For the West Virginians in the audience, give Senator Capito a call:
My latest statement on the Senate health care bill & planned vote to repeal Obamacare: pic.twitter.com/yAVIxgptCu
— Shelley Moore Capito (@SenCapito) July 18, 2017
And thank her.
Reader Interactions
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dmsilev
That’s a pretty straightforward statement without much wiggle room. So, I guess “repeal, and then we’ll figure something out, maybe” is dead as well?
Major Major Major Major
Woohoo! Glad the dam seems to be bursting on this.
So we should just all pretend to be Cole when we call (‘cept you JR, you can be you)?
Ridnik Chrome
I wish more Republicans would get this idea through their heads.
Chris
Good for her.
Villago Delenda Est
Yertle is getting his ass kicked…by members of his own caucus.
Meanwhile, Donald is ranting and raving about the fillibuster. Which hasn’t had to be applied against this abortion of a health care bill.
rikyrah
Do the right thing, Senator.
Keep your people alive.
It really shouldn’t be this difficult.
Jeffro
And take a moment to savor that these effing idiots in the GOP can’t even deliver when their party completely controls all three branches of government!
Anyone want to print up “TRUMP CAN’T DELIVER JACK SHIT!” on a bumper sticker and make a gazillion bucks?
MomSense
Yes we can!
Gin & Tonic
Almost on topic. For a guy who’s, IIRC, north of 90 years old, John Dingell’s Twitter game is mighty fine.
dmsilev
Let’s again take a moment to admire what Pelosi, Reid, and Obama managed to accomplish. Yes, there were some ugly moments along the way, but they got it done.
Jeffro
Btw David Fahrenthold is tweeting about failed restaurants in Trumpov hotels and huge numbers of available tee times at Trumpov golf courses (contrasted nicely with unavailable tee times at nearby local public courses)
Even Shit Midas’ own businesses aren’t immune to his touch! LOVE IT
rikyrah
Free Talenti gelato at Millennium Park today
POSTED 7:23 AM, JUNE 27, 2017,
BY ANABEL MENDOZA, UPDATED AT 07:35AM, JUNE 27, 2017
CHICAGO – It wouldn’t be summertime without some free gelato. Talenti is giving away 15,000 free pints of delicious gelato in Millennium Park on Tuesday, June 27!
You can find your free pint west of the Pritzker Pavilion, 201 E. Randolph St. starting at noon according to DNAInfo.
The giveaway will happen before Millennium Park’s free showing of ‘Julie & Julia’ and feature some of Talenti’s popular flavors like cinnamon peach biscuit, vanilla chai, and double dark chocolate.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: (SH)ART OF THE DEAL
rikyrah
Capito is a “no” on repeal vote. With Portman talking it down, Collins unlikely to support, McCain still out, this should about do it pic.twitter.com/GzMr6yd87g
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) July 18, 2017
comrade scotts agenda of rage
It still begs the question will she be bribed with some kind of modification that sends plenty of federal tax dollars to the opiate addicts in her state in order to support the bill? Or does McConnell have the votes so is letting her take the symbolic “no” vote in order to preserve herself politically?
Yeah, this looks like a straight up statement of opposition but those bastards pull the football away every damned time so it’s hard for me to take what they say at face value anymore.
Yarrow
Awesome news! This has to have been planned. Lee and Moran take the fall last night and Capito goes out against Repeal this morning. No one person to blame for everything.
I think the Senators don’t like McConnell very much.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@dmsilev:
But neoliberalism, dronez, corporate cash, no single payer and all the other crap spewed out by Our Progressive Betters!
Yeah, my guess is that history will be kind to the respective leaders during 2 years of Dem control of the gubmint. The three of them made a great legislative team.
Emerald
Well now. That’s very nice. If she didn’t come to Washington to hurt people, then she’ll also oppose Ryan’s plan to slash Medicare.
Yeah, Medicare.
Oh, and also Medicaid, the ACA, federal employee pensions (that will never happen—retired federal employees know the system too well to allow it), food stamps and the EITC.
All done under budget reconciliation so the Democrats can’t fillibuster it.
Here’s the relevant paragraph from TPM:
OK, yeah, the TPM article also says “though GOP leaders have no intention of actually carrying out the cuts.”
Uh huh.
