Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America condemn Republican Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski for failing to deliver on their campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare during a vote late Thursday night, while also stressing the mistakes made by GOP leaders and the major flaws in the “skinny repeal”. Jim mocks new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci for threats and vulgar comments about his colleagues, underscoring already fractious conditions in the new administration. In an attempt to end the week on a good note, Jim and Greg discuss a new poll showing that more fans stopped watching the NFL last season because of the national anthem protests than for any other reason.
Senate
‘They Have Promised This for the Last Four Election Cycles’
Republican hopes of repealing or even drastically reforming Obamacare appear more bleak than ever after enough lawmakers emerged in the past day to scuttle an amended health care bill and sink a promised vote on a repeal bill.
Nonetheless, free market health advocates believe there is a way for this Congress to make headway while the GOP still controls the levers of power in Washington.
Moderates and conservatives are glum Tuesday. Senate Republican leaders were clinging to hopes of squeaking their amended bill through, even after Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced their plans to vote against the motion to proceed to the bill, albeit for completely different reasons.
However, on Monday evening, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, publicly opposed the plan for not doing enough to eliminate taxes, reduce premiums, or kill regulations. With all 48 Democrats firmly opposed, four GOP defections spelled defeat for the legislation.
“I think there are just too many factions within this Republican caucus and with only two votes to spare, there just was not enough room for differences of opinion,” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner.
She says moderates were not willing to give up the federal Medicaid dollars.
“You’ve got the moderates who are very worried about losing the incredibly generous Medicaid match that their states are getting. Most of them are from states that expanded Medicaid. Remember, the federal government initially paid a hundred percent of the cost of the usually joint federal-state program if the states would put more people on their Medicaid rolls,” said Turner.
She says conservatives had their own reasons to balk at the larger GOP bill.
“Many conservatives are worried, rightly, about the regulations in Obamacare that are so difficult to reach through this narrow pathway that the Senate has to pass legislation with only a simple majority of votes,” said Turner.
“There’s some conservatives, like Rand Paul, who feel that any effort to try to do something else to provide subsidies to people going forward is really perpetuating Obamacare,” said Turner.
In response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would bring forward a bill to repeal much of Obamacare and trigger a two-year sunset to give lawmakers time to craft a replacement. While hailed by conservatives, those hopes were also soon dashed as Collins and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, revealed they would not vote on a repeal without seeing a replacement bill.
Both Capito and Murkowski voted for the same repeal bill in 2015 despite the absence of a replacement plan. President Obama vetoed the earlier repeal.
Turner says lawmakers act differently when a bill has no chance of becoming law than when it does.
“They knew President Obama was going to veto it, so there’s a difference between messaging and governing,” said Turner.
With Senate leaders unable to bridge the narrow divide between conservatives and moderates and the straight repeal apparently headed to defeat, many on the right believe it’s time to move on to other priorities.
Turner says that is not an option.
“They can’t not do something on repealing Obamacare. They have promised this for the last two election cycles. Every single member is going to have to go to his or her constituents and explain why, after all of this debate over Obamacare, they can’t get it done,” said Turner. “They known they have to do something.”
President Trump now suggests he may just let Obamacare collapse and blame Democrats since they did nothing to solve the problem. Turner says that strategy won’t work.
“They are going to be blamed for the millions of people that would lose coverage if nothing is done because these exchanges are failing, insurance companies are signing up to provide coverage next year because they are losing so much money providing so-called insurance under Obamacare rules that don’t work,” said Turner.
“Republicans own it. How can you have the White House and both houses of Congress and say that you don’t own this problem,” said Turner.
That being said, Turner is also slamming Democrats for asserting that Republican promises to repeal Obamacare are creating uncertainty among insurers and that is why premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing, rather than the Obamacare provisions themselves.
“That is just so completely beyond the realm of reality. The reason that costs are going up under Obamacare is because of the flawed structure of the bill that, for one thing, encourages people to wait until they’re sick to sign up for coverage and that provides all sorts of opportunities for people to drop coverage and game the system,” said Turner.
She still holds out hope that lawmakers will send power back to the states to address health care problems in the most effective way.
“Washington-centralized solutions are not the answer, whether Republicans are developing them or Democrats are developing them,” said Turner.
Filibuster Forcing Tortured Health Care Bill
As Senate Republican leaders scramble to find the votes to pass a health care bill, their fidelity to a warped understanding of the filibuster rules is deeply impacting the content of the legislation and the odds of passing anything in a deeply divided chamber.
