BREAKING
Per report Senate Press Gallery X account:
No votes were Collins, Paul, and Tillis
Final vote 51-50 including VP JD Vance— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.
Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.
Optimism opens the door to great things.
If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.
’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’
The willow is too close to the house.
This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.
White supremacy is terrorism.
No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”
Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly
Bark louder, little dog.
Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!
Their shamelessness is their super power.
“But what about the lurkers?”
If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
Baud
I blame immigrants. #GOPVoters
Lobo
Again I wonder why Senate Democrats didn’t use all the procedural hurdles they had at hand, e.g., quorum calls as one example.
Murkowski this is your legacy. How could a person live with that?(I know strictly rhetorical)
PaulWartenberg
Say goodbye to nearly every rural hospital across every Red state (and even a few Blue ones).
Say goodbye to thousands of elderly people in guardianship care no longer able to afford their ALFs and hospice care.
You kept voting in the last 40 years the same Republican Party that kept planning to gut social services to pay for billionaire tax cuts, America. /rage
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I keep seeing references to the House FreeDumb© caucus saying they won’t support the Senate version but nothing about what they object to. Not enough bad things?
Next time I see somebody say how RCV in Alaska gave us Murkowski instead of some rwnj (which is probably true), I’ll remind them of this vote and ask how are they different?
Kim Walker
Billionaires Bonanza Bill. Yeehah…
gratuitous
Scripted as a pro wrestling match.
Steve LaBonne
Inevitable but still, fuck. What an obscenity.
artem1s
it’s not the Dems fault that the GQP has effectively imploded and unilaterally imposed a constitutional monarchy on the whole country. They have agency. They made their choice and after trying for 20 year finally accomplished McConnell’s goal of making sure Obama was a one term president. Congrats assholes.
Now they get to reap the whirlwind along with those who, for the last 20 years, couldn’t bring themselves to vote for competent leaders at every/any level because ¡VIBEZZZZZZ!. and wimmenz should be home making sammiches.
And of course we have to live in this timeline with them. I’m blaming the ones responsible and rooting for their injury; not blaming the Dems for not finding THE imaginary one weird trick that will fix everything if only….
PsiFighter37
Hope this disabuses people of the notion that Murkowski is a good person.
RedDirtGirl
Surprised that Collins was so concerned as to vote no. She usually overcomes her qualms…
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I dunno, maybe some of them actually care about the deficit and massive increases to the national debt that this bill includes?
They’re certainly not concerned with building a bunch of concentration camps, despite calling themselves the “Freedom” caucus…
“You keep using that word – I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
LOL. Next you’ll hope that this disproves the fact that both parties are the same.
Steve LaBonne
@RedDirtGirl: She voted no because they didn’t need her. As per usual.
Hunter Gathers
They are not going to be able to lie their way out of this one.
Hospital and nursing home closures may not make the nightly propaganda rounds on CNN or Fox, but shit will hit the fan when grandma dies in the street because her nursing home closed. Or Fat Ass MAGA McDipshit dying of a heart attack because he didn’t the survive the two hour drive to the nearest hospital, because the local one closed.
Meet the wood chipper, MAGA.
Ohio Mom
The only thing I can say is, at least the waiting is over. No more wrestling with false hope, that Murkowski would vote no.
This will be terrible for Ohio Son, whose services are all paid by Medicaid. It will be terrible for his support worker (whom we love), who is gets coverage through the Medicaid expansion — both she and her husband have ongoing health issues.
I know a few Republicans covered by the expansion, I’ll enjoy some shadenfreud on their behalf.
I hope all those far-leftists salivating for contradictions to be heightened appreciate the chaos and suffering their wish will be creating shortly.
Splitting Image
@RedDirtGirl:
53-47 party count in the Senate, so three golden tickets. I imagine Collins and Murkowski flipped a coin to decide who would vote yes.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Steve LaBonne:
Exactly. My guess is that if Murkowski developed a moral center at the last minute given her efforts to extort stuff for Alaska were stymied, and telegraphed that she’d vote ‘no’, then good ole Suzie Furrowbrows would have scrunched her face a little harder and voted yes.
JML
@Steve LaBonne: Correct. Collins would have voted yes if they didn’t have the tie-breaker. Murkowski got bought off, she sucks.
What a disaster. The GOP are just the fucking worst of the worst or the worst.
wenchacha
Fuck that shit.
Also, got a letter that our primary Family Medicine dr is moving to Canada with her family, and will join a medical practice there.
My son the electrical engineer in solar construction and his Japanese wife with green card will move to Japan if her status is threatened. (Said his red flag is if Jon Stewart is arrested for protesting the admin. Hey, at least he now recognizes that Rogan is a fool.)
