Campaign Action
Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) says that along with shredding the safety net, House Republicans will be on their worn-out hobbyhorse for 2018. "We're going to have to work on health care again. I'm for repealing and replacing ObamaCare." Because of course they are. Why should 2018 be any different than 2010, or 2011, or 2012. … And like all those previous years, they've got the same problems they've always had.
The reality is the GOP is so divided on Obamacare, they don't have the votes to achieve either objective—repeal or stabilization. That means former President Barack Obama's signature legislative accomplishment could keep limping along, crippled by the repeal of the individual mandate in the tax law but lifted by the surprisingly strong enrollment for the coming year. […]
Just last month, the House blocked a Senate-led effort to fund the health law’s cost-sharing subsidies for two years — a conservative victory that underscores how loath they are to do anything that props up the health law, said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), who leads the conservative Republican Study Committee.
“You can see the difference on this side versus the Senate side as far as how much energy there is” for repeal, Walker said.
That rift could reappear almost immediately. Moderates — who say they have Trump’s backing — want to try again this month to fund those subsides, which help low-income people pay out-of-pocket medical bills. […]
“Alexander-Murray is a really tough one, I think, in this chamber,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). House Republicans would want to add abortion restrictions, Cramer and other GOP lawmakers say, and they don’t want to send “bailout” money to insurance companies.
Let's keep it that way. Please give $1 to each of our Senate funds so that Republican senators know there'll be a price to pay for repealing health care.
A clue as to what Republicans really intend to do will come when they concoct their new budget resolution and whether they put a reconciliation authority to go after the ACA and/or Medicaid in it. Those instructions would allow them to pass their repeal or Medicaid cuts—which they've clearly indicated they intend to do—with just 51 votes in the Senate. For real now, since Democrat Doug Jones won the Alabama special election for the Senate seat, they can only afford to lose one vote. So, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to need Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to do either or both, the two who helped kill Trumpcare last year.
But one of those senators—Murkowski—has been making noises about being open to Graham-Cassidy, Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) idea of turning all of Obamacare into small block grants to states. So the likeliest possibility for a budget reconciliation push would include that. House Republicans, however, are going to insist on massive Medicaid cuts as well. That's another headache for McConnell.
Little has changed for Republicans on Obamacare going into the eighth year of their repeal efforts. The only way they could manage to get any part of it done was to pair it with a massive tax cut to the donor class—probably the only thing you can get majority Republican support for. They still have zero policy ideas that will actually provide a replacement to the law, and they will be facing as much—if not more—public opposition to trying it now as they did in 2017. And it's an election year, which has plenty of them in both chambers scared.