Looks like Indivisible has a bit more work to do (although I do believe that the senior population will be able to mobilize pretty well on its own).
debbie
@rikyrah: @rikyrah:
Never count Portman out. He can waffle and collapse with the best of them.
Yarrow
Adam Jentelsen, Harry Reid’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, had an epic twitter thread about all this last night. On how the Senators feel about McConnell, I found this interesting.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
I went and read the entire thread. very interesting.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Emerald:
“…federal employee pensions (that will never happen—retired federal employees know the system too well to allow it)…”
Even the most die-hard, anti-federal employee Repub looking to gut the workforce has never said a word about touching the retirement of *already retired* feds. They’re looking to gut the current workers (raises hand).
And don’t believe for one minute that we active feds can do squat about it. We have two toothless unions (not their fault, they’re legislatively been made toothless) and no real legislative clout. Sure, we have Reps and Sens with sizeable fed constituencies but the numbers pale in comparison to just about anything else. And there just aren’t that many Reps and Sens in those places.
The Popular Vote Loser’s budget was a wet dream for people like the departed Chaffetz who have gutted public sector workers at every level of their incompetence. If these clowns could ever get their shit together, they could pass anything and we feds could do zip about it.
It would die in the Senate because I doubt McConnell could do any additional legislative hocus pocus to find a way past the 60 vote threshold.
I remember all too well how a Democratic controlled House and Senate screwed us over in the mid-80s when they changed the retirement system in cooperation with St Ronnie. It could still happen again.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Apparnetly Trump isn’t amused by the crash and burn of his signature bill. Can’t imagine why, it’s distracted everyone from his son’s act of treason.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Yeah, it’s epic. He understands how the Senate works and if he says the Senators aren’t happy with McConnell, I believe him. A few more from that thread:
I saw McConnell speak this morning for a few minutes. He started out looking rattled and afraid. When he pivoted to attacking Democrats he perked up, but him being afraid caught my eye. He has failed spectacularly. He knows it. He can’t deliver Obamacare repeal. Thus he can’t deliver the huge tax cuts he promised his owners. He’s compromised and those that own him can’t be happy. He knows it.
debbie
Huh. Glenn Beck just said out loud that he hopes the Dems remain fixated on Russia because it will make it much easier to repeal ACA.
khead
“Serious concerns”. About the “discussion drafts”. Yawn.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
I am told that McConnell’s approach as majority leader is draconian and unilateral. He makes decisions, other people follow. It irritates his caucus, the Wealthcare bill pissed them off, and the repeal bill is slapping his own senators in the face for daring to defy him. I generally have scoffed at ‘political capitol’, but here it definitely applies. McConnell is rapidly squandering the goodwill he has among his caucus to vote for any of his agenda.
Maybe that’s why he’s sat around doing nothing. Anything he did would make them mad, and he only had two or three real votes worth of power. He’s wasting that.
Yarrow
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!
MattF
McConnell will now force Capito to deliberately refrain from harming her constituents. There’s something I don’t get about this. Maybe McConnell is much more of an ideologue than I’d realized.
Cermet
The kock sucker brothers must be furious; their one wet dream has turned out to be just their own soiled depends are leaking shit and piss down their legs! LOLOLOLOLOL
rikyrah
Senate Republicans Are Back to Repeal and Delay
by Nancy LeTourneau
July 18, 2017 10:00 AM
With announcements last night from Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) that they will not support the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to concede that he doesn’t have the 50 votes to pass it.
……………………….
What McConnell is saying is that they will instead revive a bill that Republicans passed in 2015 to repeal Obamacare, but was vetoed by President Obama. Since that bill delayed implementation of the repeal for two years, we’re back to the idea put forward by some Republicans at the beginning of this process to “repeal and delay.” The rationale was that the prospect of a collapse of Obamacare would force Democrats to work with Republicans on a replacement. In other words, it is a renewed form of the hostage-taking we saw from Republicans repeatedly during the Obama presidency.
Most people are assuming that a repeal and delay vote will never pass the Senate. This revival of that strategy is merely a way for McConnell to give Republicans a way to tell their constituents that they voted “yes” on the bill to repeal Obamacare. But it also puts tremendous pressure on so-called “moderate Republicans” who would have to go on record voting “no” for a dangerous bluff from McConnell.
