Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to force Trumpcare through the Senate this month, and he's doing it as quickly and as secretly as he can. With a major emphasis on the secret part.
Senate Republicans are on track to finish writing their draft health care bill this evening, but have no plans to publicly release the bill, according to two senior Senate GOP aides.
"We aren't stupid," said one of the aides. One issue is that Senate Republicans plan to keep talking about it after the draft is done: "We are still in discussions about what will be in the final product so it is premature to release any draft absent further member conversations and consensus."
If this bill was going to be good for anyone but the wealthiest people who are getting a tax cut with it, then they wouldn't have a problem showing what was in it. McConnell does have to do one thing, though, and that's get the bill scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate can't vote on it until that's done, and it's not likely to have much in it that is good for Republicans. Look for McConnell to try to time that so that he can get the bill on the floor next week—as Senate Democrats are hearing—but without time for the bad CBO bill to scare off any of his rank-and-file.
McConnell needs to rush this through before there's time for us to really mobilize against it and scare the hell out of Republican senators, and before popular vote loser Donald Trump completely immolates and prevents anything from happening on the Hill. We've got to stop it. The best way to do it is to raise holy hell with the rank-and-file. If you have a Republican senator, call them through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 or in their local offices.