Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a top Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told Reuters on Monday that the Senate GOP should ignore President Donald Trump’s push to keep working on an Obamacare repeal measure and instead move on to tackling the tax code.
“There’s just too much animosity and we’re too divided on health care,” Hatch told Reuters.
“I think we ought to acknowledge that we can come back to healthcare afterwards but we need to move ahead on tax reform,” he added.
Hatch said that he would rather not work with Democrats to up cost-sharing subsidies, but he told Reuters that Republicans will likely have to do that.
The senator’s comments follow an intense push from Trump and his administration to convince Senate Republicans not to give up on repealing Obamacare just yet. Trump sent several tweets over the weekend urging senators to keep working, and Office of Budget and Management Director Mick Mulvaney said that the Senate should not hold any other votes until they pass a bill to repeal Obamacare.
Well, one thing that will always untie the Republicans is the ardent belief that taxes are bad - -for rich people.
Republicans have given so many head-fakes on this issue, all designed to let the world think that ACA repeal is dead in the water. The moment we let our guard down, there will be sudden legislative rush in the Senate.
Wonder if this is truly a white flag on this issue or if the GOPers are buying into trumps new tactic to bleed the ACA however he can from the executive branch.
Could be the realization, among the senior R. Senators, that the implosion is coming and it might be a good idea to have some distance between themselves and PO(tu)S
So now, they’re going to move from one incredibly unpopular policy they tried to push through with magic asterisks and Free Market Pixie Dust to fill in the budget holes and a bunch of facially nonsensical rationales to another incredibly unpopular policy they tried to push through with magic asterisks and Free Market Pixie Dust to fill in the budget holes and a bunch of facially nonsensical rationales.
Why, it’s almost as if they were taking orders from cadre of unelected oligarchs who think they actually control the government and can do whatever they want regardless of popular opinion.
And they may be right. They are clearly banking on the belief that shifting the tax burden downward and blowing up the deficit so they can use deficit panic it to keep Democrats from doing anything if the Russians can’t keep them out of power won’t generate anything like the passion health care deformation did because we spent all our passion and it’s all indirect and it sounds like a thing stupid people think will help them.
But god knows what they’ll do if they don’t get something out of this Congress.