Things can always change, but as of now it looks like the plan is for Speaker Paul Ryan to bring the health care bill to a vote tomorrow under the threat, issued from the White House, that if the bill is rejected there will be no more attempts to pass it. It’s a desperate effort to convince the hold-outs, particularly in the hardline Freedom Caucus, that they won’t get more concessions nor another chance to say that they killed President Obama’s most prized achievement.
It’s an interesting negotiating tactic because it depends on two things. First, it’s operating on the flawed premise that the people who are expected to vote for this bill believe that they will be better off politically for having done so. Second, it relies on the credibility of the threat. If this bill fails to pass tomorrow, will that be the last time in Trump’s presidency that any effort will be made to repeal Obamacare? If rank-and-file Republicans believe this, then maybe the logic is compelling. But if they don’t believe it, then it isn’t a real threat.
I know Donald Trump is supposed to be an expert on the Art of the Deal, and maybe he will prove himself worthy of that reputation. But his strategy is not very opaque here. And I don’t think he has the credibility to convince folks that he means what he says even though he may be completely sincere.
If the moment gets close to a vote and the whips announce that the bill with fail, it’s possible that it may get pulled again. But it sounds like they’re going to make the caucus walk the plank, show their cards, and go on the record. It won’t be a good vote to have on their record regardless of how they cast it.
For Speaker Ryan, it could cripple him in much the same way that Speaker John Boehner was crippled by his right flank. It will be more proof that the Republicans cannot function as a partisan majority. With Boehner, they needed to ask for Democratic votes repeatedly. That’s becoming less and less of an option, and it could come to a head when it’s time to raise the debt ceiling again.
A failure on health care will deny Ryan the funds he needs to pass a partisan tax reform bill, meaning that the two top legislative priorities of the year could go down in one late-March vote. If they want to move on to an infrastructure bill, they’ll find that that can’t pass on a partisan vote, either.
The only way the House leadership can function is by cutting out of the right flank and going to the Democrats to form their majorities, which is why I have long advocated a cross-partisan governing coalition for the House where some Democrats get committee chairs. It was the only way that Boehner could have saved his job, and he wouldn’t take the step out of party loyalty. Paul Ryan won’t do it either, but if his speakership fails and there is a new election, the moderate Republicans are going to have to consider making the kind of deal I envision.
It would actually be the only thing that could conceivably save Trump’s presidency, because it would not compel him but would give him permission to move away from this unworkable plan to govern based on only Republican votes. If he really wants to wheel and deal, he needs the freedom to get away from rigid far-right conservative orthodoxy. He didn’t run as that candidate, so he’s crazy to try to govern that way.
Look where it got him. Here he is trying to cajole people into voting for a bill that breaks almost every promise he made about health care. He couldn’t create a workable replacement for Obamacare that would cover everyone, keep prices low, and make people happier unless he was willing to get beyond conservative myths and talking points. He isn’t a down the line conservative and his effort to govern like one is bringing him to early ruin.
In any case, even if this bill somehow passes tomorrow, its chances in the Senate are approximately nil. I expect the Republicans senators are pretty much uniformly with the rest of us in hoping that Speaker Ryan fails and gets to take all the blame.
Right now, I’d say the only constructive thing anyone in Congress can do, whether Democrat or Republican, extremist or moderate, is to work toward getting that man out of the White House. Otherwise, they should all make plans to retire to some safe place far away. The idea that any kind of traditional politicking can be usefully done in this madhouse atmosphere is absurd.
And give us President Pence and a new, unknown as of now, VP?
At this point, we’re in the same situation as a pilot guiding a badly crippled plane toward the airport. We’ve long since despaired of taxiing up to the gate for an on-time arrival and are just trying to crash near where the firetrucks are.
Pence is not unknown. He’s as bad, if not worse than Trump in that he is actually a politician who is rather good at the visual art of politics (lousy at seeing the consequences of his policies [re: RF laws]).
However, he won’t press the red button at 3 am because Kim Jong-un made him mad.
I agree, but I can’t say that in every single post.
So Trump met with the Freedom Caucus and gave them everything and they still said no?
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Trump agreed to scrap all the Essential Health Benefits, including the provision on pre-existing conditions, the maternity benefits, the kids under 26 — all of it. They still refused to take yes for an answer. That’s what they do.
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Trump must be pissed right now.
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“The only way the House leadership can function is by cutting out of the right flank and going to the Democrats to form their majorities”
Boehner didn’t do it.
Ryan won’t do it.
Trump could turn his whole presidency around if he had the balls to do it.
Not true. He gave them half of what they wanted. They wanted all of that stuff, but also getting rid of community rating. WH has refused to give that, at least thus far. Although I’m still not sure that would be enough because it wouldn’t get rid of the subsidies.
