Campaign Action
Here's your daily reminder that this is not normal. That what the Senate Republican leadership is doing with a major piece of legislation that will affect one-sixth of the economy and take health insurance away from 23 million people is unprecedented. But you ask them about how they're negotiating things in secret, withholding details even from their own members and refusing to allow the public to have any say, and they are completely unconcerned. Oh, and some of them will lie to you, too.
[I]f you asked Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), a member of the GOP Senate leadership team as well as the working group negotiating a health care deal, he would describe what the Senate GOP plans to do on health care as an “open process.”
“The House bill is what, 100 and some pages? People are able to read that in an amount of time, it doesn’t take too long,” he said, when asked how much time the public would get review their legislation. “How long does it take you to read 100 pages?” […]
Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was asked Monday how much time the public deserved to see the bill before a vote and whether a few days would suffice.
“Well I think we’re not worried so much about that as we are getting it together so we can get a majority to vote for it,” Hatch said.
At least Hatch didn't lie like Barrasso, making it perfectly clear that the only thing that matters is getting 50 votes to repeal Obamacare, and damn the consequences. But he's not as honest as the senior Republican staffer who admitted that the bill is so toxic they can't show it to the public and get it passed. "We aren't stupid" was that admission.
Given that, how could any Democrat not fight tooth and nail against it?
Call your Democratic senator/s through the Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121 and at their local offices and tell them you expect them to do everything in their power to make passing Trumpcare as painful as possible for Mitch McConnell and team.