I am sad for what we have become out loud.
Nelle
Back to calling the House reps….
Ohio Mom
@PsiFighter37: These same people still need to be disabused of the notion that all of the No votes (particularly Collins) are good people. A stopped clock that is correct twice a day is still broken.
Chief Oshkosh
@artem1s:
Of course, that’s not all what the OP said, but hey, you do you.
I saw a lot of advantage to dragging this out as long as possible through any means possible, if for no other reason than to not give Trump a win for the July 4th weekend.
Captain C
@Hunter Gathers:
FTFNYT: Sure, Republicans control all three branches of government, but here’s why this is exclusively the fault of the Democrat [sic] party.
Chief Oshkosh
@Ohio Mom: I am so sorry to hear of the direct impacts on you and yours. I don’t know what else to say.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
As a former subscriber to the Washington Post, I still get their news roundup emails. From this morning:
WashingtonBezos Post: All the news from last year, it’s not like anything important is happening in Washington now…Mart
I would just like to take a moment to thank my Senator, Josh Hawley. He has continuously made a strong stand night after night on the local news against this amoral bill that will crush America’s economic leadership and the healthcare of poor people in… oh, never mind.
Me
@Splitting Image: this only became possible though when Ron Johnson folded like the world’s cheapest lawn chair. Tillis to his very small credit didn’t.
Glory b
@Lobo: Again, I wonder why Republicans get to be lawless while Democrats are required to be flawless.
PsiFighter37
Well, the only good thing is that the House is going to have send all their swing-district members out on a plank to vote against this monstrosity. Good luck holding the House if they vote against this (which they won’t – if the House votes this down, I am unconvinced the GOP will try again. Same as what happened with ACA repeal).
Ohio Mom
@Chief Oshkosh: Thanks. We still have a year or two before all this goes into effect — I don’t know what we can do to prepare but we will have lots of company.
Old School
@Lobo:
I guess they didn’t use it, but Wikipedia says the delay would have been up to 15 minutes.
opiejeanne
Bah! A plague on their house and The (R) House.
I’m consoling myself by having strawberry shortcake for breakfast* because we have an abundance of strawberries in the garden right now. Shortcakes are ready to go into the oven.
*my doctor would have a fit if she knew, or maybe she’s in a “state” this morning too.
Ohio Mom
@PsiFighter37: There’s an argument to be made that this is round two of ACA repeal. Just a little disguised.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@opiejeanne: That is an excellent breakfast.
WTFGhost
@Lobo: Well, keep in mind, probably everyone felt like Fetterman, but, only he had the lack of barriers to saying “this is really pissing me off, we know how the effing votes are going to go.”
Once you get to a certain point, you are only pissing off the opposition, who will retain control of the house (of Congress) for another one-and-ahalf-years. At that point, you can expect spite. You know good and well that Republicans are spiteful, vengeful assholes, who will gladly vote their spite on other people.
It’s appropriate to try to gum up the works to run out time when there’s a real deadline, but it’s not appropriate just to piss off the opposing party, not when you know they are evil.
Almost Retired
We are careening towards a world where the quality of life for most people will wildly diverge based on the state you live in. Once the disparity becomes apparent, I don’t believe for a second that the GOP/MAGA crowd will tolerate Blue State prosperity. They will target us and drag us down. In other words, we shouldn’t be quite so smug and tsk tsk-ey here in California. This sucks for (almost) everyone.
NaijaGal
I’m surprised that Collins voted no. Is there any hope that the House won’t pass it because it got worse in the Senate?
WTFGhost
At least they managed to push it outside the boundaries of Pride Month.
Remember, they passed the jeweled lie on the first of Ju-ly, and remember to cram it so far up their collective asses they’ll be shining it every time they brush their effing teeth. (Yes, their teeth eff, and *NEVER* use a condom, so they have to eat their food in the middle of the wet spot, which, eeews-ville.)
hells littlest angel
@PsiFighter37:Hope this disabuses people of the notion that Murkowski is a good person.
Indeed. All Republicans Are Monsteres.
PsiFighter37
@NaijaGal: The clowns who screech about the deficit won’t like this bill because it raises the deficit / debt even more than the House bill. 2 cents that their spines are softer than wet half-ply toilet paper.
ExPatExDem
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I’m still amazed how Trump was able to grow back the piece of his ear that was supposedly grazed by a bullet.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
That statement in courage compliments of Murkowski, who could have voted no and gotten the same result. What a feckless, morally hollow person. But, that’s not a news flash.
