Campaign Action
There are a lot of Republican senators who need to either put up or shut up about now over Trumpcare. They're happy to complain about being shut out of the process but so far not one—not even Mavericky John McCain—has said that they won't support this bill until a regular process is followed.
“I’ve said from Day 1, and I’ll say it again,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. “The process is better if you do it in public, and that people get buy-in along the way and understand what’s going on. Obviously, that’s not the route that is being taken.” […]
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, offered a hint of the same frustration felt by Democrats seeking more information about the bill.
“I come from a manufacturing background,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’ve solved a lot of problems. It starts with information. Seems like around here, the last step is getting information, which doesn’t seem to be necessarily the most effective process.” […]
Asked this week about the Senate bill, [Sen. Rand] Paul replied, “Have you seen it?” […]
Asked his level of comfort with the process, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, cut off a reporter before he could finish his sentence: “None,” he said.
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.
Then there's Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) who was not at all shy sharing her frustrations with Vox's Dylan Scott. "I can't show to my constituents back home anything concrete because we don't have anything," she told Scott. "We've been talking about ideas."
There's a solution for these five senators—there are more than enough of them to band together and torpedo the vote until these questions are answered.McConnell can only afford to lose two votes—here's five, and they'll find plenty more who aren't comfortable with the whole thing if they start asking around. They could easily find enough members who don't want to have this vote taken this way—plenty to give them the safety of numbers. If any of them were worth a damn, that's what they'd do.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have to be figuring out how they can help encourage that rebellion. The best way to do that would be to stretch this out—they need to shut the place down.