With McCain’s announcement today, Lisa Murkowski will also vote no and probably Rob Portman from Ohio. Won’t just be a one vote squeaker.
If the GOP guts health care, then they have lots more money sloshing around to offset the pain of the tax cuts they want to enact for the wealthy with their “tax reform.” When the GOP talks about “health care,” or “tax reform,” just substitute the words, “tax cuts for the rich,” and you’ll have the true picture of what they’re trying to accomplish.
A good example of many Repubs’ “thought” process on health care and insurance for same, as in “I don’t care about it until it happens to me”:
From the NYT article:
Bolding and italics mine.
So even the New York Times is passing along the story that ordinary voters – not Big Donors – are complaining about the lack of results. Where are these people? How do we know they’re complaining?
I’m willing to give a pass on that; it’s no big leap to think that there are plenty of people who’ve internalized the ACA lies on the right, and are furious that promises have not been kept.
Indeed. There are several on this very board. Well, a couple.
There’s a recent poll that says that a majority of Republican voters want a repeal and replace and think it’s a high priority, even though not much of anyone wants what’s been offered so far.
Okay, so – the question I started with – how are they making this known to their representatives in Congress (rather than to pollsters)? Are they having angry town meetings that aren’t being covered, or are they just calling and e-mailing them, or what? and how do the pundits know that this is going on, since they’re the ones telling the Times and the talking heads on CNN?
Pretty sure the GOP has pollsters of their own.
At least one of the Koch brothers is a true believer libertarian (easy to be when you start out with daddy’s money), so it’s not so much that he wants the poor people dead as that he sees no reason to do anything to prevent it.
If you’re keeping score, it’s Hollywood Elite 1, Donald’s Demonic Team 0. Now they can give up this dream of killing health care for millions to give money to the rich to move on to their main event, tax “reform” to give more money to the rich.
Gotta wonder what programs their going to cut (more of) to find the money. Food stamps? Social Security?
Well, what they need to do with health care was cut taxes so that they had a lower starting baseline for tax “reform.” But this bill only got rid of the device tax, IIRC, so it wasn’t doing much heavy lifting re: taxes. This is unlike AHCA which would have made later tax cuts much easier.
Thanks for the clarification. But are you saying that eliminating the funding for federal subsidies to offset premiums won’t count toward savings they could apply to “tax reform?” What about cuts to Medicaid?
<sigh…> I guess I find it even more depressing to think there’s not even a fiscal goal for them, even a nefarious one. If it’s not about helping them to achieve tax cuts, then it must really be about Koch/Adelson/Wynn/etc. money and saying, “Fuck you!” to Obama. Human beings be damned.
If they pass a huge tax cut, they are reducing the revenues for the country. They aren’t really supposed to do that by itself (they do it all the time). Instead, they are supposed to cut spending if they cut revenues. So, the original AHCA bill had a big tax cut coupled with a big spending cut. They LOVE that! Woo! They just paid for the tax cut for really rich people by cutting services for really poor people!
So then you look at the next bill in the line. Hmm, this also includes a revenue cut, but see how the revenue is less than it was before the previous bill was passed! Woo! Suddenly the total tax revenues for the country can be lower and still be neutral, which means they have to do less in raising taxes or cutting spending in other areas, and they most certainly don’t want to raise taxes, nossir! So, say they start out with wanting a 10% tax cut. If the baseline is originally 100, that’s 10 that they have to offset. But if the baseline is 90, that’s only 9 that they have to offset.
Does that make sense?
The Twisted Logic of the Last, Desperate Attempt to Kill Obamacare
Dunno that there’s anything in there that hasn’t been mentioned already, but I thought it was a fairly good, concise recap of the current situation. And there are links to related stories in other publications throughout the article.
It does. I was aware of the dollar-for-dollar offset issues previously, but didn’t understand how the requirement fit in with their current version of the “health care” bill. Thanks for fighting my ignorance. 
LOL, I thought of you, by the way, when I saw ol’ Tom Price having to fend off inquiries over his preference for travel by private jet. I know how fond of him you are. (I can’t stand him, either.)
When exactly is the vote? Please God, I hope McCain lasts until then. (I’m guessing plenty of Pubs are praying he won’t.)
Huh. That’s how praying is supposed to work, is it?
Vote is next week, if it happens at all. The more unsteady the bill looks, the less likely McConnell will be to call for a vote. But the reconciliation deadline is September 30th, so it can’t be voted on past that date.
He’s fucking creepy. Weirdly shiny, too.