Because the 2015 bill’s revival would once again be subject to the rules of the budget reconciliation process in the Senate, it wouldn’t necessarily repeal all of Obamacare. Instead it would:
What wouldn’t be included are all of the regulations on health insurers that are part of Obamacare. They would stay in place. That includes things like the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, coverage for the list of essential benefits and what is known as “community rating,” which prevents health insurers from varying premiums within a geographic area based on age, gender, health status or other factors.
Kevin Drum points out that eliminating the funding mechanism while keeping the regulations in place would destroy not just Obamacare, but the entire individual insurance market. I suspect it would even go beyond that. The regulations that would stay in place affect all health insurance—even what is provided by employers. So the damage could extend beyond the individual market.
The brutality and cynicism of this play by McConnell is two-fold: (1) he’s counting on the probability that this repeal and delay bill won’t pass, and (2) even if it does, the prospect of this kind of havoc in health care would force Democrats to concede.
To recap, here are the steps McConnell has taken in this effort to repeal Obamacare:
Frankensteinbeck
@MattF:
I haven’t understood what McConnell is doing since day one of this Republican government. Current best guess is ‘He hates Obama and wants to make damn sure the voter suppression Republicans rely on isn’t overturned, but otherwise doesn’t care and is happy to twiddle his thumbs and do nothing.’
EDIT – @khead:
The important part is “I cannot vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan.” A replacement plan isn’t happening. That’s why they’re discussing this bill in the first place. This is a ‘no’ vote.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It would be awesome if another big collusion shoe thumped down atop Trump now that he is already foaming at the mouth in rage and incompetence.
Amir Khalid
How TPM sees it.
Could someone explain to me how Obamacare repeal without Trumpcare in its place is supposed to fly in the Senate? From what I’ve read, the former is by itself plenty toxic with the public.
Major Major Major Major
A republican who says they didn’t come to Washington to hurt people is lying.
eric
@Major Major Major Major: that is too harsh and mean spirited. they did not come to hurt rich white people! ass!
Emerald
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Well then, Indivisible will have to be!
I used to know a former head of the CBO, Martha Phillips. She said that federal employees were so savvy they knew how to block virtually any changes to their benefits.
Of course, that was in the 90s. Times have changed. And plus, your own direct experience probably is a more reliable guide than Martha’s from way back then.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: some have suggested that Mitch just wants a dead bill he can trot out as an excuse to move on.
@eric: argh, I also forgot about corporate people!
hovercraft
Good for Capito.
@Jeffro:
Well duh! Anyone with a brain would know that the multiple bankruptcies weren’t just bad luck. The only reason the DC hotel is making money is because of the people openly bribing Twitler.
Many of his rubes can’t afford to patronize his enterprises, hence the effort to launch their new SCION chain where they can separate them from their money.
Hungry Joe
We would be so, so totally screwed if these guys were even in the neighborhood of competent. And the bozos running the Trump House are even worse. They keep breaking what I think of as The Molly Ivins Law, that goes something like “Everybody steps on their own dick sometimes, but you’re not supposed to just STAND there.”
MattF
@Amir Khalid: There’s a significant number of Republican voters who will be exceedingly pissed off if/when Ocare repeal fails. If this bloc decides that the current Republican party is ‘no better than the Democrats’ then the Republican Party becomes the ex-Republican Party. Just consider– all those polls on issues showing Republicans in a 60 to 40 minority– if the majority of that minority gives up on the Republican Party, there’s no more Republican Party. So, I think we’re immersed right now in wingnut politics, and it ain’t pretty.
Given that this is the situation on the right, one possibility is that McConnell has shifted to damage-control mode. Another possibility is that McConnell is actually a true believer. From my point of view, it’s a somewhat academic question, but the politics is quite serious for anyone on the right.
zhena gogolia
I’m reading Al Franken’s book, and I’m surprised by his account of how the Obama campaign refused to help him in his first senatorial race. He’s big on Hillary, though.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Emerald:
A huge difference between now and then if the gutting of staffers in the House and Senate. This was deliberate policy enacted in the 90s by Gingrich after he took over. The professional cadre on the Hill were downsized to nothing. When they were there, you bet they worked over their bosses on cuts to federal benefits, that’s why nothing changed.
But with few of them around now, those asshats don’t see first hand the havoc their actions bring.
That’s the big difference between now and 20+ years ago.
