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The current exercise of reviving Zombie Trumpcare in the House is looking increasingly like a blame-shifting attempt to make House moderates buckle, as the Washington Post's Paul Kane writes.
On Wednesday, however, after a few changes to the legislation that modestly tilted the bill more to the right, the Freedom Caucus issued a forceful endorsement of the new package. Outside allies issued declarations that the bill’s fate now fell entirely on the shoulders of moderate Republicans.
It was a whiplash moment for a group that has previously based its existence largely on opposition in the pursuit of purity — and it set off alarm bells among other Republicans.
“A lot of them were taking a lot of heat for the failure of the bill, and they didn’t like it. It’s an exercise in blame-shifting,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a leading member of the Tuesday Group, the collection of more than 50 moderate Republicans.
Should Ryan overcome moderate opposition and get the votes to pass it, either now or possibly next week as seems more and more likely this blame-shifting will switch to the Senate, where the bill is almost certainly doomed. The Freedom Caucus boosters in the Senate—Sens. Rand Paul (KY) and Ted Cruz (TX)—are applauding the maniacs for making this bill considerably worse, but the hurdles on this bill are just increasing in the Senate. Mostly, the don't want anything to do with it and are coming up with excuses.
House Republicans are hell-bent on ripping away our health insurance. Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121, and demand they vote NO on a renewed Trumpcare that is worse than the one before. Remind them they work for you.
Few Senate Republicans are currently engaged in the health care efforts. Several GOP senators declined Wednesday to wade in to the specifics of the revised plan drafted by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) and Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), taking pains to note that senators will probably have to rewrite it anyway.
“It isn’t discussed a lot over here,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “Except for the hard work of [Susan] Collins and [Bill] Cassidy, there’s hardly anything being done.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), the party’s chief vote counter, also downplayed any notion that the new House version of an Obamacare replacement will sail through the Senate intact.
All of which makes this resurrection of the horrible bill in the House really bizarre. It's putting vulnerable House moderates in an impossible position and it's further dividing an already fractious Republican party. All for a bill that was polling at 17 percent approval in its first iteration for a historically unpopular president.
And Paul Ryan is supposed to be the smart one.