Whole thing’s sick —I vote yes!
McCAIN HELPS ADVANCE REPEAL
THE GOP’S CRUSADE to eliminate Obamacare has been kept alive by one vote.
Vice President Pence broke a tied Senate vote Tuesday and chose to continue debate for attempts to repeal and possibly replace America’s health care law.
Pence cast his decisive vote after the Senate ballot broke down to 50-50.
Another decisive vote was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who announced last week that he has brain cancer. He flew into Washington to cast his vote in favor of the motion to proceed on a bill that’s been shrouded in secrecy, and chided his colleagues for partisanship and gamesmanship.
He encouraged lawmakers to set aside personal agendas in the interest of the nation as a whole.
“Incremental progress, compromises that each side criticize but also accept, just plain muddling through to chip away at problems and keep our enemies from doing their worst isn’t glamorous or exciting . . . But it’s usually the most we can expect from our system of government, operating in a country as diverse and quarrelsome and free as ours,” he said — adding he couldn’t vote for the underlying measure in its present form.
Several Republican senators who opposed versions of a reform bill — including Dean Heller of Nevada, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — also voted in favor of keeping the debate alive.
President Trump praised the razor-thin win as “the beginning of the end for the disaster known as Obamacare.”
“Now we’re all going to sit together and we’re all going to try to come up with something that’s really spectacular,” he said in a joint press conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. He took aim at the two Republicans who voted no, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “So we had two Republicans that went against us, which is very sad, I think. It’s very, very sad for them,” Trump said. The tension and turmoil over Tuesday’s decision resounded until the final minutes before the vote. Protesters in the Senate chamber shouted “Kill the bill!” and “Shame, shame, shame!” as the senators prepared to make their choice. The surgery-scarred McCain drew applause when he returned to the floor for the first time since announcing his ailment. But after the tally, the veteran lawmaker and Vietnam prisoner of war delivered a scathing rebuke of the partisan politics roiling Washington. “We’re
getting nothing done,” he said, sporting a gash over his left eye.
“Our health care insurance system is a mess. We all know it, those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will,” he said.
McCain lamented that today’s gridlocked Congress could not claim “with a straight face” that it is “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
McCain has said he opposes the current form of the bill, making his vote to proceed with debate, coupled with his medical condition, appear hypocritical to many.
“John McCain is giving an outstanding speech about how he shouldn’t have just made the vote he just made,” comic book editor Tom Brennan tweeted.
The Tuesday vote came after Republicans had repeatedly failed this year to unite the party behind various health care bills.
But the vote only ensures that the legislative battle for reform will proceed one way or another.
Trump has supported either a repeal-and-replace option or simply nixing Obamacare without another plan in place. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pushed to end Obamacare even if there isn’t a replacement ready. Versions of both approaches as they are written now would deprive more than 20 million Americans of health insurance over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Some Republican senators shunned the bills because of the cuts to coverage, while others turned away because they felt the legislation didn’t go far enough in dismantling Obamacare. Conservatives still want to get rid of the Affordable Health Care Act, and moderates still want to keep some of it in place. Late Tuesday, the Senate rejected a GOPbacked proposal that would have repealed and replaced the majority of Obamacare.
Senators voted 57-43 to reject a version of McConnell’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. Those voting “no” included nine defecting Republicans.
Trump said he expected to see a “really, really wonderful” bill hammered out “over the next week or two,” though he did not detail what he hopes to see in it.
It is unlikely that the Senate will be voting on a new bill anytime soon, as it is expected to begin its August recess next week.
But Trump told Republican senators last week that they “shouldn’t leave town” until their reform efforts are “complete.”
Several Republicans voted to start debate but said the bill will have to be changed for them to vote to actually pass the legislation later this week. The amendment process promises to be extensive and freewheeling.
“We obviously don’t have consensus on where we ought to go,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Just plain muddling through . . . is usually the most we can expect from our system of government.