We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its editorial on “the Trumpcare disaster”:
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, and other Republicans falsely accused Democrats of rushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress. On Thursday, in a display of breathtaking hypocrisy, House Republicans — without holding any hearings or giving the Congressional Budget Office time to do an analysis — passed a bill that would strip at least 24 million Americans of health insurance.Pushed by President Trump to repeal the A.C.A., or Obamacare, so he could claim a legislative win, Mr. Ryan and his lieutenants browbeat and cajoled members of their caucus to pass the bill. Groups representing doctors, hospitals, nurses, older people and people with illnesses like cancer opposed the bill. Just 17 percent of Americans supported an earlier version of the measure, and Republicans have made the legislation only worse since that poll was conducted. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Ryan seemed bothered by this overwhelming criticism of their Trumpcare bill, the American Health Care Act. They seemed concerned only about appeasing the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right flank of their party.
John Nichols at The Nation:
The vote by 217 House Republicans to gut the Affordable Care Act (while 20 of their colleagues and 193 Democrats opposed the move) must be remembered as the shameful abandonment of health and humanity that it is. This should become the permanent stain on every member of the House who supported it—the issue that does not to go away. House Speaker Paul Ryan and his caucus abandoned any pretense of deliberative or responsible legislating in order to deliver an empty “win” the flailing administration of President Donald Trump. [...] The overwhelming majority of them cast their votes as Ryan said they should, and then they ran the gantlet—past crowds of citizens chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!”—on their way to a White House Rose Garden “celebration” of their partisanship with Donald Trump. [...]
Republicans now must be identified for what they are: charlatans who would lie to Americans with cancer and heart conditions about the health care they cannot live without.
Ryan Cooper at The Week:
The American Health Care Act is an absolute moral abomination. [...]
Why would Republican lawmakers do all this? So that they can massively cut taxes on the rich, of course. TrumpCare is in no meaningful sense a health-care reform bill. It is a bill to cut the taxes of the top 2 percent, paid for by taking health insurance away from poor and working-class people. (Naturally, when Republicans are done with this they're moving on to regular old tax "reform," where they will cut taxes on the rich even more.) [...]
Whether the American Health Care Act becomes law or not, in the 2018 campaign, Democrats need to hang this piece of poison around the neck of every one of the 217 Republicans who voted for it. Make them own the cruelty and carnage that is the American Health Care Act.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post takes on the myth of the “moderate” Republican:
To be sure, among the general population, moderate Republicans are real and plentiful. But not on Capitol Hill, where the Moderate Republican — a creature whose prudence and clearheadedness will rescue the country from the uncompromising dogmatism of the House Freedom Caucus — is an extraordinary popular delusion, a madness of crowds.
We’re told of these centrist leading lights of the Grand Old Party, people who listen to experts and weigh evidence, who are serious and sane and even sometimes inclined toward making PowerPoint presentations. They emphasize substance over sloganeering, country over party. They are reasonable, rational, sensible. Or so we like to tell ourselves.
But at the point that they vote to remake 18 percent of the economy without hearings, without expert testimony, without a public text of a bill even a day before their vote, without waiting for an estimate of either the budgetary or human cost of their handiwork — well, at that point, they lose any claim to “seriousness” or “moderation.”
Here’s David Frum’s take:
Trump’s Republican Party may attract white working-class votes with its cultural messaging, but the excited promise of 2016 of a “working-class party” can be disregarded. The working class will be stripped of its Medicaid coverage. It will again be exposed to the worst practices of the pre-2010 healthcare status quo. The coming tax cut that will absorb the resources shifted away from healthcare subsidies looks likely to be tilted even more radically to the wealthiest in society than those of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.
Meanwhile, the House’s next priority after Obamacare repeal and the tax cut will not be the roads and bridges that Trump promised his voters, but amendments to the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill to allow big banks to engage in riskier transactions.
Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine previews the battle in the Senate:
All ten red-state Senate Democrats up for reelection next year are already trashing the American Health Care Act – but not because they weren’t open to a bipartisan fix. According to Politico, they agree with Democratic leaders that the bill is so bad it’s making Obamacare more popular, and Senate Republicans have made it clear they don’t want their input.
“So far the attitude’s been ‘take it or leave it’,” said Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat. “And I think that’s not really an invitation to negotiate.”
Without Democratic support Republicans can only lose two votes in the Senate, and it was clear on Thursday that the House bill had only worsened the divisions among Republican senators.
And, on a final note, Gideon Resnick at The Daily Beast details how Democrats are using the vote as a call to arms:
Of the 217 House members who did vote for the bill, a sizable share was made of up vulnerable members. Some 14 of the 23 House Republicans in districts that Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election supported the bill, including all seven in California. So the short-term payoff of a “win” may spell disaster in midterm elections.
For now, progressive groups smell blood in the water.