Today is the day that freshmen Congresspeople get *their* government-run healthcare, right?
The GOP brought up their amendment to repeal the ACA on a bill meant to reauthorize the FAA. It failed pretty spectacularly — largely because the GOP amendment didn’t propose a way to *pay* the $1+ trillion cost of repeal. It failed, because the GOP were looking to play to the cameras and the horse-race reporters who would not pay attention to the fact that 1) the new rules agreement with Reid and McConnell meant that the GOP would bring up bill amendments that were related to the bill on the floor; 2) the GOP had no intention of paying for it (do they ever?); 3) they didn’t have a *replacement* plan; and 4) they knew they didn’t have the votes. So the news will be full of this drama without any context for this bit of legislative stunt wrangling. The amendment failed 47 – 51. Barbara Milkulski gets that this was a stunt:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne3HP2ahZwM[/youtube]
The GOP-led House repealed the ACA a couple of weeks back, and the news was full of the story of *this* stunt vote and the Democrats’ *strategy* for opposing (which, according to he media I consume, appears to be lots of personal stories).
But it took a comment I read over at Congress Matters to know about this:
A little after 5:00 p.m., House Democrats proposed that the bill be sent back to three House committees and be altered to say that the repeal of last year’s healthcare bill will not take effect until a majority of House and Senate members agree not to enroll in federal health insurance. Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) said repeal should not happen unless most members agree to abandon their own coverage.
(TPM also covered this and it may be the extent of coverage it got.)
Here is the motion that Representative Andrews made. It was defeated, 185-245 (largely on a party line vote), but how come the only place I can find anything reported on this is from a blog at The Hill or at TPM? Apparently, the only stunts that matter are the Republican ones. Even though you’d expect to see some mentions of a motion that asks the House to repeal the health coverage for themselves that they repealed for the rest of Americans. (And remember that once the ACA goes into full effect, Congress gets the same coverage offered under it.) As expected, the House Republicans (and 5 Democrats) made sure that they had all of the Government health insurance coverage they could eat, while other Americans’ needs go utterly unaddressed by the GOP’s grandstanding.
You’d think that the media would *want* and dualling stunts narrative. You’d think that the media would be eager to know what the GOP alternative is so they’d have another dualling plans narrative. You’d think that Democrats would be just everywhere talking up the sheer hypocrisy. (Except for Barbara Milkulski — more like this, please!) But what is certain is that Americans are apparently not to be told that the GOP is willing to make sure that Americans can’t have the coverage that they take as a matter of entitlement.