Republican Senate leaders said Tuesday that they plan to charge through with their plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as the new Congress convenes in January. “Obamacare repeal resolution will be the first item up in the new year,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at his weekly press conference after the GOP caucus lunch.
Either the GOP thinks it has Carper’s vote in the bag, or they want Obamacare repeal to fail YET AGAIN in order to be able to keep it in place in order to run against it YET AGAIN in the next mid-term.
Flip a coin. Both outlandish explanations make sense in the up is down world of Trump’s America.
If the answer is Carper’s vote is in the bag, we will be hearing about “budget balancing” as the vote draws near.
Thune said that Republicans will be attacking the ACA through budget reconciliation, a method that only requires a bare majority vote in the Senate. It is a method that Carper has previously supported when it entailed trading off “entitlement cuts” for debt reduction in what came to be called the “Grand Bargain.”
“I’m hopeful that we will have both Democrats and Republicans, our colleagues in the House and here in the Senate, and the President-elect and his team working together in a way that moves us in a better direction,” Thune said.
Contrary to what the CBO and many economists say, Thune has attempted to make the case that cutting the ACA is a budget balancing measure.
Carper has long held “balancing” the federal budget as a superordinate goal that should unite Democrats and Republicans. He has also indicated that he will fight for the ACA, this will be the first test of Carper’s will to protect the ACA when budget “balancing” is the GOP’s stated goal.