Jeffro
yes
they’re mad that it doesn’t go far enough
jonas
@Hunter Gathers: You’d be surprised at the lengths people will go to not to have to admit they were wrong about something. You got folks down in Texas right now whose kids just died of fucking measles going on about how they *still* won’t get vaccinated.
My prediction: this bill will be a disaster for America and an even bigger disaster for rural, red America and it won’t make a lick of fucking difference politically. Their lord and savior, Jesus H. Trump, can do no wrong.
Jeffro
me too
NaijaGal
@Almost Retired: There are millions on Medicaid in California and the state currently has a budget deficit. No one is pretending CA is immune. What we do have that differs from the federal government are Democratic leaders that are not actively trying to kill us. In fact they actually dream up ways to make our lives better and often they succeed!
ETA: The disparity in life in CA versus say MS is already apparent.
WTFGhost
@NaijaGal: There is a chance. It’s not very likely. Republicans have to go back and face the voters, and possibly, go on the Republican dole from losing their seats, but some piss-poor Republicans can turn a single term into a long running TV show, where they are viewed as wise for hating Trump until they turn Trump-ass remora as soon as it looks like he’s ahead of the game.
Me, I remember said asshole was one of the many who crowed “WHY DO LIBERAL WANT TERRI SCHIAVO TO DIE!” without looking at the public record evidence that only about 30% of her brain remained *PRESENT* – the rest was just gone, absent, dead, and sucked away by the body, before it could go gangrenous.
Anyone who did the most minimal due diligence on this story should have been incapable of quoting a single Republican on the story. I assume editors threatened to burn out a reporters eyes with a red hot poker, if they researched the actual court cases and filings (including the image that showed how little brain tissue she still had remaining).
Raoul Paste
@opiejeanne: Your doctor is probably having cheese fries for breakfast this morning. Doctors know what is happening
dm
Isn’t all the bad stuff delayed until after the mid-terms? If the Democrats retake Congress, I’m sure all the hospital closures and Medicaid cuts will become their fault.
FDRLincoln
@Ohio Mom: I hear you Ohio Mom. My young autistic son’s services are provided through Medicaid. My wife’s job is funded by Medicaid. My older son’s job is funded by Medicaid.
This bill is a kill shot for my family.
NaijaGal
@dm: If Dems have a trifecta in 2028, how long would it take to undo this bill? Can we start writing the replacement now? Is there a left leaning org that would fund that the way Heritage funded Project 2025 and what’s happening now?
scav
I mean, the best restaurants or hotels don’t serve every hungry or sleepy riffraff that stumble by but maintain their exclusivity — why should hospitals or retirement facilities demean their product by serving the hoi polloi? Best medical system in the world! Who needs all the branch locations bringing down the stats and tarnishing the rep? Same goes for universities.
tobie
Murkowski and Collins are allowed to vote against bills when their vote doesn’t count. Tillis messed up the calculus with his “no” so only one of them could vote “no” this time. I’m sure this was all choreographed. At least we no longer have to have any illusion that Murkowski votes based on principle. Like Collins she’s a partisan and a coward.
My heart goes out to inner city hospitals, many of which will have to shut their doors since a good portion of their payments come from Medicaid. I’m not going to cry over rural hospitals. Rural white Americans voted for Trump overwhelmingly. Elections have consequences.
Ohio Mom
@dm: That’s my understanding. Its almost enough to make me wish the Republicans keep the House so it can all blow up in their faces.
The delay is diabolical. Most people aren’t going to believe our panic because everything will be the same. Until it isn’t, and then they will have forgotten why everything is disintegrating.
p.a.
Like the (probably) apocryphal story goes “… we’ve all ready determined [what you are]. Now we’re just haggling over price.”
Sorry for the misogynous framing, but in this case…
cain
@Hunter Gathers:
It’s set up enough ahead that if a Dem takes over maga and the press will blame the Dems.
Captain C
@Ohio Mom: From what I understand, a lot of rural hospitals will have to close sooner, as it takes some time to wind down and close a hospital.
gene108
@PsiFighter37:
Are gerrymandering and voter suppression able to blunt the ill effects of any backlash?
That’s the GOP House’s calculation.
If gerrymandering and voter suppression can’t do this in 2026, those tools will eventually give Republicans control of the House again by 2030 at the latest.
Also, Republicans are laser focused on making sure the OBBBA gets passed. Trump 2.0 and their control of the courts and Congress is there best chance to cement their terrible Republican vision for the country for a generation. They’ll stop at nothing to make sure it happens.