The filibuster is a powerful tool by which the minority in the Senate can delay or kill legislation simply by preventing the 60 votes necessary to open or close debate on a bill.
However, a top official at the conservative Hillsdale College believes that embracing the original understanding and implementation of the procedure would provide for much more robust debate and a stronger legislative branch.
Matthew Spalding is the dean of educational programs at Hillsdale and also runs the school’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center in Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington. He says the filibuster is diluting the purpose of Congress.
“The underlying problem here is that Congress doesn’t really legislate in the way it was supposed to. It gave up on that, in many ways, decades ago, as it delegated its powers away,” said Spalding, who says the filibuster was never intended to give the minority that much power.
“The filibuster was not intended to stop legislation. It was intended to delay it. It was intended to slow walk it. It was intended to allow the minority to say whatever they wanted to say in objection in a public forum, in a deliberate legislative way,” said Spalding.
Instead of the traditional filibuster, which required exhausting speeches that lasted hours on the Senate floor, Spalding says the tool has become the lazy way to stop what members don’t like.
“A filibuster (now) becomes a silent veto. They no longer have to debate and keep the floor open. It doesn’t force deliberation the way the filibuster is supposed to. It’s essentially this silent killing mechanism that stops legislation in its tracks,” said Spalding.
As a result, he says the American people glaze over while the Senate plays parliamentary games instead of publicly debating the best course for the nation.
“I think Congress too often hides behind processes, whether it’s the filibuster or reconciliation or omnibus legislation rather than doing the hard work of legislating. That’s the Madisonian answer here, and in the long run, that’s the best thing to solve our problems,” said Spalding.
He says that problem is front and center right now as GOP efforts to address Obamacare are complicated by the inability to get to 60 votes to do anything. As a result, Republicans are trying to shoehorn changes through the Senate by way of the budget tactic known as reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority of votes to begin or end debate but also restricts what can be considered in such circumstances.
“The Senate is forced to try to go around the filibusters so they use things like reconciliation, an obscure budget process rather than regular legislation to get policy matters done,” said Spalding, who also says the GOP should have been crafting and debating the bill in public rather than writing it behind closed doors like the Democrats did with Obamacare in 2009 and 2010.
Spalding says two simple changes in approach to the filibuster would maker a world of difference. First, he wants the Senate to return to the policy where all other business is halted until a filibuster is resolved. He also encourages Senate leaders to embrace the “two-speech” rule, which would allow each member two opportunities to speak as long as they want in opposition to a bill.
However, once all the opportunities for speeches are done, the bill would proceed to a simple up-or-down vote.
Spalding says this would be very simple to accomplish.
“One of the reasons I point to these two reforms is that neither one of them requires a rules change. All they actually require is for the majority leader to agree to do this. This is merely a procedural move,” said Spalding, noting that those policies used to be in place before getting changed by leaders back in 1970’s when Democrats ran the chamber.
Such moves would still allow for filibusters, but would require real filibusters where lawmakers are forced to stand for hours on end to demonstrate how fiercely they oppose a bill.
“So I’m in favor of legislating but also keeping the filibuster so you can object. But if you’re going to object, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to debate and you’ve got to really filibuster,” said Spalding.
“You force the opposition to a piece of legislation to each get up there, and they can speak twice at whatever length they want, but it does come to an end at some point. The political point is made. Everything stops. The Senate shuts down and you get a filibuster. You have the effect but it does not stop the legislative branch from fulfilling its constitutional duties,” said Spalding.
The instant concern for those in the minority now or in the future is that Spalding’s approach all but guarantees the majority gets its way and that the minority’s ability to scuttle bad legislation is limited.
He acknowledges that’s true but says there is a remedy for that too.
“We shouldn’t hide behind it to stop bad things. We should argue to stop bad things and have more politics better elections and get better people in there,” said Spalding.
Left to the status quo, Spalding says the legislative branch of the U.S. government will only get weaker and weaker.
“Congress is the weakest branch. It doesn’t legislate. It doesn’t budget. Its muscles are so atrophied (that) we should think about the underlying reforms needed to revive it as an institution, which is good for constitutional government,” said Spalding.
VA Cleaning Up, Impeachment Idiocy, Kid Rocks the Senate?
