Whether Trumpcare passes in the House as scheduled Thursday is a 50-50 proposition. The House Rules Committee is meeting Wednesday to establish the rules that will govern the debate on the floor and determine what amendments will be allowed. Meanwhile, popular vote loser Donald Trump is reportedly meeting again with the Freedom Caucus looking for more sweeteners to get them on board. The Congressional Budget Office has not yet finished its work on the current version of Trumpcare, but it is expected by the end of Wednesday. But more changes could be coming to the bill that ends up on the floor tomorrow, per the Trump meeting today. Leadership is whipping like crazy in the House, and everyone seems to be ignoring the humungous elephant in the room: the Senate.
Mitch McConnell is being tasked with fixing what GOP senators and House members say is a flawed Obamacare repeal proposal—one with little to no chance of passing in that chamber in its current form—in a week’s time.
The Senate leader and his deputies are nevertheless barreling ahead—assuming a health care bill clears the House Thursday in what’s expected to be a razor-thin vote. Senate leaders say they have a plan to jam through legislation on a party-line vote next week before opposition has time to bubble up.
And they're sticking to it, regardless of the scant level of support right now for the proposal among Senate Republicans.
The whip count in the Senate isn't the only problem McConnell is facing. As it stands, a core part of the bill doesn't fit the Senate rules for passing under budget reconciliation, the tool they're using to avoid a Democratic filibuster. In order to get this passed with a simple majority vote, McConnell is going to have to blow up the "Byrd Rule," which has been in place since 1985. He can do that with a majority vote. The Democrats will raise the fact that the bill doesn't meet the Byrd Rule, the Senate parliamentarian (a referee) will agree and say that it indeed does not, and then McConnell would have to get a majority of his members to overrule that and go ahead with the vote.
So McConnell has two hurdles—first of all arm-twisting enough of his members to keep 50 out of his 52 votes just to support this bill that at least eight Republicans have serious problems with AND getting 51 of them to close the Senate up. Neither of those hurdles seem surmountable in one week's time. Not with all the other baggage this bill will arrive with if it gets through the House Thursday.
The House is scheduled to vote on Trumpcare on THURSDAY, MARCH 23. Even if you already called your member of Congress, do it again by calling the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Jam the phone lines, urge them to vote NO.