Jeffro
folks there’s no need to blame Murkowski when we can blame ALL OF THE Rs
especially JDivans
PatD
Seems to be a no-brainer that there should be no Dem support, assuming it’ll be needed, for appropriations, CRs, debt ceiling hikes etc. The Republicans threw all the rules out to pass this bill. Let them own all of it.
LAC
@artem1s: God bless you! So beyond fcuking tired of the David Copperfield procedural response to this atrocity by republicans being put on democrats. This is electoral consequences! All we can do is try to wrest this back to some normalcy and get this Congress back.
opiejeanne
@Raoul Paste: My doctor(s) may be on the list to be deported. Not white enough and with forn* names.
*hat tip to Nanny Ogg.
gene108
From earlier versions of the bill that I read about, the worst effects had been pushed off until 2029. I’m not sure if it still does this.
Assuming Trump doesn’t seek a third term, the bill had been setup to real screw the next president.
What we’re predicting about hospital closings won’t kick in for a few years, but I do not know what the Senate has changed.
BellyCat
Ding, Ding, Ding!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So, …
The GOPers know they can’t blame Dems for this so blame immigrants. ROFL
azlib
The quandry that Republican Senators face is they need the MAGA base to support them for reelection. At the same time they recognize they will get very few Dem votes. I remember when Lincoln Chaffee ran for relection and lost in 2006 to Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee was one of those rare NE liberal Republicans whose policies were little different that the Dems. The word was he lost because he had an ‘R’ next to his name. To me that was the start of the extreme partisanship we see now. So it does not surprise me the way the vote came down. The electoral calculus is pretty simple for Republicans.
Collins got the “golden ticket” to allow her “no” vote since she will face a really tough relection next year. Murkoski is in a safer position.
Also, most of the Medicaid cuts only go into effect in 2 years. Maybe some of the Republican Congress critters thnk they can tough this one out. Also some may think the House will not vote for this bill. I doubt that is correct, but hopefully thinking others will get the blame is always in play.
Omnes Omnibus
It looks like Baldwin and McBride did a lot of behind the scene work to get rid of the ban on Medicaid being used for gender affirming care.
Soprano2
@Mart: Oh, you knew he was going to vote for it. All that posturing was a lie.
gene108
@NaijaGal:
The thing with MS, when people talk about how this will impact the rural poor, is a huge percentage of the rural poor in MS, AL, and other parts of the South are African Americans.
I don’t know the percentages, but it’s substantial.
I wish only rural white Republican voters would get hurt worse than everyone else, but that’s not what’s going to happen.
Ohio Mom
@FDRLincoln: Ugh and double ugh. We have a little time to prepare but I don’t know how to or for what exactly.
Over the years I’ve come to learn that most people think the disability services world runs on charity, that it’s all big benefactors or endowments or magic fairy dust.
You and I know it’s all Medicaid dollars. All those day programs, the agencies providing homemaker/personal support services, the various transportation options — everything that keeps our people productively engaged in their communities, that allows them to have decent lives, it’s all Medicaid dollars. That entire network could be facing an extinction-level event.
Then there is health coverage — a lot of our folks have complicated medical issues (not Ohio Son, thank the universe).
Belafon
Unless the House adopts this straight, we will be doing those whole thing again soon.
Soprano2
It’s purposeful. Notice that all the “goodies – no tax on tips and no tax on overtime – start right away and expire in 2028. All the bad stuff is put off until 2027-2028 and after, so that people won’t remember who actually did it to them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
Which is why whenever somebody expresses general disdain along the lines of “those red state voters deserve all the bad shit they’ll get from this”, many of us here bristle.
Because there are a lot of Democratic voters in those states, many of whom will feel the brunt of this. Discounting them that way is basically saying “acceptable casualties in the long fight against the GOP” or something along those lines.
Also too, I don’t doubt that the GOP looks at this differently in that they don’t mind the “collateral damage” among their red, rurl voters as long as “those people” suffer. Thus, this hitting black voters in MS, AL, etc., is simply a feature, not a bug.
Soprano2
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They stake a lot on the lie (that’s easy to get people to believe, unfortunately), that all immigrants are getting “generous benefits” and not working. I just read a story about WalMarts around the country suddenly losing a significant amount of their employees because FFOTUS withdrew TPS from people. The truth is, most of those immigrants are working, not living off the government.
NaijaGal
@gene108: I know that a substantial proportion of the rural poor in the South is African American but there are also poor whites. Their own suffering doesn’t change the way poor white people vote in the South. I expect that Republicans believe things will play out the same way nationally (people voting to make others suffer rather than to improve their own lives).
