Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) admitted to CNN that he did not read the full health care bill before voting for it.
Said Collins: “I will fully admit, Wolf, I did not. But I can also assure you my staff did. We have to rely on our staff.”
Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) admitted to CNN that he did not read the full health care bill before voting for it.
Said Collins: “I will fully admit, Wolf, I did not. But I can also assure you my staff did. We have to rely on our staff.”
“You have every provision of this bill tattooed on your forehead. You will glow in the dark.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the New York Times, on Republicans who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“No one knows better than House Democrats how a contentious health care vote can exact a steep political price — losing control of the House in the first midterm election of an untested new president’s tenure for example,” the New York Times reports.
“As they hooted derisively at their Republican colleagues on Thursday after a narrow, party-line approval of legislation to roll back the Obama-era health care law, Democrats glimpsed the mirror image of their own politically disastrous health care experience. They also saw a prime opportunity to avenge their ugly 2010 loss and possibly recapture the House majority.”
Said Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA): “I think they are staring death in the face. They asked their vulnerable members to take an enormous gamble and risk on an act of faith that I guarantee will not pay off.”
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New York Times: “The Republican health care overhaul might never become law, but it has already changed the life of one American: Reince Priebus, who knew it was his best and perhaps last hope of becoming an empowered White House chief of staff.”
“It is unlikely that Mr. Priebus — roundly regarded as a steady party leader but one of the least powerful White House chiefs of staff ever — would have been fired had the second repeal-and-replace plan not passed the House on Thursday. But he viewed it as a personal make-or-break moment, and interviews with two dozen West Wing aides and Republican officials confirmed that another big loss on health care would probably have been an unrecoverable blow to an already weakened Mr. Priebus.”
Senate Republicans said they “won’t vote on the House-passed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but will write their own legislation instead,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“A Senate proposal is now being developed by a 12-member working group. It will attempt to incorporate elements of the House bill, senators said, but will not take up the House bill as a starting point and change it through the amendment process.”
FiveThirtyEight: The GOP health bill is still far from law.
For members: The House Vote Is the Easy One
Of the 58 Republican lawmakers on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list put out earlier this year, 45 of them voted in favor of the GOP health care bill while just 13 voted against it.
CNN: “Looking at the states with the largest percentages of people under age 65 with pre-existing conditions, if the GOP’s high risk pool plan goes south it runs the risk of more adversely affecting those in states that voted for President Trump.”
“Of the 11 states in which 30% or more of the under-65 population has some sort of pre-existing condition, all 11 were won by Trump in 2016.”
“I have never seen political suicide in my life like I’m seeing today.”
— Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), quoted by the New York Times, on the GOP health care bill passing the House.
The House passed the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, 217 to 213.
New York Times: “The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where the legislation’s steep spending cuts will almost certainly be moderated. Any legislation that can get through the Senate will again have to clear the House and its conservative majority.”
Washington Post: “Democrats, meanwhile, predicted that the measure would be devastating for Americans’ health-care coverage but also, on a political level, for Republicans who voted for it.”
Politico: What’s actually in the GOP health care bill?
“The Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare does not allocate nearly enough money to protect people with pre-existing health conditions from potentially higher insurance premiums,” CNBC reports.
“The bill’s $23 billion in funding specifically for such people would cover just 110,000 Americans, according to the Avalere Health study released Thursday. That’s only 5 percent of the 2.2 million current enrollees in the individual insurance market with some type of pre-existing chronic condition.”
“Do we have the votes? Yes. Will we pass it? Yes.”
— House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), quoted by the Washington Post, on the GOP plan to repeal-and-replace the Affordable Care Act.
James Hohmann: “GOP leadership aides say they are mindful that the bill cannot pass by just one vote. They know that, if that happens, Democrats can run attack ads describing each supporter of the bill as ‘THE DECIDING VOTE’ on a measure that remains quite unpopular. How do they know this? Because they successfully used that talking point against Democratic senators for three election cycles in a row.”
“Annoyingly for the strategists tasked with holding the majority, the number of Republicans with safe seats who are voting no is putting a lot more pressure on vulnerable members in swing districts to support the bill. These guys might normally get a pass because they’re going to face tough races in 2018. But House GOP leaders are now calling in all of their chits.”
Greg Sargent: “A Democratic leadership aide tells me that the CBO has confirmed to Democratic leaders that the CBO score will be completed and delivered next week or the week after. This means moderate and vulnerable House Republicans who are already worried about explaining to their constituents why they voted for the bill — which guts protections for the sick and rolls back coverage for millions of poor and working-class people while delivering a huge tax cut to the rich — will have to justify it again, in light of a nonpartisan analysis spelling out the grisly details of what they really voted for.”
Rick Klein: “With the American Medical Association and the AARP lobbying for no’s, plus Jimmy Kimmel’s breaking through with a searing personal story, nothing has changed about the basic politics, even as the bill itself has changed. (One thing that hasn’t changed in recent drafts, despite promises to the contrary: special treatment for members of Congress and their staffs.)”
“Call it walking the plank, or ‘doo-doo stuck to their shoe’ (to quote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), but this is a vote and a move than can’t be taken back. Seven years of GOP promises haven’t changed the fact that Republicans have never really wanted to do what they said they wanted to do. They’re now led by a president who has said plenty of other things, and is more than willing to change where he stands anyway. Republicans are placing trust in their teamwork, on a bill where the impact will be determined in individual states and with unpredictable consequences.”
“Hey GOP, don’t ever lecture us again on fiscal responsibility. You’re about to reorder 1/6 of the US economy with no idea what it costs.”
— Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), on Twitter.
David Nather: “It looks like the House Republican health care bill may be coming back to life after all. And if the leadership is this close to having 216 votes, they may well get the rest when the roll call starts. But don’t get the impression this means the Affordable Care Act repeal effort is alive and well. This is Republicans just scraping by, getting a deeply unpopular bill off of their plates as quickly as they possibly can.”
New York Times: “The measure still faces opposition from health care providers, patient advocates and retirees, as well as from many Senate Republicans, who are not likely to pass it in its current form.”
Mike Allen: Three landmines ahead for Republicans.
House Republican leaders said that they “plan to bring their controversial plan to revise key parts of the Affordable Care Act to a vote on Thursday, capping weeks of fits and starts in their attempt to fulfill a signature campaign promise,” the Washington Post reports.
“The flagging Republican effort to reshape the nation’s health-care system picked up steam Wednesday, as GOP leaders tried to address concerns about people with preexisting medical conditions. But independent analysts remained skeptical that the new proposal would fully address the needs of at-risk patients who receive coverage guarantees under the Affordable Care Act, underscoring the controversial nature of the Republican effort.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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