So, I’m unclear on the procedures. If they pass something, does it get kicked back to the House of Representatives again after debate? Or does it become law?
If they passed the House bill as-is, it would go to the President. Because they are planning to change it, the House will have to vote again. This is unlikely to be a problem for them. And Trump would sign anything he was given. It could say “Trump is a fucking idiot and the ACA is officially Trumpcare and it sucks” and he would sign it.
“Still time to do the right thing”? Okay, when can we expect you to act presidential?
I don’t care how much you hate the ACA because you think it’s an affront to federalism, or because you want a lower tax rate on rich people, or because you think that premiums and deductibles should be lower, or because your alien overlords from an alternate dimension sent you instructions through your fillings for unknown reasons. It’s completely unacceptable to write major, life affecting legislation in such a slapdash, chaotic fashion. Even the Senate doesn’t know what it’s going to be voting on, much less the end effects of the unknown amendments. I’m rapidly losing the capacity for surprise at much of anything, but it is frankly shocking to me that they’re apparently really going through with a vote without establishing what the bill says first.
It’s like they all read choose your own adventure books as children and think that’s just WAY COOL, MAN! Let’s do legislation that way!
Man, I just spit taked (took?) jalapeno potato chips and Goose Island IPA all over my keyboard. When can we expect Trump to act Presidential? Holy shit, cleanup on aisle my house!
Exactly. Even if he did know the right thing to do, he would do the exact opposite no matter what.
McCain is coming back in time to help vote to take health care away from millions (if he votes as it is expected he will).
I hope someone reminds him that he gets care from the same plan that he wants to take from tens of millions.
If they don’t know what the bill says, I could see an argument that the votes don’t matter. And if the reconciliation rule isn’t followed, they’re nuking the filibuster. Can they even do that after the current rules have been established?
Actually, the filibuster doesn’t need to be nuked. There is a rule, in the Senate, that a senator is not allowed to speak more than twice on the same topic that is raised, in one “legislative day” (which is not 24 hours, but a Senate session). So you can allow the Democratic Senators to speak. Not more than twice each. If every one of them manages to speak for 24 hours straight (though I doubt they will), it will take around 90 days to kill the “filibuster”.
Of course, in order to do that, Republican have to find some cojones that have gone missing quite a while ago.
Did you know Obamacare is 17 years old?
It’s 17 years old in all 57 states.
That’s right. You assholes pretended that Obama thought there were 57 states, we know that Trump is stupid enough to think it’s been 17 years.
Those who vote for the repeal of the ACA should give up their own medical insurance.
Perhaps to pay for his cancer treatments McCain could get a loan from Lincoln Savings & Loan…
He could sell one or two of his homes. He has 6 or 7, right? I forget how many.
Apparently McCain is going to be a hero and manage to return to DC to vote to take health care away from 30 million of his own people.
Don’t pay attention to any of his patriotic-sounding bullshit; he’s a party hack.
In my mind, I officially discredited McCain as a center-right “maverick” when he brought in Sarah Palin as his VP. In reality, it probably happened long before that but there was once a time when he at least gave being a decent legislator some lip service. Now he’s just trying to do and say whatever he can to keep his personal taxpayer-funded goodies. Though I seem to recall his right wing challenger being an outright kook, I admit that there was a part of me that would not have minded seeing McCain lose anyway, especially considering it was obvious he was going to vote every which way to keep his standing.
The newest news is that they are trying for a skinny repeal: just repealing the individual mandate, plus maybe the employer mandate, and the medical device tax.
Then it would go to conference.
While I don’t want ANYTHING passed by these idiots, it’s good to think that Medicaid might be the sticking point. That might make it hard to bring it back in in conference.
Call your Senator to vote no on the motion to proceed, please.
We’ll have to pass it to find out what’s in it? Literally?