Hunter Gathers
@Captain C: Hospitals and nursing homes have to budget out years in advance. Once the final numbers come out and said hospital figures out how much $$$ they are going to lose and if that amount means the hospital can no longer operate after the loss of those funds, they have to start winding it down.
After final passage, there will be storm of rural hospitals and nursing homes that are going to announce that they are closing.
WTFGhost
@NaijaGal: The big plot of 2025 was to do so much damage that a lot couldn’t be undone. For example, they want to give up leases and throw away property, and break contracts, until a department, or even an entire agency, would have to be built from scratch, in the busy area of DC, where real estate is hard to come by.
Trump isn’t smart enough to do that, most likely, and, it would take work, which he’s completely allergic to. But they can do a hell of a lot of damage, a lot more easily than it can be undone. Their plan was literally to cripple government, except for what they thought mattered, in hopes of leaving it permanently crippled.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: The people in my dementia support groups will be PANICKING if they know about this bill. There’s already been talk about people being worried. I don’t think the average citizen realizes how much of Medicaid’s money goes to help the elderly. They think it’s all through Medicare, but that’s certainly not true. Some people want their loved one to go on hospice because they can get help paid for that they can’t get otherwise. R’s count on the idea that most average people think Medicaid pays for lazy unemployed people and young women who shouldn’t be pregnant anyway. *rolleyes* By the time people realize that isn’t true, it will be a lot harder to fix what this shitshow of a bill does.
Captain C
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
This is why I say anyone who didn’t vote blue* deserves it. A lot of good people who did the right thing will be caught up in the damage too.
*Who could vote.
Soprano2
@Belafon: They will be under a lot of pressure to do that, because FFOTUS has set an artificial deadline of July 4th for it to pass. I guess he likes the “symbolism” of that. We would like it if it were our bill, but I think we would want to make sure it was a good bill rather than trying to meet an arbitrary deadline. Did you read that they were all saying they don’t know how the tax on wind and solar got in there? Are you kidding me?
gene108
@Soprano2:
They’ve been successfully doing this with African-Americans my entire life.
There’s a certain percentage of white people that are instinctively inclined to believe the worst things imaginable about minorities.
It’s gotten better, but not enough to keep the lies from being effective.
gene108
@NaijaGal:
Republicans have been right about this for decades. They may suffer temporary setbacks, but white people voting Republican based on resentment is the safest bet Republicans have ever made.
Soprano2
Yep, I live and work among them. I know exactly what you mean. When some of my co-workers (who don’t live in Springfield) see people walking down the sidewalk, they assume they are homeless. They can’t conceive of people voluntarily walking places or not having a car. One of my co-workers said that everyone who lives in the area around where our office sits is either old or a drug addict! They truly believe this, that the “bad” part of town is full of bad people.
Ruckus
I have zero idea how this will affect my VA healthcare but it was already fucked up by the hiring of a new, pompous, arrogant, fucking jackass of a doctor who is now my assigned caregiver. Far more like care remover. At my next VA appointment I’m filing a complaint with the head of the hospital about how much a pompous, arrogant jackass he is and that I can imagine more than a few vets that might just want to prove to him physically how much of a pompous, arrogant, jackass he is. And that if he is my assigned doctor I would like to file a complaint about him, every last ounce of him.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
I have 4 words for people like this. I’ll repeat them from my prior comment.
Pompous.
Arrogant.
Fucking Jackass.
WTFGhost
@Soprano2: It’s not just that. They expect to hold controlling votes in the Senate so they can demand that any attempt to undo all this damage will have to be “paid for.”
“You want to re-do medicaid expansion? What’s it worth to you?”
This is why I recently mentioned “you know, we shouldn’t die on the hill of saving hospitals in rural areas. I’ll take a wound, but, I won’t die to protect others, until habeas is preserved.”
Republicans really will pretend that stopping their evil is a BIG FAVOR they’re doing us.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: Rrpublicanscrealky are evil geniuses.
Albatrossity
As someone else pointed out, these shenanigans are scripted like a pro wrestling tango. She knew she could do this and that the bill would still pass with J Divance doing his bit. I’d bet that if there were three other NO votes, she would have voted yes.
Captain C
@Albatrossity: “I’m just soooooo concerned about my constituents who I just voted to screw horribly. Please vote for me.” — Susan Collins, if she were honest.
Lobo
There are procedural techniques to cause headaches for the opposition. They use them us. The point is to throw enough sand in the gears for second thoughts to reduce the harm anywhere you can. Can it reduce all harm? No, but some. Sadly that is your only victory.