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America praise the leadership of new Veterans Affairs Secretary Dr. David Shulkin as he makes sweeping administrative changes to improve veteran care. They also dismiss California Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman’s introduction of articles of impeachment against President Trump while California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom implores his party to tone down impeachment rhetoric. And they enjoy the news that rock star Kid Rock is seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate in Michigan and speculate about future celebrity candidates.
‘Do What You Told the Voters You Were Going to Do’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it may not be possible to unite 50 Republicans on any health care overhaul and that the only action may be a collaboration with Democrats to adjust certain parts of the system, an evaluation that a leading House conservative finds unacceptable.
On Thursday, McConnell told a town hall-style event in Kentucky that political realities inside the Senate Republican Conference make it very difficult to find consensus.
“I’m in the position of a guy with a Rubik’s cube, trying to twist the dial in such a way to get at least 50 members of my conference who can agree to a version of repealing and replacing” said McConnell, according to NBC News. “That is a very timely subject that I’m grappling with as we speak.”
“If Republicans are not able to agree among themselves, the crisis will still be there and we’ll have to figure out the way forward at that point,” added McConnell, who later said that could mean working with Democrats to provide options for Americans in the individual insurance marketplace but have no plans available where they live.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is also a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, says Republicans had an obvious path to avoiding this political mess.
“Sometimes we forget what our responsibilities are in Congress. Some are pretty basic. Do what you told the voters you were going to do. We were very clear over the last six years when we told the American people we were going to repeal Obamacare. That’s what we should have done. That’s what the Freedom Caucus proposed,” said Jordan.
Jordan wanted the same approach in the House but didn’t get it.
“I actually introduced that clean repeal, the same bill we voted on [in 2015] that we put on President’s Obama’s desk, we thought we should put it on President Trump’s desk and have a two-year phaseout where we had time to do the replacement. Unfortunately, that’s not the path that was chosen by our leadership,” said Jordan.
While congressional leaders insist Senate rules limit what legislation can pass with a simple majority of votes, Jordan says the passage of the 2015 repeal proves otherwise. On December 3, 2015, the Senate approved the Obamacare repeal by a vote of 52-47.
All current Republican senators who were in office then voted for the repeal, with the lone exception of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
As many as 14 Republicans have expressed opposition or reservations about the Senate bill, which McConnell pulled off the Senate schedule late last month. Some insist Congress must make good on vows to repeal and replace Obamacare and make sure that any legislation drives down the cost of premiums.
But moderates who are opposed to the measure are upset that there is not a greater role for government, as they demand more generous Medicaid expansion, Planned Parenthood funding, billions for opioid addition treatment or other priorities.
Despite the individual issues raised, Jordan says there’s a more discouraging fact behind the GOP’s inability to move this effort more smoothly.
“When you boil it all down, read Byron York’s column a few months back, where he said that the reason that Republicans aren’t doing a full repeal is because some Republicans don’t want to repeal Obamacare.
Jordan suggests that fact can be seen in how some GOP members are worried about limiting Medicaid expansion just 18 months after backing a much more conservative approach.
“That bill said Medicaid expansion goes away after two years. You don’t add to it. You don’t phase it out. It’s done. It’s a two-year wind down and the expansion part is no longer the law. That’s what we passed a year ago. Now we can’t do it, so that’s the frustrating thing for all of us,” said Jordan.
But all hope is not lost. Jordan says the Senate could be salvaged from a conservative perspective if lawmakers there embrace an amendment from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
“The Cruz Amendment creates what we call freedom of choice or a consumer choice option, which would say as long as an insurance company provides one plan in each category that meets with all the Obamacare regulations, they could then also offer any other plan that consumers and patients also want,” said Jordan.
“That would be moving us back toward a market that would bring down premiums for so many families and just makes good common sense to me. If that amendment goes in, I think the bill is good and you would see conservatives support it on the House side. Let’s see if that amendment gets in the Senate bill,” said Jordan.
While some Republicans in Washington bemoan the complexity of the issue and the legislative process, Jordan says the business owners and families in his district see things very clearly.
“Traveling in our district, we hear from employers all the time. Even this morning they said, ‘Here’s what’s happened to our health care costs. These aren’t even people who are in the small group or the individual market. They’re in the large group market. They’re costs are going up too.
“They want changes. They know what Obamacare has done. They want changes there, they want changes in the tax code. They want us to do what we said. They want us to secure the border,” said Jordan.
“Let’s get after doing what we told them we were going to do. After all, that’s what our job is. We better get doing that and the sooner the better,” said Jordan.