In any case, even if this bill somehow passes tomorrow, its chances in the Senate are approximately nil.
What is Yertle the Turtle cooking up in the Senate? Granted, they’ll ignore or vote down the House bill. But what kind of bill will he offer and throw back to the House?
Nothing
He does not have the votes.
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Some reporters think he has a different/new bill cooking. Only time will tell.
I think Trump may be happy to keep Obamacare. I don’t think he gives a damn about policy as such, so fine. He would like to give more tax money to his friends, but even that takes a back seat to crushing rivals. What he will achieve here is crippling Paul Ryan, who is right now the main other player in the Republican Party. He’s going to blame Ryan if it fails and use it as an excuse to move away from Ryan’s agenda, which is proving too constricting. The danger for him is that the House may become less willing to cover his ass on the Russia matter and other investigations.
That could very well be why he is demanding a vote tomorrow. Bannon has stated he wants Ryan gone, and the demand probably is his idea.
Good post!
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If you read anything about Bannon, you know he hates Ryan just as much as he hates liberals. Why does he hate Zombie-eyed Granny-starver so much? No idea. I only know that he does. So if TrumpCare/RyanCare fails in the House Bannon will definitely try and hang it around Paul Ryan’s neck.
It’s a waste of time trying to figure out why individuals hate.
I’m reminded of a line in the book ‘One flew over the Cuckoos Nest’ by Ken Kesey. It’s about alcoholism.
“I drank from the bottle for so longt that the bottle ended up drinking from me’.
It’s a great line, and could just as easily be about hate.
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I’m actually thinking Trump’s negotiating is not bad. It’s heads I win; tails Paul Ryan loses. The House either has to hand him a victory on Obamacare, which includes, as it must, compromises from both extremes, making clear that he runs the party. Or the House is forced to abandon hope of repealing Obamacare, which will lead them to turn on Ryan as someone to blame. Perhaps his first genuinely slick move as President. Understanding it requires letting go of the notion that he fundamentally gives a damn about health policy one way or the other.
I’ve been thinking on this.
Brilliance of an ‘idiot savant’, or the blind squirrel who still manages to find a nut sometimes (throw in ‘stopped clock’ if you like).
Booman’s documentation of the setup-to-fail suggests Trump’s vociferous (and ridiculously counter-factual) criticism and condemnation of Obamacare were a pose all along to gain wingnut support, but which he was never personally invested in.
Cutting Ryan’s legs out from under him with the same stroke is just a twofer.
I have been helping organize and lead phone banks targeting voters in Districts or States where the Republican officeholders are vulnerable and/or persuadable. It’s reduced the amount of time I can spend around here on campaign days.
We are very pleased to be doing something which appears to be working very well. Many of the Congressmembers we are targeting are among the declared No votes.
To everyone who has done anything to defend the ACA this year: Keep it up! To everyone who has sat on their hands: It’s a great time to help us finish this fight- contact Congress and the White House and tell them to strengthen health care reform, and stop trying to repeal it.
Jason Lewis that puss spewing fucktard, has me on ignore actually. You guys arent the only ones I needle.
Are you contacting moderates or freedom whackos, as all the press is about the “die quickly” caucus. What approach are you using in your efforts?
We’ve been contacting voters represented by (relative) moderates in the GOP caucuses in the House and Senate.
Also, we’ve been contacting voters in Rep. McCarthy’s District, because he’s in House leadership, his District has an extremely high number of citizens who have benefited from the ACA, and because he’s an asshole who instructs his staff to resolutely ignore opponents and he must be made to feel tons of pressure.
You been saying this for a while and it would make sense if we lived in a country with a sensible system, that is a parliament, but the existing method has granted the GOP more and more political power. I suppose if you want to DO something with that power it might be an option but for the most part, the GOP end is power itself amd denying it to democrats.
Even those in the reddest of red districts should be scared to death of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju3K9bqPTeM
Makes sense they wouldn’t want to take yes for an answer. Those guys are going to keep shifting to their right, moving the goal posts and finding any excuse to vote against this piece of shit bill. Then they’ll claim it was because they were holier than thou conservatives who could not bear to sully their pure white souls.
What I love about this situation is that it demonstrates conclusively that Trump doesn’t give a shit about policy; laws; governance; the welfare of the body politic etc. (or, understand any of it) and never did. All he cares about is “winning” (meaning, his own victory) — it’s why he spent the first month of his presidency bringing up his electoral victory every five minutes, as if he was an Olympiad discussing his performance in retrospect; as if the basic task was over and not just starting.
He’s the perfect end result of decades of cynical conservative/Republican manipulation of the process: a creature of crass commercial mediocrity, television, and misinformation.
They deserve every bit of this. (I’m not sure we do, but that’s another story.)
