July 18, 2017

The Party of Bad Faith?

If the Republican attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare ultimately fails, it will be a lesson in the wages of political bad faith.

If the Republican attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare ultimately fails, it will be a lesson in the wages of political bad faith.

The current path of the Senate bill has plenty of obstacles, including the sheer inertia of the Obamacare status quo and the fact that no one has made the public case for the Republican legislation. But the effort also suffers from a mismatch between the longtime public posture of Republicans (Obamacare must and will be fully repealed) and their private misgivings (do we really have to do this, even partially?).

It’s not just that Republicans have said for years that they would repeal Obamacare; they actually voted to do it. In December 2015, a bill passed the Senate that was more stringent than the version now struggling for GOP support. The 2015 bill only tried to repeal Obamacare (although it fell short of that goal), while the current bill attempts to repeal and replace, i.e., forge a Republican alternative.

Only two Republican senators voted against the 2015 repeal, Susan Collins of Maine, who is still a “no,” and Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is out of the Senate. Everyone else was on board, and celebrated a righteous blow against Obamacare. Winston Churchill said that nothing is so exhilarating as getting shot at without consequence. For Republicans, nothing was as exhilarating as repealing Obamacare without consequence.

The repeal bill inevitably got vetoed by President Barack Obama. Republican congressional leaders thought they could pick up where they had left off. They failed to account for the changed — and more difficult — dynamic with a Republican in the White House ready and eager to sign whatever gets to his desk.

The prospects of the current bill are clouded by the hesitance of the Medicaid moderates, Republican senators from states that accepted the Obamacare expansion of the program. The legislation is hardly Dickensian on this front. It allows states to continue the expansion, but, over time, brings the level of federal funding for the new population down to the levels for the rest of Medicaid (years from now, it also establishes a new per capita formula for all of Medicaid). The 2015 law was tougher on the expansion — it simply ended it after two years — and yet all of today’s hand-wringers voted for it.

Perhaps they are disturbed by the coverage numbers the Congressional Budget Office has produced about the current bill? According to the CBO, it would lead to 22 million fewer people having insurance. But the earlier repeal bill, per the CBO, would have led to 32 million fewer people having insurance.

Perhaps they think the current bill should be more generous? The fact is the Senate bill unveiled a few weeks ago spends roughly $600 billion on replacing Obamacare, or $600 billion more than the December 2015 bill. It has since been revised to spend even more, and scale back the tax cuts.

As the publication Health Affairs starkly noted of the 2015 legislation at the time, “It would end the premium tax credits, the cost-sharing reduction payments, the Medicaid expansion, and the small business tax credits — that is, all of the assistance that the ACA gives to low and moderate-income Americans.”

(Rand Paul, whose shtick is libertarian purity, is guilty of his own hypocrisy. He portrays the 2015 bill as preferable to the current version, which he opposes for not fully repealing Obamacare regulations. But the 2015 bill didn’t touch any of the major Obamacare regulations.)

All of this is why the Plan B endorsed by President Donald Trump — to revert to a repeal-only bill if the current bill fails — is a non-starter. If there aren’t 50 Republican votes for today’s relatively generous bill, there won’t be 50 votes for anything like what passed a year and a half ago. Unless, perhaps, Trump promises to veto it, and Senate Republicans can consider it once again a blissfully consequence-free vote.

© 2017 by King Features Syndicate

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.