‘All the Wrong Moves in the Obamacare Direction’
A key member of the House Freedom Caucus says the Senate health care bill drifts too far towards the existing framework and that the smartest approach would be to repeal Obamacare and then get to work on a replacement, although he does not expect GOP leaders to choose that path.
Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia, taught economics for 20 years before pulling off a stunning defeat of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Republican primary. He could not support the Senate bill unveiled by leaders last week.
“The original bill coming out of the Senate kind of made all the wrong moves in the Obamacare direction, which is shocking,” said Brat.
“It’s not just about adding more coverage or helping more people. That’s the way most people are thinking about this. What I think people lost track of is Economics 101. Obamacare is in the ditch because of its own economic logic,” said Brat.
He says lawmakers on both sides struggle to see the big picture.
“That Obamacare logic was just about 100 percent attention paid to coverage and no attention paid to the price of health care. As a result, people were covered with gold-plated health insurance policies, but no one could afford health coverage,” said Brat.
With Senate Republicans now unable to move their own bill, Brat enthusiastically endorses the suggestion of Sens. Rand Paul, R-Kent., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., to repeal Obamacare now and then get to work on a replacement that can pass.
“The rational politics would have been, initially, to repeal Obamacare, which all of those senators voted for when it didn’t count. They all voted for the 2015 package to repeal Obamacare,” said Brat.
He says that’s exactly what Republican voters expected after the 2016 elections, but they aren’t getting it.
“When you vote 50 times to repeal and then you tell the American people you’re going to repeal and then you end up very close to Obamacare logic. That is not good for the Republican brand,” said Brat.
Brat is confident that if repeal came first, there would be plenty of interest across the spectrum in getting on board with the replacement bill.
“Then you have the leverage to work with the Democrats. There’s no shortage of people who want to add programs in D.C. in the swamp, right? So you first repeal and then the floodgates are open to add. You can get as many votes as you want from any politician to say yes. Politicians love to say yes. That would have been a brilliant move back in January,” he said.
So will House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell embrace that idea now that a comprehensive bill is flailing in the Senate? Brat is not holding his breath.
“I went to seminary so I’ll be praying for it, but I’m doubtful. That would be too good of news. I don’t think we’ve got a big enough spine to carry that off,” said Brat.
But why? Republicans scored decisive wins in three separate election cycles, due in large part to their promises to repeal Obamacare. So why aren’t they following through?
Brat sees three key reasons: keeping the special interests happy, the effort to protect vulnerable Senate incumbents from unpopular votes, and a relentlessly hostile media.
“Up in D.C., you’ve got to appease the swamp, so there’s all sorts of moneyed special interests you have to appease, ” said Brat, noting that the insurance companies love what the Senate GOP produced. “Then if you’re in tough seats, you’ve got to try to support those tough seats.”
Brat says the influence of the major insurance companies is a big problem, one that James Madison and Adam Smith warned against long ago.
“Both of them had the exact same logic. You want a large number of small competitors duking it out in this country. We’ve lost that. That’s the American way. Instead, we’ve got a few huge oligopolies running from D.C., which the elites can put their thumb down on and that’s why the American person is getting hammered right now,” said Brat.
As for the media, Brat says the avalanche of false, negative coverage is tough for many members to weather.
“After we passed the House bill, the mainstream media repeated misinformation and fake news for the next week. It was one simple line: House bill gets rid of pre-existing conditions. Everybody with pre-existing conditions is on their own and there’s going to be death in the streets,” said Brat.
“It is daunting to have confidence in the people back home, that they can see through that message when that’s all you see as a politician is that mainstream media. CNN, New York Times, Washington Post: House guts, destroys obliterates – all these crazy words. Then they say, ‘Politicians, you guys have to be more civil,’ as they lambaste us with falsehoods constantly,” said Brat.
One of the main reasons Brat opposes the Senate bill is because it fails to deal with what he sees as the fatally flawed framework of Obamacare.
“At least the House package had a little bit of room to negotiate some of the regulations and the regulations are Obamacare. If you don’t get rid of the Obamacare regulations, a young person cannot go out and buy a catastrophic package out of college, so they’re left with a gold-plated plan with a $2,000-$3,000 deductible. And I don’t know a lot of college grads with two or three grand in their pocket,” said Brat.
He is imploring his fellow Republicans to proceed on the principles they constantly espouse about the success of the free market.
“If you believe in free markets and the standard American package of free enterprise, etc., that will deliver the goods. Everybody knows these eye surgeries that started out at $6,000 per eye are down to $450 per eye to get your Tiger Woods eye surgery,” said Brat.
