The surprise defection of Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) dealt a massive blow to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's leadership, not to mention throwing a spanner into his Trumpcare works. McConnell being McConnell, he's fighting back by promising he's going to force his caucus to vote on this damned thing, anyway.
"Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful. So, in the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up ... a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable health care."
The plan is to bring the House Trumpcare bill, which the Senate hates, to a procedural vote with the promise that he will then replace it with that simple repeal. He got Lee on that one, who says he'll go ahead and vote for the motion to proceed on this so that he can get to the straight across repeal vote. So McConnell might actually get the Trumpcare bill to the floor, if enough other hard-right conservatives go with it and the moderates totally cave. Which doesn't seems likely.
He was giving the conservatives the chance to vote on a straight-up repeal. But first they would have to record their vote for a House bill they loathe. There would be no guarantee that the amendment to repeal would pass — and no guarantee that other, less welcoming amendments would fail.
If hard-right conservative senators vote no to starting debate and the effort quickly collapses, McConnell can come back at them and blame them. He is likely to try shifting the blame onto others, and he has given himself a new talking point to counter the "clean repeal" crowd—including President Trump. […]
Even if the Senate got to a clean repeal vote, it wouldn’t be likely to pass. Moderates are petrified of voting for repeal-only legislation. Even some conservatives suggested Monday that the better idea is to completely start over again with a new effort led by the committees. So why would the conservatives go out on a limb for something that isn’t expected to actually become law? And if they do, why would the moderates join them in voting to proceed to debate on something they don’t like?
Daily Kos readers have made over 30,000 constituent calls to Senate Republicans in the last month opposing Trumpcare, and it worked. But McConnell is still fighting, so we have to, too. If you live in a state with a Senate Republican, you can call, too! Call your senator at (202) 224-3121, tell them NO WAY to taking health insurance away from millions. Then, tell us how it went.
Can this happen, under the reconciliation rules, with 50 votes (plus VP Mike Pence's for the majority)? Theoretically, they could repeal Medicaid expansion, the tax subsidies for Obamacare premiums, the taxes in the bill. In short, everything to do with revenue and spending. They couldn't repeal all the requirements on insurers to take all comers, the essential health benefits, etc. Which means that if they get rid of the subsidies but still require that insurers cover sick people, premiums will become unaffordable for most people and then you'll have the death spiral, and millions of people losing insurance. Which all the moderates are totally freaked out about voting for.
McConnell's gambit probably won't work, but that means we don't keep up the pressure on Republicans. First, we need to make sure that repeal simply doesn't happen. Second, we have to make McConnell's humiliation complete.