It's the House maniacs against Paul Ryan against popular vote loser Donald Trump against Republican senators against Republican governors as the fight over who's going to own Trumpcare continues. Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee is meeting today to pull together the bills that came out of the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means into one. One that still has bleak prospects in passing the House and almost none in the Senate.
WASHINGTON — A day after a harsh judgment by the Congressional Budget Office on the House plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, nervous Senate Republicans on Tuesday suggested changes to the bill.
They told Trump administration officials — including the health secretary, Tom Price — that they wanted to see lower insurance costs for poorer, older Americans and an increase in funding for states with high populations of hard-to-insure people. They said those changes would greatly improve the chances of Senate approval even though they might further alienate conservatives.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Republican leadership, said Senate Republicans could take steps to make the bill “more helpful to people on the lower end.”
Those changes would doom the bill among House maniacs, who are busy working with Trump to make the bill meaner and even worse for Trump voters. He's apparently also, however, talking to "Republican senators who fear the measure headed to the House floor would be too costly for older residents." Those same Republican senators who are saying that the current bill can't get through their chamber because it's too harsh. This is a division Trump can't bridge, particularly since he doesn't really seem to care how this gets done. Hell, maybe he doesn't even want it to get done. Maybe he wants it all to fall apart, for his antagonist Paul Ryan to come out of it severely damaged, and to have the opportunity to keep blaming it all on President Obama and the Democrats.
TrumpCare is a travesty: It cuts taxes for the rich, kills Medicaid expansion for the poor and defunds Planned Parenthood. We can defeat it in the Senate, if you call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and contact your senators.
Meanwhile, the maniacs are doing what they do best, refusing to budge. "I'm a no," says Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) living up to his name. "The C.B.O. report doesn't really affect my calculation too much." There are some for whom nothing but straight across repeal will do the trick. The maniacs reliable ally in the Senate, Ted Cruz, agrees. "The way to get to yes is to pass legislation that honors our promise to repeal Obamacare and that drives down costs."
Republican governors, who will bear the brunt of the 24 million people losing health insurance, are pleading for someone to recognize they can't have the rug pulled out from under them. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson (AR) stakes out his position that the House bill "needs to be the starting point, not the ending one." The problem for Hutchinson—and all the Republican governors in Medicaid expansion states—is that the starting point isn't nearly as bad as where this looks like it's going to end.