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The suspicion that Mitch McConnell is going to follow the route to Trumpcare that Paul Ryan took—maximum secrecy and pressure on his members—is growing. The effort is facing serious obstacles and McConnell himself said he doesn't know "how we get to 50 [votes] at the moment" just before the Memorial Day recess.
All the public statements from Republican senators have been reflecting that they are working through this, trying to reach consensus. But it looks like behind the scenes, McConnell is pushing hard, even though supposedly there's not even a draft of a bill yet.
Some Senate Republicans hope to send their bill to the Congressional Budget Office by week’s end, allowing the nonpartisan CBO to begin work on estimating the bill’s cost and coverage details. Republicans’ goal is to vote on the legislation before July 4, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
Senate Republicans have said their bill will diverge from a House-passed health bill, which would strike down much of the 2010 health law, often called Obamacare, and replace it with a new system of tax credits tied largely to age. The House bill would also cut $834 billion from Medicaid over a decade, a reduction that many Senate Republicans have said they cannot support.
One of the fiercest debates amid Senate Republicans is how to shape their own overhaul of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and disabled. The House bill would freeze funding for the ACA Medicaid expansion in 2020, gradually winding down the program in the 31 states that expanded eligibility. Some Republican senators involved in the negotiations are considering pushing that deadline out further.
No draft yet, but they think they can have something to send to the CBO by Friday of this week? That doesn't add up.
The conference lunch Republicans are having Tuesday is supposedly where leadership will "present Senate Republicans options for the major policy decisions shaping their health-care bill," but with a timeline that compressed, it seems likelier they're being presented not with options, but ultimatums.
The alternative story is that McConnell is pushing for a vote this month, even though he knows it will fail, because he wants to move on to tax cuts and "to ensure the whole year isn’t consumed by health care." But that doesn't mean they're not above trying to muscle it through. "We're getting to the point where people need to make decisions," Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas told Politico.
That means we keep fighting.