Senate Democrats are framing Tuesday’s vote for President Trump’s latest judicial nominee as an attack against healthcare protections for pre-existing illnesses.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats said at a press conference that anyone who votes to confirm the nominee, Chad Readler, to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio, is not committed to upholding Obamacare’s rules on pre-existing conditions.
Senators who said they were committed to the protections but then vote to confirm Readler were “committing hypocrisy,” Schumer said. Senate Democrats have said their party will unite to oppose Readler. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced Tuesday afternoon that she plans to join them. But if Collins is the only Republican to oppose, Senate Democrats will still be three votes short in their quest to defeat Readler’s nomination.
Readler had worked for the Department of Justice and authored the Trump administration’s decision to side with Republican state officials who have asked the courts to invalidate Obamacare. The day after the brief was filed, Trump nominated Readler for the lifetime position on the 6th Circuit.
Schumer called the Trump administration’s decision not to defend the law “one of the most dangerous” to come out of the administration.
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“He was the chief cook and bottle-washer in the effort to take away protections of pre-existing conditions from people,” Schumer said of Readler.
The lawsuit originated from GOP state officials who said that because the 2017 tax law set the fine on the uninsured to zero, then the rest of Obamacare should also fall, because it was a lynchpin of the whole system. The Trump administration didn’t go as far, asking that only the protections on pre-existing conditions fall, not the entire law.
Obamacare’s rules prevent health insurers from turning away sick people or from charging them more than healthier customers. It also mandates coverage of a range of medical care so that care associated with specific illnesses aren’t excluded from coverage.
In December, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor sided with the GOP officials by ruling all of Obamacare unconstitutional. The case is being appealed as Obamacare remains law, and Democrats have seized on it to say that Republicans and the Trump administration oppose protections for the sick.
“Republicans have made it clear they will stop at nothing in order to take these protections away simply because they have President Obama’s name on them,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said at the press conference.
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In opposing the nomination, Collins specifically cited the lawsuit on Obamacare and noted reporting that showed other attorneys in the Department of Justice similarly opposed the administration’s decision.
“I strongly objected to DOJ’s position to not defend the law, and it is telling that this position also concerned some other career attorneys in the department,” she said. “In fact, three career attorneys withdrew from the case rather than support this position, and one of those attorneys eventually resigned.”
Readler will need 50 votes to be confirmed, assuming a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence. Judicial nominees used to require 60 votes to be confirmed. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., changed the rules to require only a bare majority, in response to a move years earlier by Senate Democrats to limit filibusters for presidential nominees.
Democrats have been opposed to most of Trump’s appellate nominees, citing issues with their views on abortion rights, their past writings, and what they call lack of experience. A number of Democratic home-state senators have also voiced their opposition to Trump’s nominees by failing to return their blue slips, a piece of paper in which senators say whether they support or oppose a nominee. The Senate has confirmed at least 30 of Trump’s nominees to the courts of appeals since his inauguration.