“That’s what the market can do if you let it alone. If you let the government intervene, you end up with Medicare, which is insolvent in 2034. You end up with Social Security, which is insolvent for the kids in 2034. $20 trillion in debt, $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities to those major programs, and we’re going to add more government,” said Brat.
‘This Is A Rescue Effort’
Senate Republican leaders revealed their closely guarded health care bill on Thursday, predictably outraging Democrats and leaving some conservative senators insistent that the bill doesn’t go far enough.
Known officially as the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, the legislation kills Obamacare’s individual mandate, scraps many of the current taxes on the books, and gives more power to the states to define the health care market.
On the flip side, the bill increases subsidies over what House Republicans approved last month and offers a slower phasing out of Medicaid expansion. Both plans keep the Obamacare provisions of forbidding insurance companies from rejecting patients with pre-existing conditions and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26.
Some of the top conservative health care policy leaders are effusive in their praise. Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity President Avik Roy says, “If it passes, it’ll be the greatest policy achievement by a GOP Congress in my lifetime.”
Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner also likes the plan, noting that it addresses the four areas she believes must be dealt with as a result of Obamacare’s many problems. Specifically, she says any final product must provide a safety net, create a bridge to new coverage, allow states greater flexibility on regulations, and reform Medicaid.
“This bill does all four of those key things,” said Turner. “Yes the Senate moves the dials in slightly different ways and they learned from the reaction to the House bill, particularly in the way the refundable tax credits were structured for people who need help in purchasing coverage.”
Turner admits the Senate bill spreads taxpayer dollars around more liberally than the House plan.
“Young people, people that are in lower income categories and people (nearing) Medicare age will get more help than they would have through the House bill,” said Turner.
That approach extends to Medicaid as well.
“It gets back to a more normal way of spending the federal-state match for Medicaid spending, but it does it over a longer period of time. So the states have more time to adjust to reductions in their Medicaid payments,” said Turner.
“But they are also going to have a lot more flexibility with this bill than they would have otherwise had. Obamacare just basically added millions more people to a faltering Medicaid program instead of building in reforms,” she added.
While many on the right see the legislation as a significant improvement over the status quo, some changes must be made if Republican leaders want the votes needed to pass it. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Mike Lee, R-Utah, Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., say they cannot back the bill in its present form because it doesn’t do what the GOP promised to do the past four election cycles.
“Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor,” the senators said in a joint statement.
“There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs,” they added.
Turner says she is encouraged by the language of the statement and expects their concerns to result in a stronger bill.
“I think the leadership knows they are going to have to make tweaks and adjustments to this bill. Fortunately, we’re now sort of out of the policy realm and we’re in the vote-buying realm. ‘What do you need, Sen. Paul? What do you need Sen. Johnson, etc. to be able to vote for this bill,” said Turner.
“We saw on the House side they made it better when people started to push back strongly,” said Turner.
She also says the underlying arguments from the four senators are spot on but she says the parameters for moving this legislation make things more complicated.
“They are right that we’ve got to do more to get costs down and to give people more choices. But they’re also so constrained by this process they have to go through, this reconciliation process, to be able to pass this with 51 votes, means that everything in the bill has to directly pertain to federal spending and federal taxation,” said Turner.
“That means that it’s really hard to get to the regulatory structures through this bill, which is why I think we need to think about this as a first step – breaking the logjam – so we can begin a process of making changes that effect this one-sixth of our economy so that we can begin to move forward to give people the choices that they want. but we can’t do it on the Obamacare platform,” said Turner.
Turner says with Medicare and Medicaid on the books, the conservative goal of wrenching health care away from the clutches of government will remain just that. However, she says the key provisions allowing more latitude to the states is a major step in the that direction.
“There’s always going to be a federal footprint. The question is whether it’s Bigfoot and it crushes the health sector or whether it has an appropriate footprint of helping people in need while allowing the private market to work,” said Turner.
The greatest howls of protest came from Democrats, who denounced the bill as cruel and likely to kill many people the moment it was released.
“That sort of tells me they were against it before they even knew what was in it,” said Turner.
While fully aware of the partisan divide in Washington and the Democrats’ intention to defend President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, Turner is stunned that Democrats are fine with what Obamacare is doing to health care right now.