From No More Mister Nice Blog:
“I’m sure few in the GOP expected Trump to be a policy wonk, especially on health care, but they thought he would be a barracuda in the conference room. Instead, it appears that he’s thinking, Look at me. I’m the president! All these people I’ve seen on Fox want to talk to me about important matters like health care! He’s not a dealmaker — he’s starstruck.”
Makes sense to me.
Failure would tell us that Repubs never had a health insurance reform plan after 7 years of whining and didn’t have the courage of their “conservative” convictions to pass a simple repeal of the hated Obammycare bogeyman. They have, of course, been a thoroughly incompetent majority for some time now, and they were foolish to stake the early days of their revolution on the tar baby of health insurance. But we know that success or failure is irrelevant to their majorities, since the system has been gamed so badly by them and their Supreme Court majority.
So “Deal Maker” Trump turns out to be a fraud as well, I am shocked, shocked! Plan B is for Der Trumper to simply throw one wrench after another into the Obamacare machinery, until it does become truly unworkable. Cynical but effective.
I think we can retire with honor the theoretical idea of a power-sharing arrangement that cuts out the braindead extremist flank of the Repub House of Clowns. There hasn’t been an example of this in the past that I know of, and in the days of Repubs terrified solely of their right flank, it most certainly is not going to be tried out by Der Trumper. And if Reichsfuhrer Bannon thinks there is some unknown Repub LBJ in the current House of Imbeciles, then he really is delusional. He has the only possible ringmaster out there with Pretty Boy Ryan.
To the extent Der Trumper cares about this charade of health insurance “reform”, we can see he hasn’t the slightest patience or understanding of legislating—what a surprise for someone never elected to anything. His approach when faced with opposition is simply shit-or-get-off-the-pot. Make ’em walk the plank!
The only thing a party of Medieval barbarians can do is destroy things. So they need to wash their hands of this Trumpcare error, and get on with the massive tax cuts, bloated defense spending and annihilation of all remaining gub’mint functions and 20th century programs. That’s what they were elected for, not this health insurance sideshow.
“…He couldn’t create a workable replacement for Obamacare that would cover everyone, keep prices low, and make people happier unless he was willing to get beyond conservative myths and talking points….”
Actually, no. It comes to the definition of the term “conservative”, which anyone must agree has multiple meanings — regardless of whether you consider any, or all, of those meanings to be purely literary.
All Trump has to do is channel Reagan and Cheney. “Deficits don’t matter.” Issue the debt. Trump has lived entirely on debt all his life: he knows how that works, even though he may know little else.
Certainly correct, and the gub’mint-wrecking policies enacted in the “Conservative” Era are what is actually responsible for the explosion of national debt. It was critical to explode the debt in order to have a credible argument for gutting the New Deal, Medicare and regulated economy, which is the true goal—after the creation of an unaccountable class of billionaires, the true cancer upon the body politic.
The $64,000 question here is whether Pretty Boy Ryan has a working majority to continue the “conservative” debt explosion strategy, since they literally spent the past 8 years railing against the Obammy Deficit. I guess the issue boils down to: how much hypocrisy is too much, even for a “conservative”?
The idea that Trump can issue a threat that, if the bill fails, there will be no more attempts to pass it once again demonstrates his basic lack of knowledge about how the American system of government works. Congress initiates legislation, not the Executive. If Ryan wanted to keep tinkering with different versions of a healthcare bill for the next two years, Trump could do nothing about that.
The idea of a coalition government is an interesting one although it would also be unprecedented and also very high risk for the Democrats since the GOP is never honest and would try screw the Democrats at the earliest opportunity.
I am shocked, shocked, to find Der Trumper has a lack of knowledge about how the American system of government works!
In Europe lately coalitions with center-right parties have generally been electorally disastrous for the other parties (UK’s Liberal Democrats, Germany’s FDP, the Netherland’s Labor party). I think it’s almost impossible for the “moderate” Republicans to make the offer, but even if they did I wouldn’t want to take it because of that. Temporary alliances for essential things like raising the debt limit or continuing resolutions are fine but no more than that.
As I said above, failure would be blamed by Trumpites on Ryan, which would serve Trump in other ways. This has already begun.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/breitbart-drudge-blame-ryan-obamacare-repeal-bill
But will the MSM play along? Trump’s done so much to make then hate him, after all. I suspect they’d bigly enjoy sticking him with the blame.
Of course he’s going to try to blame Ryan. He has to blame anyone but himself. That’s who he is. And some of his supporters will fall for it.
But even among Republicans that isn’t going to fly for all of them. And out in the reality-based community Trump’s failure and Ryan’s failure are shared, based on promoting a bill so shitty they couldn’t even get it past their own party’s congress.