCOTUS, which gave us that policy win.
We may be able to improve health care access, quality and affordability on the margins through a judiciary strategy, but we won’t achieve universal health care through that branch of government.
I want to be clear that I have a lot of appreciation for the points you’re bringing up here. We need to steer from avoidable fights within our coalition, and we need to bring inspiring issues which fit within the modern progressive tradition.
What we’re experiencing here is a microcosm of what is going on in the larger progressive community. A small but significant portion of the community wants to believe a bunch of things which are simply not true. If it were a matter of a difference of opinion, that would not draw my passionate response. But I feel a responsibility to my movement to argue against proposals based on factual falsehoods.
Hillary Clinton ran on the most broadly progressive policy platform from a viable general election POTUS candidate in our lifetimes. Her campaign tried to highlight many of these positions, but were often buried by The Trump Show as the media followed his empty podium and flogged his latest outrage. In the end, I believe that the Clinton campaign ended up spending too much time trying to disqualify Trump in the voters’ minds.
This was happening as many Americans, propagandized thru sophisticated social and mass media methods which appear to have been assisted by a foreign adversary, bitter primary opponents who were ginned up by those social media methods, and the Justice Department’s literally unprecedented multiple interventions in the general election campaign, were made to disqualify Clinton as a result. She didn’t do quite enough to build a wall of good will between herself and those voters.
We shouldn’t forget the voter suppression methods which appear to have been a factor in the extraordinarily close results in three States which all were won by Trump. All of this was required to defeat not just Clinton, but Congressional Democratic Party candidates like Russ Feingold.
These are the things I see. Others bring a fun-house mirror to the historical summary. They claim Clinton ran as a conservative. They claimed, in real time, that there were issues where Trump might have a more appealing progressive vision than Clinton. These people want us to trust their judgment now.
Many of them join you in believing that universal healthcare is the issue that can bring us together. I actually do believe that it is an issue which does have broad support by both Party leaders and its rank-and-file. Unfortunately, we have some people within the Party who label anything less than a headlong pursuit of immediately extracting the private sector from the health care system as a massive betrayal and show of pure corruption and/or conservative ideology by Democratic Party elected leaders.
I got to hear this sort of thing just today by a local elected official who should know better. He explicitly claimed the Speaker of our State Assembly made a corrupt decision by dropping the quarter-baked single payer Bill sent over by the State Senate from this summer’s legislative session. “The Speaker is getting money from the private health industry,” my Brother complained.
Disagreeing with him over his corruption claim, I pointed out the current polling which, when you dig past the flashy surface, shows that the voters in our State would reject a single payer ballot measure. “That’s the same thing the Speaker said!”, he responded.
“Yeah, I can see the same thing he sees, and I’m not getting a dime from the private health insurance industry. We do terrific damage to our Party and our movement when we label our own leaders as corrupt when they make decisions we disagree with.”
Then we got into a discussion about the extremely strong implementation of the ACA which our Legislature has continued to improve on, and whether the voters could be persuaded to support single payer in a Statewide ballot measure. Establishing at least an understanding that the truth is more complicated than the “Corrupt!” claim was a more reality-based place for the conversation to move.
These are the sort of discussions I’m trying to support here, discussions that aren’t filled with poorly substantiated happy talk on one side and animus-filled baloney on the other.
one, Luke.
I occasionally picture Obama following these Keystone Cop shenanigans from afar and chuckling mordantly over the effectiveness of the trap he set for these fools and liars (with massive, essential complicity from them, e.g., insisting on calling the ACA “Obamacare”, so now they hafta keep insisting nothing not called “repeal” is acceptable — cuz it’s got his name on it dontchaknow . . . at their own insistence).
And then they proceeded to paint themselves into a small corner of that trap.
Sometimes it seems like Obama 11th dimensional chest – until you realize that Obama was simply playing chess against people who have trouble with tic tac toe.
>>agreeing to provide votes for the debt ceiling allows the Republicans to avoid taking responsibility and then they’ll run against the “big-spending” Democrats who acted responsibly in their stead.
bingo.
the Democrats standing firm will be something I will believe when I have seen it. They will have to face the united voice of every editorial writer and Serious Person in the corporate media telling them to be the adults in the room and reminding Democrats of the awful effects a shutdown would have. None of these writers will waste their breath complaining about Republicans.
“None of these writers will waste their breath complaining about Republicans.”
You mean like what you just wrote?
Like that?
.
What the hell are you talking about? He’s talking about the Tom Friedman’s and George Will’s of the world. You won’t hear a peep from those nitwits.
well like what I just wrote except for having an audience bigger than a couple dozen people. And except for them advocating for the Dems voting to save Ryan, which is not my opinion.
