Donald Trump has tried bullying, mocking, threatening and … really that’s it. That’s the extent of his deal-making skills. That and proclaiming a do-over.
Trump has issued multiple tweets since the dramatic midnight vote that killed the “Skinny Repeal” of the Affordable Care Act calling for the Senate to end the filibuster and give it another try. Which is both an interesting philosophical point, and a clear sign that Trump can’t count, as every attempt the Republicans have made so far has been under rules that required just fifty votes plus a Pence.
This basic innumeracy isn’t keeping Trump’s budget director from even going the boss one better.
The Senate should not vote on anything else until it’s voted again on repealing Obamacare, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Sunday.
Mulvaney said that “yes,” it's official White House policy that the Senate shouldn’t hold a vote on another issue — not even an imminent crisis like raising the debt ceiling— until the Senate votes again on health care.
Instead of a government shut-down, Trump wants a Senate shut down: No votes until the Senate votes on what Trump wants, the way he wants. This is bound to work, because if there’s anything Senators like, it’s someone telling them how to run the Senate.
To back up his give me a repeal, or just go die policy, Trump is making none-too-veiled threats to cut off the payments to insurance companies that participate in the plan. And he’s threatening to take away Congress’ health plan.
Yeah. About that. Congress used to be covered through the plan for Federal employees. But since 2010, both members of the Congress and their immediate staffs purchase their insurance on the ACA exchanges. They’ve go a very wide selection, and they get a “Gold” level plan, but they get their plan where everyone else gets their plan.
So Congress is paying what the public pays. Trump could attempt to extort Congress by holding off payments that would limit their options … but they’d probably still have plenty of options. But Mulvaney says that Trump isn’t planning to wreck the plan until the Senate cries uncle.
“The special exemption dealt with the employer contribution, how much your employer — when you're a member of Congress, that's the federal government — can contribute to your coverage. And that's the rule that the president was talking about in his tweet yesterday,” Mulvaney explained.
So, according to Mulvaney, it’s not that Trump didn’t understand Congress was already getting their health care through the ACA, it’s that he wants to take away the government’s contribution to covering their plans. Which would take … an act of Congress. Which is something the Senate would have to vote on.
The whole do-nothing-until-repeal option is dead on arrival, because there’s not even a repeal bill available to vote on. All it does is set up a confrontation between Trump and the Senate—the Republican-controlled Senate—over critical upcoming votes. For Republicans who want to stage a confrontation around the silliness of “raising the debt ceiling,” that might seem like a good excuse.
But Republicans are likely to find that an already artificial crisis is a good deal less satisfying when it’s imposed on them by Donald Trump.