Who's popular vote loser Donald Trump going to call for help in stoking Republican in-fighting over the tax cuts bill? Who else?
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), back in D.C. having recovered from his foliage-related injuries, is back to his old self, screwing stuff up for leadership.
A reminder, the Congressional Budget Office says repealing the individual mandate would kick 13 million people off of their health insurance in the next decade. It assumes that younger, healthier people would not sign up for insurance if there was not a tax penalty for not enrolling. That would leave the people who need insurance—the sick ones—having to pay more in premiums as the pool of customer shrinks and insurance companies have to charge more to make up for the loss. This is what's known as a death spiral—people dropping out as insurance becomes more expensive until only the sickest, most expensive to insure people are still enrolled.
That's one of the reasons at least two Republican senators—Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME)—want Obamacare left out of the tax cuts bill. That and the fact that there's enough in it already enough in it to stoke fights between Republicans in each chamber and between the House and Senate, too. So of course Rand Paul is in the middle of it, helping Trump make it worse. As annoying as he is, he does have his uses.
The Republican tax giveaway to the super wealthy attacks students, universities, non-profits, blue states, homeowners, the sick and the disabled. Please, call your member of the House of Representatives at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.