Perhaps some Republicans will respond to their constituents’ or at least their donors’ interests as I documented here.
Or am I making the same mistake that Obama did in comparing Illinois Republicans to National Republicans?
Or is the difference that a state district is smaller than a Congressional District?
Or as my sister said, “Illinois Republicans are bastards but they’re not stupid bastards, at least about money.”
The only possible way to avoid bailing out insurance companies is….
Well, never mind. Start the popcorn.
We seen to be drawing closer to that clarifying moment of seeing whether this bunch of lemmings will go over the cliff for their dear leaders just to check off a 7-years running campaign promise based on lying to the public.
And a clarifying moment for the the GOP public.
For years the R.s have been approaching a reckoning, and yet they never seem to arrive. The Zeno’s paradox of politics? Or is a republican reckoning just a mirage that recedes as we approach? Will they once again wriggle off the hook? McConnell is a slippery bastard, that I know.
Republicans never have yet arrived at a reckoning? What was 2006 and 2008?
They wriggled off the hook then because Blue Dogs gave them the cover of bipartisan votes. McConnell just played that division in the Democratic Party by holding his caucuse tightly disciplined with the promise of a comeback (which he delivered on in 2010 and 2014).
It’s no paradox at all. When Democrats are united in holding Republicans to account and in standing up for Democratic agendas, things will change.
2006 and 2008 weren’t the reckonings I (or you, I suspect) was hoping for. After those whuppings the R.s just doubled down on their b.s., and were rewarded for their obstruction at the polls. You blame dems for this; I primarily blame the Rs and their masters.
You consistently underestimate the collective Republican appetite for evil and the resilience of their tribalism.
The Freedom Caucus is not about to realize their wet dream, fortunately. But neither are the Democrats going to receive anything other than continuing resolutions.
The real pain for the Democrats arrives after the 2018 election if they don’t show up again.
I don’t understand why McConnell doesn’t just change parliamentarians until he finds one willing to ‘interpret’ the reconciliation rules in obviously, wildly false ways that just allows Republicans to proceed however they’d like.
There’s no way for Democrats to prevent that, is there? The Supreme Court won’t weight in on the conduct of Congress. Just rule that things that obviously do change revenues or whatever, actually don’t. What’s the enforcement mechanism?
Actually, the court would have to weigh in on reconciliation rules because those are actually in a law passed by both houses and signed by the President and not merely Rules of the Senate.
The formula and conditions for reconciliation are also in the law.
That means that if McConnell did that, he could be taken to court and loose on summary judgement pretty easily.
That is a huge relief! Thanks. (I thought it was just Rules of the Senate.)
Then what is the so called nuclear option?
The Nuclear Option is the elimination of the Filibuster by simple majority vote as an appeal to the Senate Parliamentarian to Suspend the Normal Rules.
The Filibuster is a mere rule of the Senate that means the Senate won’t proceed forward with consideration of a bill without X number of votes. It’s one of many procedural rule on how bills get to the floor to receive votes that is designed to prevent the Senate from having to vote on every hair brained ideal some Senator wants to be a law while claiming to be based on the ideal that the actions of the Senate should represent more than a mere Majority of States. By doing this, the original champions of the filibuster claimed that this would slow things down while at the same time creating consensus and compromise among the many States and their Senators.
Hence why Filibusters are Constitutional, it’s just a procedural rule. And the rules of the Senate are set by the Majority of Senators, not the Majority Party, and can be changed by a Majority of Senators at any time. The Filibuster is just Kabuki Theater. That said it’s Kabuki Theater that has been in place for a long time and so like a fair number of traditions, there are many who want it there simply for the sake of tradition. There are also a lot of Senators who understand that this kind of Kabuki Theater can save their backside because most people don’t understand the how’s or why’s of the way the Senate runs.
The Reconciliation rules are currently codified as an actual law that creates an exception to the Normal Senate Rules and Procedures, and ostensibly exists to prevent a minority of Senators from permanently shutting down the government by preventing funding bills from passing.
So it’s a law that supposedly changes the rules of the Senate on certain types of bills in certain situations under certain conditions.
Interestingly enough, it’s actually highly debatable if the law in question is actually Constitutional because the rules and procedures of a house of Congress are Constitutionally defined as the sole jurisdiction of only the body of Congress in question. An actual law, such as this case, defining the procedural rules of the Senate could be interpreted as the House of Representatives and the Executive trying to interfere in those rules, and/or the Senate that voted for the law trying to Unconstitutionally bind a future Senate’s actions. That later is blatantly Unconstitutional, as each Senate, House, and Congress has the full powers of Congress and no prior Congress can restrain or limit a future Senate, House, and/or Congress.