“Are they really defending Obamacare, that has caused health insurance costs to double for an individual since the year before this law was passed, 140 percent higher for families. You have many counties that are at risk of having no options for people to use. Obamacare has not worked,” said Turner.
“There have been no changes in any meaningful way, other than one regulation, for the Trump administration or this Congress to precipitate this. This is failing of its own right,” said Turner.
Given the current numbers in the Senate, Turner believes this legislation is about the best the GOP can do on its own and that lawmakers must act.
“This is a rescue effort and they’ve got to get this done,” she said.
‘You Said It’s What You’re Going to Do’
Senate Republican leaders are not offering an specifics on their health care reform bill but reports of critical concessions in at least three major areas leave skeptical conservatives worried that years worth of Obamacare repeal promises are wilting before our eyes.
In recent weeks, reports have described the difficulty of Republicans in cobbling together 50 or 51 votes to advance an Obamacare overhaul. As a result, leaders are reportedly considering a more generous approach to Medicare expansion, effectively adopting the Obamacare approach to people with pre-existing conditions and, most recently, allowing tax payer funding of Planned Parenthood to continue.
Former Virginia Attorney General and current Senate Conservatives Fund President Ken Cuccinelli says efforts to make everyone happy appear to have taken any meaningful teeth out of the legislation.
“I’m concerned anytime (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell is talking the way he is. A deal to Mitch McConnell to you and me means capitulation,” said Cuccinelli, who was also the 2013 Republican nominee for Virginia governor.
He says if McConnell embraces a badly watered-down bill, he is breaking promises he clearly made while running for re-election in 2014.
“I remember, ‘Root and branch. We’re going to pull it out root and branch,'” said Cuccinelli, mimicking McConnell’s 2014 declaration. “[He ] paid for over 30,000 anti-Obamacare ads in October alone for his re-election in 2014. He apparently had no intention of keeping those promises.”
But it wasn’t just McConnell. Every Republican senator has campaigned on addressing Obamacare, with the vast majority vowing to repeal and replace the 2010 law. What has changed now that the GOP is in a position to do something about it?
“A lot of them lie. That’s the sad truth that is now being brought home to us,” said Cuccinelli, who also has no use for the argument that dealing with Obamacare is far more complex than a simple repeal vote.
“They love to tell us how complicated it is. What that means is, ‘You’re stupid and I’m the smart senator. You don’t know what you’re talking about so you should just adopt my soft, unprincipled position that, oh by the way, is not what I campaigned on,'” said Cuccinelli.
“It’s demeaning to the American people. It’s patronizing. It’s elitist and it’s a lie,” said Cuccinelli.
Rather than try to mollify every critic, Cuccinelli says there’s a much simpler way for lawmakers to proceed – do what they promised voters they would do.
“They didn’t say, ‘We’re going to undo parts of it.’ They didn’t say, ‘This is complicated and I’m going to simplify it.’ They said they were going to repeal it. There was a good article by one of the Fox (News) contributors a little while ago about simply doing what you say you’re going to do.
“Will some people not like it? Yeah, some people will not like it, but you said it’s what you were going to do,” said Cuccinelli.
Cuccinelli points to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial effort to ease the grip of unions on state government as an example of honoring your word in a tough environment.
“We saw the largest protest in the state capital we have ever seen, 100,000 people. They physically shut the place down with their obstruction. Scott Walker and the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature soldiered on and did what they said they would do,” said Cuccinelli.
He says the voters ultimately rewarded that consistency when opponents were able to put a recall election on the ballot.
“Guess what? The people who had been largely silent, the people of Wisconsin, came back out and returned Scott Walker to office with essentially the same margin as his first election. He got re-elected again three years after that,” said Cuccinelli.
“The moral of the story is even when people disagree with you, they respect it when you keep your word, even when it’s hard,” said Cuccinelli.
While the House has passed a bill, Cuccinelli says it also is not what voters were promised. He says President Trump’s biggest mistake was to let GOP leaders lead the process.
“One of the mistakes…was for the White House to turn this over to (House Speaker) Paul Ryan. What they got was a donor bill. They did not get a repeal bill. That’s what the House leadership does. They caucus with donors,” said Cuccinelli.
Contending that repealing the burdensome regulations in Obamacare is of top priority, Cuccinelli points out that the House bill only address one and a half out of 24 key regulations in the law.
Cuccinelli was the first attorney general in the United States to challenge the Affordable Care Act in court after it was passed into law. He doesn’t understand why Republicans in Washington don’t just vote on a full repeal.
