Never mind that their Obamacare repeal plans are crumbling around them: Senate Republicans are moving forward with the repeal vehicle, the budget reconciliation plan that is supposed to kick the process off. Just to make today crazier, it's vote-a-rama day on the repeal plan that has nowhere to go because there is no "replace" plan, and everyone from Paul Ryan to Donald Trump says a replacement has to come before repeal. Even though they don't have a clue what that might be or how, if they had one they'd actually get all Republicans on board with it. But they're going to go all night with votes. Ed Kilgore:
As I explained in a separate piece a week ago, the “vote-a-rama” is a quirky byproduct of the limits the Congressional Budget Act places on debating budget resolutions (or the reconciliation bills that implement them). While time for debate is strictly limited, ruling out filibusters, there are no limits on the number of amendments that can be offered. Thus senators (usually from the minority party) use this opportunity to offer a vast number of amendments on which votes are guaranteed — typically those that put senators on the spot and on the record on sensitive issues.
In the context of this year’s budget, the amendments will mostly be about Obamacare. Several Republican senators have already indicated they want to amend the resolution to stretch out the time available for putting together a reconciliation bill — i.e., to actually repeal Obamacare. It’s anyone’s guess how Donald Trump’s signals this week that he wants action quickly will affect that possibility.
Senators had filed 105 amendments as of Wednesday morning, most from Democrats, and they'll go all night with them—or as long as it takes, which will probably be all night. There won't be much debate on them, but it's a chance for Democrats to get Republicans on the record doing things like voting against some of the most popular provisions of Obamacare. They will be recorded votes, which makes it trickier.
Meanwhile, any hope Republicans harbored that Trump would lead them out of the morass was dashed in his Wednesday press conference, in which he offered that they are "going to have health care that is far less expensive and far better" but wouldn't say if it would cover all the people who now have insurance thanks to the law. Sen. Lamar Alexander, who has been more and more insistent lately that they can't repeal the law until they have a plan to replace it, offered up a sketch of a plan on Tuesday, but one that would not provide the same level of benefits to as many people as Obamacare.
But damn the torpedoes: it’s full steam ahead on voting for something that seems less and less likelier to happen by the day.