House Republicans want to get all the credit for working on bipartisan legislation to bring down drug prices without having to shoulder any of the responsibility for Republican sabotage of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are not going to let that happen, and boy, are the Republicans whining about it.
"I'm not very happy at all," Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter told Politico. That's because in the three bipartisan drug pricing bills the House will consider also have provisions reversing the Trump administration's various efforts to destroy the law, including the all-important protections for people with pre-existing conditions which the administration is trying to have declared unconstitutional and is undermining with junk insurance plans. "It didn't have to be this way," sobs Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican. "But they're just wanting to cut TV ads." The irony.
It's ridiculous enough that all these Republicans are acting as though this had never ever happened in their majority, but even more ridiculous that they're pretending Mitch McConnell's Republican Senate would ever advance bipartisan bills from the House to the floor. McConnell is not looking for bipartisanship. He's not looking for anything that Democrats could point to as wins in 2020. He'll do the minimum necessary to avoid politically disastrous government shutdowns, but other than that is only going to be jamming through Trump's unqualified and extremist judicial nominees.
And no, Republicans shouldn't be just handed these wins on a silver platter, not without having to pay the price of answering for the damage they've done to Obamacare and the nation's health system.