Republicans came into power with such hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams about crushing the future of working people and handing over more money and power to the already wealthy and powerful, but we are talking about the goals Paul Ryan was meditating solemnly on as he did keg stands in college, here. And now … never count them out or underestimate their ruthlessness, but congressional Republicans have painted themselves into something of a corner:
It’s not just health care that Senate Republicans are hoping to get back on track after they return from their July 4 vacation. President Trump and Congress have a lot on their plate before their summer recess in August — raising the debt limit, passing a budget, moving on tax reform. It’s a daunting agenda during the best of times.
And this is not, to put it mildly, the best of times, what with a president who doesn’t know what’s going on and resets the agenda on a whim via Twitter, all while his team is under investigation for collusion with the foreign government that got him into office despite a popular vote loss. That’s the setting for Republicans to try to pass a wildly unpopular healthcare bill that they’ve already had to delay a vote on, and, as Ryan Lizza explains, everything else in their agenda may hinge on that, because “For obscure parliamentary reasons, Republicans can’t move on with the rest of their wish list until they pass the health-care bill.”
They planned to use one reconciliation bill for health care and a separate one for the beast of tax reform. But one of the many arcane rules about the reconciliation process is that any new reconciliation bill cancels out the old one. [...]
If the Senate health-care bill dies and Republicans move on to tax reform, they will have an interesting choice to make: do they give up on health care and propose only a tax-reform bill? Or do they combine tax reform and health care into one monster bill, which would make passage even more daunting?
The time crunch on gutting health care and still being able to get to taxes has gotten so serious that a group of 10 senators is asking Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to shorten the Senate's sacrosanct August recess, noting that if the recess happens as scheduled, “Our current Senate calendar shows only 33 potential working days remaining before the end of the fiscal year.”
McConnell’s success—or, we hope, lack thereof—at twisting Republican arms during July 4 recess and getting the votes he needs to pass Trumpcare will determine what options Republicans have for forcing the rest of their agenda on America, along with the fate of their five-week August recess.
Senate Republicans are still talking Trumpcare, and plan to bring it back after July 4th recess. We absolutely MUST make sure they don’t have the votes. Keep calling your Republican senators at (202) 224-3121. Tell them “NO DEAL” on Trumpcare. Then, tell us how it went.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2txHVR5
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