What that means is that Congress can’t pass a law saying that Congress can’t do something, and have it bind a future Congress, e.g. Ryan and McConnell can’t pass a law saying that no future Congress can consider Single Payer Insurance and have that law hold up in court.
I found this in Wikipedia:
Call the Senators.
Let’s protect the ACA, and then run on improving our health system, not destroying it.
Let’s keep on winning these legislative fights, so we can beat enough of the District gerrymands and Senate map and win Congressional control in 2018.
Did ya hear that the tax receipts for the US were down 6%. Are we sure the donald’s man at the Treasury can count? He did manage to double count billions in his tax plan. Let us not forget that the donald could start talking about his ability to get some deals with those bond we have sold to China. The Dems needs to stand tall and not cave for a continuing resolution.
. . . with-a-“t”?
That the idiot/liar tried to double-count, I mean.
Cuz I think I sorta/kinda recall that it was (projected over 10 years iirc).
It’s hard to construct a plausible explanation for just how badly the Republican legislative agenda has collapsed. Without digressing into the calamitous pile-up of health, infrastructure, tax reform and other ‘voluntary’ initiatives even the necessary ones, budget, debt-ceiling, as you point out, are proving anathema to the ethos of a Republican platform they’ve been banging away about for years.
Noting also, as you have, the cascading dependencies of these legislative ‘victories’ one upon the next, one is reminded of the narrow dependency of some failed projects and military campaigns on ‘a bridge too far’. They have concocted a fabulous chain of these.
Causes abound, to be sure; a desultory and unreliable executive, the accumulated drag on reality of a decade of polemic policy derp, a fractious party, their apparent unaccountability within the GOP politics bubble, Fox tabloidism… Even their pretty gerrymander has become a tender trap. Ultimately the responsibility seems to lead to minoritarian process dominated by a militant bunch of entitled, short-sighted fools.
A trap deep enough, apparently, to ensnare an elephant.
There’s no collapse until there is a vote. Notice that McConnell keeps kicking the vote down the road.
Yeah, right. And the August recess is on the table? That’s just disinformation to buttress how hard Senate Republicans are really trying. Repeal without replace for three years? C’mon, that might fly on Fox but that is not sound legislative strategy or policy. It is a world-class clusterfuck. Everyone of them wishes it never happened.
My guess says McConnell is thinking no bill protects his majority better than one he passes. If that’s correct, is that not the collapse of a legislative project?
And I also suspect he’s likely right about that. Do all your posturing and kabuki, then, “Damn, we did our best, tried everything, but because of those obstructionist Dems, just couldn’t pass throwing 22 million people under the bus.”
He could blame Ryan.
More accurately, there is no collapse until there is no vote.
The house bill was made worse and the gop “mods” caved. Senate could easily go the same way. Helps that people are not lulled into complacency like with the house.
It’s true that the House bill was passed after Ryan had declared it dead.
But it’s also important to understand how and why it passed.
They went to the moderates and told them that it didn’t really matter what was in the House bill because the Senate bill would become the vehicle. They still didn’t want to vote for it, so they said that it would take the heat off them to pass something and send the hot potato over to the Senate.
That argument won the day.
But the reason it won was because the moderates were assured that they wouldn’t actually have to vote to pass a bill for the president’s desk anything like the one that they were sending to the Senate.
In other words, there never was a consensus for the House bill among House Republicans. They were just a consensus that they wanted the Senate to deal with it.
Many of the same moderates who voted for the bill the last time would not vote for even a watered down version of the same thing if it came back with no protections for preexisting conditions, massive cuts in their state’s Medicaid funding, and the promise of tens of millions of newly uninsured people.
They won’t get that chance, either, because it’s easier to let this die without a vote than to try and fail and put all their members on the record.
I’ll just remark on how foolish the wavering House Republicans were to let that preposterous argument carry the day.
Did they not see that there were a number of Senators in the majority Caucus who would have the same problems that House members did to go up on such a politically damaging Bill? Why would those wavering House members accept the argument that “the Senate will fix it”?
Imagine being one of those House Republicans who voted Yes only to see the effort headed to a crash and burn. How will they run on that vote next year? “I didn’t really want to take away health care and economic certainty from millions of Americans but I didn’t want to be made responsible for making the Bill better and decided to take Paul Ryan’s word that the Senate would make it all good. Real Leadership- Toady for Congress!!”
My predictive powers are restored. That’s the exact article I predicted you would see when I wrote about this starting many months ago.