GregB
@Yarrow:
Harwood used to be at the far right of the media spectrum back when he was at the Wall Street Journal.
He is now a pretty honest arbiter of the news and almost sounds, gasp, a bit left of center.
Frankensteinbeck
@MattF:
This also happens if Democrats stay as angry and energized as they are now, or if they lose the Republican voters who have fallen in love with their healthcare. I’m guessing the less insane senators are thinking their best bet is to rely on Teabaggers being as easy to lie to as they always have been before. I’m betting they also blame McConnell for putting them in this position. They have to be pretty pissed at Ryan as well, who sold the House version as ‘let the Senate take the blame.’ (Pretty much how that worked out, too.)
Hafabee
I faxed her Friday, yesterday, and today. I started with
I see she used the word hurt in her statement this morning. Friday I said
Then this morning I concluded with
Maybe her staff actually read the faxes they get?
rikyrah
In January, this what Republicans were talking about: straight repeal but abandoned it because it became clear Americans wouldn’t allow it 1
— Angel Padilla (@AngelRafPadilla) July 18, 2017
It’s desperate. But it’s also dangerous, especially when it’s McConnell. Let’s recap what straight repeal would mean for Americans: 3
Straight repeal means an end to the subsidies that make health care coverage affordable for millions of hard working American families 4
Straight repeal ends Medicaid expansion, ripping healthcare from millions of Americans, some who got health insurance for the first time 5
It means eliminating the individual mandate (you know, that thing that makes it possible to protect people with pre-existing conditions) 6
Consequences would be devastating. According to CBO, it would take healthcare away from 18M people in the FIRST YEAR, and 32M by 2026 7
Premiums would spike by 25% in the first year, and DOUBLE by 2026. If Republicans care about reducing premiums, this isn’t the way 8
eric
God speaks….
Brachiator
@Ridnik Chrome: RE: “…I did not come to Washington to hurt people…”
Yep.
patrick II
Utah, Kansas, West Virginia are all republican states where medicaid was expanded. Those senators from states without expanded medicaid are not feeling the same pressure — it is much tougher to take something away from people who already have it. Justice Roberts attempt to subtly gut the ACA just barely fails.
MattF
Uh… according to the WaPo, the number of people attending that meeting is now up to eight.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Hey, anybody see Humboldt Blue check in lately? Maybe I have just missed him.
bystander
Sounds like Murkowski is a nein.
Motion to proceed fails, too, I think. Three repub women finished it off.
Maggie Hassan was just on. Don’t know much about her, but she seems like a good person to have out front…of Joe Manchin, hopefully.
randy khan
@Jeffro:
I said this recently somewhere, but I regularly walk past the outdoor cafe at the Trump hotel in D.C. I’ve never seen anyone there. Not one person.
low-tech cyclist
RINO!!!
Only half kidding.
Sens. Collins and Murkowski have also said they would vote against the MtP on repeal-and-delay. So three strikes and it’s dead.
I’ll be calling my (Dem) Senators this afternoon to say Thanks.
low-tech cyclist
@patrick II:
WV yes, but not Kansas or Utah.
Steve LaBonne
@debbie: That’s my Senator! What a useless shithead.
Miss Bianca
@eric: OK, I’m gonna have to follow God online, looks like…
Barbara
@randy khan: I have seen people there, and although I have not actually gone inside, I have spoken with a few who have, who have told me that the prices for food and drinks are basically unconscionable. As I understand it, fees at all Trump properties are much higher than at equivalent non-Trump venues. I am sure that has at least some bearing on their level of business.
Barbara
@low-tech cyclist: Arkansas, Kentucky, Arizona, North Dakota, and Montana . . . Here is a complete look:
http://familiesusa.org/product/50-state-look-medicaid-expansion
Dennis
Yet she refused to go on the record until it was clear the bill would fail. Don’t give her too much credit.
John Fremont
@Yarrow:Also too, as of right now, states with legalized marijuana sales.
eric
@Dennis: it only became clear to us now. I think McConnell has known he has a losing hand all along and hoped for a miracle and did not get it. It was the smart play for the ‘nos’ to wait as long as possible. I think still they were nos.
randy khan
@Barbara:
There was a semi-review of the bar at the D.C. hotel soon after it opened and the prices were pretty high by D.C. standards (which means they would be shocking to people who don’t live in a big city).