Please read Tierney Sneed’s account of being in the Senate chamber last night as it became apparent – in slow, excruciating fashion–that John McCain was going to block Obamacare repeal.
Big props to Tierney, Alice Ollstein, Cameron Joseph and the whole TPM team on covering this unprecedented legislative rollercoaster over the last several weeks and months. They work longer and harder and with more good humor than you can possibly know.
Coming off a failure this big, Trump will be looking for people to hurt, things to break. Everybody be safe out there.
Am I the only registered Democrat to have mixed feelings over the defeat of Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act? What happens now, I suspect, is that the Republicans and Trump administration will attempt to undermine the ACA through inattention from Health and Human Services (headed by an avaricious physician), lack of enforcement of the mandate from the Internal Revenue Service, and worst of all, an end to subsidies that allowed the insurance companies to offer lower-cost premiums on the exchanges. Republicans will blame Democrats and vice-versa. That’s better than denying coverage outright to millions, but it’s worse that what is going on now.
Anthony Scaramucci, like his boss, thinks the DOJ and FBI are his personal attacks squads and defenders, as Allegra Kirkland explains here. Neither of them have the most basic understanding or respect for the rule of law.
I’ve learned – we’ve all learned – that Obamacare repeal is actually never over. But that was some pretty high drama.
We’ve been slogging through the evening toward what was seeming like an inevitable passage of a godforsaken Obamacare repeal bill that not even most Senate Republicans liked or wanted to see become law. But in the last several minutes things have ground to a halt on the Senate floor, and it is increasingly looking plausibly like Mitch McConnell lacks the votes to pass the so-called skinny repeal bill. TPM’s Tierney Sneed is in the Senate chamber and from her vantage point things look amiss. It’s easy to read way too much into minor things, but at the moment Senate business has stalled. McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence and other key Republicans are all on the Senate floor, and the presumed no votes are being worked hard, Tierney reports. Among the possible no votes is John McCain. Pence has been talking to McCain for 20 minutes, Tierney reports. Stay tuned …
Late Update: As of 1:25 a.m. ET, voting has begun on the skinny repeal bill.
It’s been quite a day. And it’s ending with White House Communications Director/Majordomo Anthony Scaramucci’s maybe literally insane interview with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza. But this morning he gave what was no doubt a less profanity-laced but in its own way no less wild and crazy live interview on CNN. Here’s my annotated edition of that interview. Pay particular note to the “buddies of mine” Scaramucci’s calling at the FBI to put the scare on his “knee-knocker” enemies in the White House. Read More
Four GOP senators demand some kind of assurance from the House that if the Senate passes “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, the bill will go to conference – and not simply be passed by the House.
The problem, one of many, actually, is there’s no formal mechanism for the House to assure the Senate that it won’t pass a bill the Senate just passed! This isn’t how it works!
Three senators with the capacity and perhaps the propensity to blow up the Senate GOP’s march toward passing a so-called skinny repeal of Obamacare are about to hold a hastily arranged press conference on the Hill. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson. Stay tuned …
Senate GOP’s Obamacare repeal hijinks have become even more ridiculous. No, really. Here’s the very latest.