As another example, a senatorial staffer agreed that using the CRA you could almost shut down the Senate given how the Republicans changed the rules on it. It is also about the attention economy. It is doing what you can when you can. Sometimes it is losing to set up a win down the road. No one weird trick. And yes, we are going down the road of two Americas, see also Supreme Court on national injunctions. This will hasten it. Sigh!
FDRLincoln
I am so angry right now, I hesitate to write on the internet what I think should be done to the senators and reps who voted for this abomination.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: And then all those people who go on and on about “people shouldn’t be dependent on the government” are pissed when Medicaid claws back what little is left of grandma’s estate when she dies after living in the nursing home on Medicaid dollars.
Yup, the majority of Medicaid dollars go to poor elderly in nursing homes and disabled people living in their communities.
Elizabelle
@NaijaGal: That sounds like a good idea. Start the prepwork. Have it ready; maybe run on it.
Citizen Alan
Amen.
David Anderson
@NaijaGal: that is a good post for me to write tomorrow.
greenergood
Is it awful that I’m grateful that my 94-yr-old Mom died in May, so I don’t have to worry about her being chucked out of her nursing home? And ‘Catholic’ JD Couch-effer really needs to be excommunicated from his newly chosen faith choice …
Captain C
@FDRLincoln: Just phrase it like you don’t think it should be done, but they deserve it nonetheless.
NaijaGal
@David Anderson: Oh – I would love to read your thoughts on that!
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: My impression is that Murkowski would have been reelected in 2022 without Ranked-choice voting. That system probably made her path easier though.
Alaska has a hybrid electoral system that so far as I know is unique to that state. Like California, Washington and Louisiana they have one open, “jungle”primary first. But unlike those states where the two top finishers advance to the November runoff, in Alaska the top four advance to a Ranked-choice runoff in November.
Lobo
It is also gallow humorous that Murkowski is now the face of the Murkowski Death Bill.
Citizen Alan
@greenergood: It is sickening for me to think about how “lucky” our family has been that, except for one grandmother who died 25 years ago after spending at least 10 years in a nursing home, every member of my family who has died of complications from old age has gone quickly. That said, I do have an aunt (86yo) currently in a nursing home after a fall. Her daughter, my cousin, is hopeful that she can be rehabilitated enough to come home, but she also is in the early stages of dementia. I don’t know how everything is getting paid, but the cousin has not been openly worried about that. (I think there’s a pension plus SS.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@David Anderson:
I’m guessing this will be about Project 2029 that features noted liberal thought leaders like Third Way founder Jim Kessler.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/project-2029-democrats
Please spare us.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: We had an elder law attorney give a presentation at one of our support groups. I didn’t know there were “Medicaid compliant” ways to shelter your money, even if you have a lot of it. I get that people want to keep their home and their car and their personal possessions, but if you have millions of dollars should Medicaid be paying for your or your loved one’s care? I think it should do that for everyone, but it doesn’t, so I think if you actually have the money to pay for it yourself you should.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
She would have been, that’s not my point. I was simply remembering a comment singing the unqualified praises for RCV in an Alaska context because it “gave us” Murkowski instead of some rwnj. And my point was that we have people who think there’s some technical fix that will miraculously bring about what we want electorally without facing the reality of what we need to do to win elections and the fact that when the rubber hits the road, a rwnj Senator from Alaska is no different that Murkowski when it matters.
O. Felix Culpa
@Lobo:
The GOP owns this bill. Full stop.
The Dems did harm reduction by successfully combing the bill for appeals to the Parliamentarian and getting a number of harmful elements thrown out based on the Byrd rules. Apart from that, the majority party wins the votes in our system and no amount of handwringing or sand-in-the-gears throwing will change that fact. Every single Democratic Senator voted against the bill, including Fetterman. I hate the outcome too, but I’m not going to stamp my feet and blame them because the Dems didn’t make a miracle happen. The numbers are the numbers.
ETA: As someone (satby?) pointed out in an earlier discussion, these results were baked in last November. Let’s focus on the actual perpetrators of this atrocity, namely Trump and his collaborators in Congress and the Supreme Court.
WTFGhost
@FDRLincoln: 10 million people off health insurance is an easy 10 thousand deaths every year, since roughly one person in a thousand will have something that needs urgent attention.
When your policy is to let people die, I find no problem with the thought that it “should” be criminal, and understand why a person might start thinking evil thoughts.
Just like I can understand a jealous spouse shooting a cheating partner – but we send said jealous spouses, who commit murder, to jail.
So, yes, I agree, sometimes it’s normal to think nasty things you don’t want to say, because you don’t really want them to happen. You might yearn to read a few obituaries, but you’re yearning for “choked on a big mac” or “stroked out straining on the pot” with an autopsy revealing he’d swallowed even more incriminating evidence….
