Here's why there's only white, male reactionaries on Mitch McConnell's new Senate death panel. The pasty group has been pulled together to work on Trumpcare, and apparently McConnell is willing to cut some of his vulnerable senators loose in 2018, because instead of crafting a bill they don't have to worry about voting for, he's going for something that will get past the Freedom Caucus when it returns to the House.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) has already been working with Senate Republicans on what changes House conservatives could live with, knowing that the Senate bill will probably undo some cuts to Medicaid and perhaps a key amendment that brought conservatives onboard in the first place.
"If it's moving to the left, we just need to make sure we're not losing too many conservative votes," Meadows told HuffPost on Friday. "Obviously it's going to get more relaxed as it relates to the Medicaid expansion."
One massive change that House conservatives could accept, perhaps even welcome, is to ditch a dominant feature of the House replacement: the advance refundable tax credits.
Instead, conservatives may just take some changes to the Obamacare subsidies.
"The fundamental question is going to come down to the tax credit subsidy in place, or do they drop back to an Obamacare modified subsidy," Meadows said.
With Meadows doing the negotiating, it seems likely that they'll come up with something the maniacs can live with. The problem remains, can they come up with something that 51 Republicans can live with. The only two Republicans in the Senate who have actually been trying to come up with an Obamacare replacement, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), are excluded from the new death panel, and they are not happy with Trumpcare or how this might shape up. Collins says of the new group, "the leaders obviously chose the people they want," but she's still "working hard with Sen. [Bill] Cassidy [R.-La.], with our co-sponsors ... we're reaching out to moderate Democrats." And Cassidy is blasting the House bill for its "terrible coverage."
But, clearly, McConnell is trying to head this to a bill that he can force at least two of his moderates to accept and that will be accepted by the House. We can't let that happen. The best way to keep enough Senate Republicans scared of caving is by punishing their House counterparts. We do that by leveling serious Democratic challenges to their seat.
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