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Repeal and replace was roundly rejected by the Senate in its second procedural vote in the Trumpcare fiasco Tuesday night, 43-57. Nine Republicans, ranging from Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on the right to Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) on the almost-falling-off-the-spectrum right voted with Democrats on this proxy vote for the Better Care Reconciliation Act. The actual question before the senators was whether to vote with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in waiving the budget rules to allow his amendment to be voted on, but it served as a rejection of the BCRA in this form.
There could be other forms of the BCRA coming according to Senate Republican aides who told Axios a simpler version such as the one the Congressional Budget Office scored is possible. The next major vote the Senate will take is kind of figured out, on the updated version of the 2015 repeal-only bill, which is also expected to fail. That will be held early Wednesday afternoon.
After that is kind of when all hell will break loose. There will possibly be some more amendment votes, and a vote-a-rama on amendments to some as of yet undetermined base bill starting Thursday, possibly running into Friday morning. There is no clarity at all on what might be an actual "base bill," the thing amendments would be attached to. It's the proverbial bowl of spaghetti being thrown at the wall at the moment. The Washington Post has a page devoted to tracking amendments that should be helpful in sorting the spaghetti.
At this point Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's strategy seems to be to give every Republican the chance to offer an amendment so that they feel like they've had their shot, while ending up with what's been deemed a "skinny repeal," a very narrow bill that repeals the individual mandate, maybe the employer mandate, and some of the taxes. The outlines of that aren't even really clear at this point, because it's going to be a matter of what will get 50 votes, and judging by what happened Tuesday on the motion to proceed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bribe and bludgeon his conference enough to get that 50.
That's not McConnell's end goal, however. He just needs something, anything to pass the Senate so he can take it to conference committee and turn it over to the House maniacs. With just a shell of a bill from the Senate, the conference would have the power to create a new bill. It would have some restraints—it's still going to be written under budget reconciliation rules, so it will still have to be okayed by the Senate Parliamentarian and supposedly reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office. McConnell has been more than willing to ignore the CBO part of this equation, adding just one more element of chaos and confusion. Confusion is his strongest weapon right now. It makes it easier for him to hide what he's doing.
Democrats will take this opportunity to force some embarrassing votes for Republicans. "These votes, frankly, are a lot tougher for them than they are for us," said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). "They are squeezed in both directions." Expect dozens, if not hundreds, of Democratic amendments in the vote-a-rama.
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