Campaign Action
While Sen. John McCain remains in Arizona recovering from Friday's craniotomy, surgery to remove a 5 cm blood clot from above his left eye, business will not go on as usual in Washington. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has to have every Republican senator voting to have a prayer of passing Trumpcare, has postponed the vote for the week or two (more likely two) that McCain's recovery will take.
That means there's more time for opponents to fight this thing, from the side of all of us trying to keep 22 million people from losing insurance and from the other side.
A vocal conservative opponent of the measure, Sen. Rand Paul, predicted the delay would strengthen critics’ position by giving them more time to mobilize against the bill.
“The longer the bill is out there, the more conservative Republicans are going to discover it is not repeal,” Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Paul is also speaking for popular vote loser Donald Trump, who he says is all for the idea of repealing everything now and replacing later. Trump himself hasn't said that, but rather spent Sunday in "an angry morning tweetstorm about Hillary Clinton, the Russia controversy and other topics." It seems that healthcare policy isn't at the forefront of Trump's thoughts these days.
Meanwhile, the so-called Republican moderates are going to be subject to intense pressure from their constituents to kill this thing, and from McConnell. With both Paul and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) solid "no" votes on the bill, opponents only need one more out of the eight or so who've expressed reservations about the bill and the secretive, exclusive process McConnell has used to push it. Here's their chance to put their votes where their mouths have been, and we're going to be reminding them of that. Every day.
All we need are three Republican senators to block Trumpcare. If you have a GOP senator, we need you to call their office at (202) 224-3121 and demand that they put their constituents above their party by voting to block Trumpcare. After the call, tell us how the call went.