“They ought to put a real repeal bill up and have a vote. If you lose Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, that’s still 50 (votes). And Rand Paul will vote for a real repeal. He just won’t vote for the other junk. Then the vice president can break that tie,” said Cuccinelli.
He also says it’s not out of the question for vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in red states next year to get on board.
Cuccinelli and other conservatives balked at the original version of the House’s American Health Care Act, or AHCA. Most conservatives only got on board after amendments were added to ensure premiums would not increase, even in the short term.
Cuccinelli sees a lot of the same problems emerging in the Senate.
“If we get to an insurance situation instead of a mandate situation, then the bill may be OK. But if you’re having community rating and forcing pre-existing conditions, it’s not insurance any longer. It’s a welfare program, which is what Obamacare is right now.
“Until they move it from a welfare program to insurance, where risk is assessed and priced and the market can determine where people land, then it’s not going to be an acceptable bill,” said Cuccinelli.
And would these concessions impact costs to consumers?
“It isn’t going to lower premiums, critically. All the while, Obamacare is crashing around their ears. It’s amazing. How destroyed does this concept have to be until they reject it. This is classic government. ‘If it’s broke, do more of what you did before,'” said Cuccinelli.
The reported consideration allowing taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood would be designed to assuage Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Cuccinelli says Murkowski’s stand on this component is particularly galling.
“Lisa Murkoswki has been against funding Planned Parenthood during her campaigns and has viciously fought for it after she’s elected. This is not the first time for Sen. Murkowski to lie to Alaskans about this and to flip back to her pro-abortion position,” said Cuccinelli, asserting no one with that record should be a chairman in a GOP-run Senate.
‘They Have to Do It By September’
Republicans in the Senate have been pouring cold water on expectations of producing a health care reform bill anytime soon, but a leading health care expert says the GOP realistically has just over three months to get it done.
“If they’re going to do this with only 51 votes in the Senate, they have to do it by September,” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner. “Frankly, I think they want to do it before the August recess so that they can get on with the rest of the agenda.”
The can officially start working on the bill now that House leaders have finally sent it to the upper chamber. It was on hold while lawmakers waited on the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill to make sure their calculations on how the legislation would impact the deficit were accurate. They were.
Despite moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Dean Heller, R-Nevada, saying the House bill was a non-starter for them, Turner suspects the final Senate version will end up looking pretty familiar.
“They will make some changes to the House bill and they will very much call it their own, but I think a lot of those structural elements of the safety net, the bridge to new coverage, the state flexibility on regulations and the Medicaid reform, I think we’re going to see all of that in there,” said Turner.
She says those four components are critical and are in the House bill: providing help for individual market consumers who no longer have reasonable coverage options, creating a transition to a market-based system, giving states more power to define plans and foster competition and changing Medicaid so it doesn’t devour state resources for all other priorities.
Turner says the House crafted it’s bill with Senate rules in mind.
“The House did try very hard to bend over backwards so that it’s version of the legislation complied with Senate rules,” she said. “They didn’t want the Senate to have to change it too much.”
Still, Turner does expect the Senate to spend more tax dollars on providing for people with pre-existing conditions.
“The Senate is going to dial things back in different ways and probably provide even more protections than the House bill did for pre-existing conditions protections. I do think that that has been an inflamed issue that is very much overstated,” said Turner.
“The House bill provided $138 billion to the states to be able to take care of people who have pre-existing conditions and have high health care costs. All evidence is that would be more than enough to do it,” said Turner.
Turner also suspects the Senate may be less conservative in curtailing Medicaid expansion than the House bill. And another issue that GOP moderates are likely to fight is the slashing of tax dollars for Planned Parenthood.
With the House bill passing precariously in May, it’s unclear what impact any substantial Senate changes will have on final passage. But Turner warns the House that whatever they get back from the Senate – if they get anything back from the Senate – may be their one chance to get anything done this year and maybe in this Congress.
“I think everybody knows that whatever the Senate gets through, the House is going to have a very difficult time changing it. I think it’s very likely going to be take it or leave it,” said Turner.
If we get to that point, Turner suspects voter outrage over the possibility of getting nothing done will likely compel passage of an imperfect bill.
“I don’t think any of them want to go back to the voters in 2018 next year and say, ‘Sorry, for four elections we told you we were going to repeal Obamacare and we just kind of couldn’t figure out how to do it.’ They all know they have to figure out how to do it,” said Turner.
