The important thing on Thursday was for Republicans to pass a bill. After all, Paul Ryan had the beer ordered, Donald Trump was tapping his foot in the Rose Garden, and lots of Republican legislators had already read and practiced their speeches about “leadership.” Which is a lot more than can be said about their familiarity with the bill they were voting on.
Wolf Blitzer: “Did you read the health care bill?”
Republican Rep. Chris Collins: "I will fully admit, Wolf, I did not.”
Collins isn’t alone in casting a blind vote for a bill that few had read and even fewer understood.
In many ways, Republicans appear to be operating in the dark about the AHCA. There have been very few hearings. The full bill text was only unveiled hours before the vote. The Congressional Budget Office didn't have time to finish its study of the legislation. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday it is "literally impossible" to judge the impact of the bill. For his part, Trump, in interviews and conversations with associates, has seemed to care little about what the legislation says.
What it says doesn’t matter. What it does can’t be measured. How then are Republicans convinced that their bill is worthy of a Bud Light? The answer is: They don’t care.
Because somehow passing a bad bill they didn’t believe in is supposed to better than not passing that bill.
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Thursday’s actions may include provisions that could cut short the lives of millions of Americans and cause other untold misery, but the primary motivation behind the Republican “healthcare bill,” isn’t one of evil — it’s one of desperation. Republicans are so incapable of taking appropriate action, that they think it the height of progress that they can pass anything, anything at all, out of a chamber they dominate.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also pushed the idea that Republicans just need to pull the trigger on this bill because it will change. “This thing is going to go to the United States Senate. It’s going to change in my view,” he said on NPR. “At some point you just have to move, and we think this is it. This will create some momentum.”
That’s not leadership. That’s the top contender for Profiles in Pitiful, one of the sorriest moments in the history of American politics. Republicans literally threw a celebration for a bill they didn’t read, didn’t like, and which they passed for no purpose other than to show they could pass a bill.
Please, Paul Ryan, take another bow. You deserve it.
Inside the White House, senior administration officials say no one "really loves the legislation," in the words of one official. Trump has expressed misgivings — particularly over fears that people will lose health care and blame him. He has spoken more about blasting Obamacare than selling his own legislation, barely bringing up the new plan at a rally last Saturday night, and only at the very end of his speech.
Republicans just spent a day threatening Americans with the loss of their healthcare simply to demonstrate their “leadership” by being willing to come together around a bill that not only won’t pass, but which they don’t want to pass.
Which explains why Trump was having a celebration after completing only one step in a long process—it’s as far as he’s going to get.