If the Republican overhaul of Obamacare was unpopular before, it’s dead-on-arrival in the Senate now. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office nailed the coffin shut with its independent, nonpartisan analysis.
Overnight the CBO score has bolstered conservatives in their criticism while converting moderates into outright skeptics. Resurrection in the Senate would require a political miracle.
More than a bad omen, the CBO report amounts to a legislative death sentence. The agency found that under the current bill, 24 million people would lose their insurance at a savings of $337 billion by 2026. Those numbers make passage highly unlikely.
Anyone who doubts that should take a closer look at the legislative arithmetic. Using budget reconciliation, the Senate needs only a simple majority to pass the overhaul. To be successful, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., can lose only two Republican votes. But after the CBO score, McConnell would be lucky if he doesn’t lose a dozen.
The biggest opposition bloc would likely come from those senators dedicated to defending Medicaid. The House plan, according to the CBO, would drop spending $880 billion and keep 14 million enrollees from signing up. Already four senators—Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Lisa Murkowski Alaska—have pledged to oppose anything that guts Medicaid. Now they’ll have to keep their word.
Soon that camp could welcome a new ally. On Monday Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters he was concerned about “what the House bill will do to Arizona especially since they expanded Medicaid.”
Elsewhere, the fallout bolstered different repeal and replacement schemes. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said the CBO analysis was “cause for alarm,” while Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana added that it was “awful.” Together, they’re pitching a sort of “choose your own adventure” of replacement packages. They’re not ready to abandon that project for the current House plan.
The CBO numbers were so bad, even Lindsey Graham gravitated toward a conservative position. The South Carolina senator echoed his conservative colleagues when he encouraged House members to return to the drawing board. “At the end of the day we should pause and try to improve the product,” Graham told reporters, “in the light of the CBO analysis.”
Conservative senators stayed silent as the CBO report made their case for them Monday night. The big opponents earlier on were Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, along with Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who joined later. Their assessment that the House bill would be a dumpster fire seems especially prescient.
No amount of populist pressure from the White House or parliamentary arm-twisting from the majority leader could convince those senators to drop their competing complaints. At this point, Senate Republicans are probably praying that their House colleagues spill this bitter cup before it comes to them. Because if the House bill does arrive in the upper-chamber, it’s going nowhere fast.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