‘It’s Not Just What I Say, It’s What I Have Done’
Republicans in Washington are fiercely lining up behind Sen. Luther Strange in this year’s special election to finish the U.S. Senate term of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the nation’s best known state judge says he is ready to battle big GOP dollars in the primary and defend the Constitution in Washington.
“I think I can take the values of this state and my particular qualifications to the Senate to help us get this country back to what it should be. I have had a lot of study in the Constitution of the United States. I understand it’s meaning and I understand how far away we’ve drifted from that document. Underlying all of this is virtue and morality which comes from God and we’re trying to deny that God upon which our morality is founded,” said Moore.
Moore is most famous for twice being elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and effectively removed twice as well. Moore lost his job the first time in 2003 for refusing to obey a federal court order requiring a Ten Commandments monument to be removed from the court.
In 2015, he was suspended without pay and benefits for telling probate court judges that the Supreme Court decision on marriage did not impact the Alabama Supreme Court’s injunction that preserved marriage as the union of one man and one woman in the state.
Moore says his public stands on those issues tell Alabama voters exactly who they would get as a senator.
“It’s not just what I say. It’s what I have done. I have stood for the principles of this state and the people of this state. I’ve stood against the federal government in a legal manner,” said the 70-year-old Moore.
Moore finds himself in a crowded field for the GOP nomination. With the filing deadline set for Wednesday, six Republicans are officially in the field. In addition to Judge Moore and Sen. Strange, the most recognizable name is Rep. Mo Brooks, best known for his work in combating illegal immigration.
Prior to Brooks officially joining the race on Monday, Moore held a 10-point lead over Strange in a poll conducted by Brooks.
The national GOP is coming out with guns blazing against Moore and Brooks and is promising an initial down payment of $2.6 million in advertising on behalf of Strange.
Moore finds it a bit odd that the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, is all-in for a man appointed to the Senate just three months ago.
“He was appointed by the (former) governor and the law provided that an election should be held forthwith, so treating him as an incumbent isn’t exactly what they should be doing,” said Moore, who points out the NRSC’s money plans were announced after Moore got in the race last month.
“They didn’t do it about anybody else but me. They did it after I announced that I was in the race,” said Moore. “They restricted consultants. They imposed large amounts of money for Sen. Strange. They did it because I’m in the race and they know that I will not follow the agenda of anyone else. I’ll do what I believe is right under the Constitution and in the sight of the people of this state,” said Moore.
Moore’s comments on consultants refers to the NRSC warning any political operatives that they will never work with the group again if they offer assistance to any of Strange’s rivals.
However, Moore also thinks the NRSC is wasting its money.
“Trying to control the people of Alabama just doesn’t work and it’s futile to do so. They know better than to be controlled by people in Washington, D.C. They see me as an outsider. I recognize I’m not an insider to Washington, D.C.,” said Moore.
Moore is speaking out most strongly on issues like immigration, health care, education, and the military. However, he says he uses the same approach with everything.
“All the issues that arise in the Senate, whether it be foreign relations, the military, health care, domestic issues, immigration all go back to a basic understanding of what the federal government should do and what it should not do,” said Moore.
“The tenth amendment, as we know, says the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or the people. Yet we see the federal government, particularly in the judicial branch, stepping into state powers like marriage and divorce and dictating issues they have no jurisdiction over,” said Moore.
He cited the Obama administration’s effort to mandate transgender accommodation at all public schools as another example of the federal government trying to usurp power intended for the states to have.
So what did Moore do in response to the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage decision to get him suspended from the bench?
“I advised the probate judges that they were still under the injunction that was issues by the Alabama Supreme Court and had not been removed. For that, the opposition said I told the probate judges to disobey a federal court order. I never did such a thing,” said Moore.
He says there’s a simple explanation for why the Supreme Court’s decision did not apply to Alabama.
“The United States Supreme Court, in Obergefell, did not rule on the Alabama case, did not rule on anything in the Eleventh Circuit. It rules in the Sixth Circuit, from the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee,” said Moore.
He says until the high court rules on Alabama’s case, the injunction stands, although that injunction is not currently being enforced.
On federal policy, Moore says he would demand a full repeal of Obamacare, ripping out common core, which he considers educational “indoctrination.” The West Point graduate also favors a beefing up of the military and wants to see an end to the nation’s armed forces being used to advance “the homosexual agenda.”
The first Alabama primary is slated for August 15. The primary runoff will take place September 26. The final election will be held December 12.