It’s looking more and more like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is sticking to his goal of having a Senate vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act before the end of the month, even though legislative text hasn’t been released yet and major divisions remain among the Republican conference.
On the heels of reports that McConnell is pushing forward with the fast-track process, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) previewed the timeline as he understood it on MSNBC Tuesday morning. According to Corker, GOP senators will receive a rundown on the bill at a closed-door meeting Wednesday and then see legislative text on Thursday. That gives them just one week to review it for a vote planned before the end of next week, ahead of lawmakers’ July 4 recess.
“We will work around the clock to make sure that we understand what’s in it and we’ll just see,” Corker said, before reiterating his previous criticisms of the highly opaque process Republicans have used to hammer out a health care deal that bypassed public hearings and Democratic input. That lack of transparency has not prompted Corker to withhold his vote on the final bill, however.
“At the end of the day, that doesn’t preclude my responsibilities as a senator to either vote yes or no based on the substance that’s in it, and I certainly look forward to diving into that substance,” he said.
Senate Republicans will see a Congressional Budget Office score before the vote, unlike their House counterparts. According to the Wall Street Journal, the hope is that the CBO analysis will be finished by early next week.
Every unhinged tweet, childish Bannon utterance, and bald-faced lie about Russia that comes out of the white house in the next week is probably meant to distract from this. And much of the media will probably take the bait.
LOL. And if it doesn’t say what they want it to say they’ll just disparage the office and call it partisan and still vote a big fat YES on it.
Why are there not ads decrying the secrecy of this process?
Let me guess Bob, there’s a huge tax break for the rich, which winnows down health care options for everyone else.
This is utterly legislative malpractice.
I hope that Mukowski and Collins defect, leaving it, once again, for women to save us from these destructive Republican men.