Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Washington Post that he will not help Republicans replace the Affordable Care Act if they follow through with a strategy to repeal the law immediately and then replace it down the road.
“We’re not going to do a replacement,” Schumer told the Washington Post. “If they repeal without a replacement, they will own it. Democrats will not then step up to the plate and come up with a half-baked solution that we will partially own. It’s all theirs.”
Schumer’s comments come as Republicans remain divided on the best strategy to replace the health care law. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that the Senate would repeal the law as their first order of business in 2017, but it is unclear how Republicans plan to come up with and implement a replacement. It is very likely that Republicans will need 60 votes to implement a replacement, and thus Democratic help, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Republicans are counting on Democrats to feel pressure to help them come up with a replacement in two or three years, but Schumer’s comments make it clear that Democrats aren’t likely to come in with an assist. At least right now.
Schumer told the Washington Post that he was not going to budge on helping Republicans pass a replacement that fell short of Obamacare.
“The odds, after they repeal without any replacement, of us sitting at the table to do something that will chop one arm off instead of two is very small,” Schumer said. “They’re giving us tremendous leverage.”
Schumer laid out a similar scenario during a press conference on Tuesday and rank-and-file members seemed to be united in that strategy when TPM spoke with them Tuesday.
I’m guessing that the Republicans will work twice as hard finding a way to blame the coming catastrophe on the Democrats than they will finding a way to avoid the catastrophe in the first place.
Barring total economic and/or geopolitical catastrophe, odds are pretty good that the GOP comes out of the next election with a filibuster-proof Senate majority. I wonder if they’re factoring this into their thinking? “We’ll have 60 in two years, so might as well repeal and delay…” Of course, they’re probably lowballing the chaos this causes in the healthcare industries, short-term, and the refracted pain on patients, even if they do some don’t-call-it-risk-corridors payoff to the insurers to keep them from heading for the exits…
Can the democrats learn a few things from the republicans? l mean, we are 100% in the post trump world where EVERY THING IS MARKETING. Open the playbook, find a term that describes what the repubs are doing and USE THE TERM SO DAMN MUCH AND SO DAMN OFTEN that the media begins to pick up on it. Perhaps 'RECKLACE" or DANGEROUS or SOMETHING so that afterwards when it all goes to shit that word will be left hanging in the air and the masses will remember which side did it and which side predicted what would happen? Enough of the “make my day” swagger shit. We are back on our heels and need to come out swinging just as hard and the right did when they had people screaming in the streets that Obamacare was awful. There needs to be a cohesive strategy to make the repeal even more horrible so they own it. Just being a milktoast and saying “oooh, do it and you’ll be sorry” without any teeth is the kind of bullshit that leads us into losing positions again and again. IT’S ALL MARKETING FROM HERE ON IN.
This. 100%. They don’t for a SECOND give a crap about any downfall. Apparently downfalls lead to bigger wins politically for them.
Or did. They really do own it now. All of it. There will be no “But the dastardly Democratic Senate minority MADE us fuck up.” Not that they won’t try.
Still, the Senate map for Dems in 2018 is so ugly it could well give McConnell 60+ votes, unless the degree to which the Repubs have looted the country is really, really obvious by then… I mean, throwing 30 million people out of the healthcare system is a pretty good start.