Saturday, September 23, 2017

So far so good on saving Obamacare (#3158)

     Yesterday was a bit of a good news day as John McCain came out against the death care repeal bill republicans are offering to harm America with. With McCain a firm no, the likelihood now of the bill even getting a vote in the senate just got less probable. The other votes for defeating this bill must come from Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. Now there is the outlier no vote from Rand Paul but we cannot count on him remaining so since he is only voting no because the bill isn't horrible enough! So until Susan Collins confirms her no vote, which she is heavily leaning toward doing, and should make it known early next week we cannot put her in the confirmed no column. With  Lisa Murkowski the pressure and bribes coming at her are enormous so we will see if she can be bought.
     I expect that with no CBO score to guide her, Murkowski will have to go on intuition about what this bill does to the rest of the nation as she is getting enough bribery to protect her own state's constituents. I see Murkowski as being a bigger person than just worrying about her state and she knows she will likely be the one who will become the face of the repeal consequences if it passes. The Rand Paul vote is much more dicey, even though he says he is firmly in the no column. He is the junior senator in Kentucky with the senior senator being the majority leader in the senate who is orchestrating this death care bill for passage. I have no confidence that Rand Paul has any good principles within him and surely he will be swayed to vote for passage when the voting time comes.
     Now there may still be some surprise no votes out there but I wouldn't count on anyone other than McCain, Collins and hopefully Murkowski once again to make sure this death care bill is defeated. Hopefully some official initial report of a scoring nature to show Murkowski that this bill is the worst of the lot that have been offered will come forth. Surely she knows that already, given the takeaways that are similar to other scored bills. The first part of next week will tell the tale and if we are fortunate some more no votes will be made known this weekend but that is just hopeful on my part and not something that is to be expected. Like I said though, with republicans only needing 50 votes in the senate where they have 52 senators, we are doing well not to have already lost this battle we may well win despite the disadvantage in numbers.

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