WTFGhost
@Albatrossity: As importantly, if there was any concern about the vote not passing, they’d just hold the vote open until they could break the right arm or make the right gift. Had it come to 51/49, they’d have said “sorry, we can’t afford to let you vote ‘no’ any longer.”
FDRLincoln
@WTFGhost: The GOP is committing murder. They’ve already killed thousands in the Third World with the USAID cuts, with millions more to come. This bill will kill thousands in the US and ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands more, at least, with the suffering concentrated among the weakest and most vulnerable.
People have the right of self-defense when all peaceful means are exhausted. Someone will claim that right. There will be more Luigis to come.
Geminid
@NaijaGal: I expect there are Democratic members of various committees like Energy and Commerce who are working on replacement legislation already.
If Democrats win control of the House in 2026 they can at least put the legislation on the House floor and pass it in the next Congress. The strategy would be to push that legislation all the way through in the Congress after that, and get it signed by a Democratic President.
chemiclord
@Hunter Gathers:
Narrator: They were, in fact, able to lie their way out of this one, like all the other times before.
Eolirin
@FDRLincoln: The economic damage will also be immense.
chemiclord
@Captain C:
Well, what will likely happen is that Dems will eventually take over, but if they can’t fix ALL the damage the GOP had done in two years time, well, then the voters are just gonna have to vote Republican again, ya know?
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: You are certainly the undeniably expert authority on that!
Omnes Omnibus
@chemiclord: We could always just give up, but I am not sure anyone here would like where that takes us.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: I am hardly a policy wonk but I’ve always thought there should be some sort of cut off for families of modest means. If your estate isn’t worth more than X, you don’t have to pay Medicaid back. Let families have a little generational wealth.
What the value of X should be, I leave up to the policy wonks. Nobody has to pay back Social Security or Medicare if their expenses are more than their contributions, it’s just poor people on Medicaid that have to have money clawed back.
Many years ago, Ohio Medicaid sent me an audit letter, asking me to verify that the pharmacy had sold Ohio Son two different prescriptions, on certain dates for certain amounts (the amounts were to the penny, e.g, $7.46). They were doing a spot check on the pharmacy I guess.
Now I recognized the names of the medicines but what day we picked them up and how much they cost, I had no idea — the cost was completely covered by Medicaid so I never cared about the price. But I checked everything was legit and returned the form.
The point of this story is, at that moment I realized that Ohio Medicaid was keeping track of every single cent spent on Ohio Son. There is a bureaucracy dedicated to adding up all they spend on Ohio Son’s behalf in anticipation of his eventual death and their payday.
Captain C
@FDRLincoln:
I’m not going to do that but prosecutors probably wouldn’t want me as the 12th man on that jury.
Captain C
@chemiclord: Just like in 2024. And 2022. And 2016, 2014, and 2010.
We shouldn’t because it’s inhumane, but if that weren’t the case we should think of forcing all students to watch Schoolhouse Rock cartoons in a Clockwork Orange setup. Perhaps also require a mandatory class (no pass, no diploma) on critical thinking, thinking ahead, and planning.
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: Your aunt might be in rehab, which Medicare will cover for a limited amount of time. The idea is it’s not a permanent placement, it’s to finish healing and recuperating in a facility focused on well, rehab, which a hospital isn’t.
Now if she comes to need memory care, that is permanent and not something Medicare pays for. It is also many, many thousands of dollars a month, probably more than her pension and Social Security combined. She will have to pay the difference out of pocket until it’s all gone, and then when she’s broke, she can go on Medicaid.
It’s a little bit more complicated than that, this is a simplified version for the sake of a comment thread. But — not your problem, it’s your cousin’s.
oldgold
Senator Lisa Murkowski says this after voting for this awful legislation:
“This has been an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation—and we all know it”
Then why in the hell did you vote for it? You were the damn deciding vote!
Lobo
@O. Felix Culpa:
I agree the GOP owns Murkowski’s Death Bill and I think our representatives could be doing more. I look at LA and see what my gente are doing. They are relatively putting up a stronger fight than the most prominent, privileged, or positioned people. Words cannot describe my sorrow at this bill. So much suffering like the destruction of USAid.
WTFGhost
@chemiclord: More importantly, this is blowing a huge hole in the annual deficit, hence to the total debt, so, our options will be far more limited, because people are going to be less confident lending us money. Let’s face it, we might elect Trump and he might decide to declare bankruptcy for the US, demanding everyone take a haircut on bonds.
