Strategy of making a rotten bill worse fails for some mysterious reason
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I won’t say the GOP’s second failure to get a vote on the AHCA was inevitable because that’s not true. Neither do I expect Paul the Life-support Plug Puller to give up. However, the GOP’s continued attempts to overturn Obamacare show a knack for drafting bills that will cause people to stop what they’re doing and call their Reps. For this, I am almost grateful.
When Republicans had to call off the vote on the American Health Care Act in March, President Trump dismissed the failure, saying, “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days.”
As the Washington Post reported, he was wrong on two counts: He’d been in office for 64 days, and he repeatedly promised to repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately” or “on day one,” even if he had to call a special session of Congress.
What I’d like is a majority of elected officials who aren’t so sadistic, venal and cowardly that their constituents have to watch them all of the time to keep them from destroying everything for fun and profit. The fact that they’re incompetent slows them down, and is good for some laughs. But it doesn’t render them harmless.
Nevertheless, Republicans said they may vote to gut Obamacare this week, giving the president a huge legislative win by the end of his first 100 days in office. According to the New York Times, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had “pushed aggressively” for the House to schedule the vote.
But following a 90-minute meeting in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office on Thursday night, Republicans announced that they still can’t find a way to pass the health-care overhaul they’ve been promising for seven years. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said there would be no vote on Friday, and denied that GOP leaders had ever wanted to vote this week.
Nah, he said they were going to BOAT on it. They were planning to go on a fishing trip and talk about it. Silly #FakeNews.
