The Republicans think they are cute, but Bernie and the Dems are too smart for them.
Bernie Sanders is going to do his more moderate colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus a big favor, in pursuit of the larger goal of trying to defeat Republican efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday night that Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) is planning to propose an amendment during debate this week to create a single-payer health care system.
Daines doesn’t support single-payer. But his amendment is an attempt to splinter the Democratic caucus and expose the minority party’s divisions on how to reform the health care system.
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In essence, the hope would be to force the many Democrats who are in cycle in 2018 to choose between going on the record as favoring a pretty hefty tax increase by voting for a Daines-written single-payer bill and attracting the ire of Sanders supporters by voting against it.
But Sanders isn’t having it.
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Rather than seize the opportunity from Daines to talk about “Medicare-for-all” — which would in turn highlight Democrats’ internal divisions — Sanders will reject Daines’s amendment, a spokesperson for the senator told me.
"The Democratic caucus will not participate in the Republicans' sham process. No amendment will get a vote until we see the final legislation and know what bill we are amending,” spokesperson Josh Miller-Lewis said in a text.
“Once Republicans show us their final bill, Sen. Sanders looks forward to getting a vote on his amendment that makes clear the Senate believes that the United States must join every major country and guarantee health care as a right, not a privilege."
Vox: Bernie Sanders will foil Senate Republicans' single-payer trolling
All Republicans have is lies and bullshit. Like their leader, Donald Trump.
Update I:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who popularized “Medicare for all” among progressives with his insurgent presidential campaign last year, plans to introduce legislation later this summer that would implement a single-payer system. A spokesman for Sanders told Vox that the senator planned to vote against Daines’ amendment, giving other Democrats cover to do the same
HufPo