Some day, people will have a “favorite Republican Serial Killer” to “love,” from this era. Years after everyone is dead, I bet there will be ballistics dummies made up of said deceased Republicans, for use in a rage room. I know I’d feel a fury similar to what I’d feel if my home state, Philadelphia, had fought in the confederacy. (See, PA is a *commonwealth*, so I can call Philly the “state”.)
“This was a time when we could have made a lot of rich people even richer, by pumping up the use of renewables, and quickly destroying the feeble arguments against them. But N-eeeh-OOoooo-OOO. (I was the third child born a year apart from bigghostbro, and two from sisghost. I can “but Noooo” better than the vast majority of people raised in less dysfunctional families!)
“this was a time we could have had real reform in policing, in the sense that ‘Only Nixon could go to China,’ and real reform in gun laws;
“This was a time we could start reminding people that empathy is what makes us work together so well, and love our friends and neighbors, even if we won’t talk politics with all of them.
“This was a time we could have had universal health care, and maybe even some minor basic income, either SNAP benefits for everyone, or a refundable credit, for, say, 80% of the SNAP benefit.
“We could have had federally funded child care, revitalizing rural areas, and allowing families to live there, while modernizing postal service, so USPS is still the best “last mile” option, even accounting for the need to make 6-day-weekly deliveries!
“But (come on, everyone, all together, as best as you can!!!) NEH-OOOOOOOO-OOOOO-OOOOOOOOO-OOOOO, and if you get that last OOOOO right, it sounds like only the wicked witch of the west would have contemplated “no” instead of “yes.”
Ohio Mom
@oldgold: You know the old joke used to define the Yiddish word “chutzpah”?
After killing both his parents, the defendant asked the court for mercy, pointing out he was an orphan.
That’s Murkowski, the embodiment of chutzpah.
It might be some sort of sexism, expecting Collins and Nurlowski to be smarter and more decent because they are women.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I hate saying this but it’s good that they are finally getting everything they voted for. If we had stopped this from passing then we would have had the blame for the failure of MAGA. Now the Republicans can get all of the credit for everything that follows from this. Republicans have wanted to drive the car off of the cliff forever but the sane people have always taken the wheel from them and corrected course, averting disaster.
Not this time. They won and they are taking us over the cliff and there’s no sane people to stop them. People are going to be hurt, imprisoned and killed/die. As the news cycle starts to report on the disaster porn that is unfolding across the country, Republicans will be hard at work blaming the Democrats for all of the shit going sideways.
Civility is dead in this country, so is good government. We now live in a police state where you will work or die sick and hungry. You are on your own and exist solely to provide working capitol and breeding stock for future working capitol. Obey the Christian laws or get the Christian boot of government on your neck.
While it’s going to suck balls for the sane and those who have functioning brains, I am going to enjoy every single fucking disaster that is visited on the heads of those who voted for this national abortion.
David Anderson
@Lobo: They pretty much did; the constraint for the GOP to pass the bill out of the Senate was getting to 50 not procedure time to burn on the floor. This was the longest vote-a-rama in history because the GOP leadership needed to figure out what Murkowski needed for her vote. If they had her vote last night, vote-a-rama would have ended after twenty or thirty amendments rather than forty five plus.
This is the bill that passes with a 53-47 majority with ideologically well sorted parties.
WTFGhost
@WTFGhost: Ahem. All due apologies to the actual Wicked Witch of the West, who felt a bit, uh, slandered, and defamed, bordering on what she’d call blasphemy, which I am trying to understand, through thick cultural differences. The actual WWotW was a solid no.
Lessee, fire damage cleanup….
WTFGhost
@WTFGhost: As a random note, since I share bits about being disabled here, if you follow the links up these posts, you can see a great example of my communication circuits starting to fry in the first post. I could no longer clearly say what I intended to say. You might find it “babble-y,” or “circumlocutious” (the latter of which proves I am in a slightly better state right now!)
What tends to happen is, since my brain is going in, and out, while I’m writing, I don’t always seem to know what I’ve written. I know what I “thought” I intended to write, so I just continued from the last word I “thought,” without realizing that none of it got to the paper, or, that it contradicted something else.
That’s a sign of low working memory – I can’t hold my response in my head, not even a full sentence, not at a glance. My background in compsci (which is weak indeed!) reminds me you can work with low memory, just, small bits at a time.
If my low working memory wasn’t accompanied by severe pain, I’d recommend it as a moment of peace. I don’t have the bandwidth to worry about the evil being perpetrated in our names.
Kayla Rudbek
@greenergood: and Pope Leo should excommunicate all of the Republican Catholics, maybe that would either get their attention or force them to go Protestant as they have been threatening to do for years now