Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that the healthcare vote will be delayed.
With the July 4 vacation recess approaching, the vote will now come after July 8.
That leaves Republicans with a short July window before the summer recess begins on July 31.
It’s a tough ask.
It’s not simply because healthcare reform is itself a complicated ask. It’s because, as James Wallner (a former Heritage Foundation fellow) explains, the July window also requires action on the “debt ceiling, budget control act deal, fiscal year 2018 budget, fiscal year 2018 appropriations, tax reform, infrastructure, nominations, etc.”
Senator McConnell says that these issues are not intractable.
He plans to get a bill agreed on — in principle — by the end of this week so that senators can contemplate their votes over the July 4 holiday. McConnell is hopeful Senators will then return to Washington ready to vote.
The senior senator from Kentucky also hopes to make adaptions that allow for a more positive rescoring of the bill by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO’s latest scoring, which predicted 22 million Americans might lose their healthcare under the GOP’s replacement bill, met a frosty reaction from moderate Republicans like Susan Collins.
To add three votes and retain his existing base of support, Politico suggests, McConnell is dangling pork barrell spending. In addition, he’s warning that a failure to act will result in a massive loss of credibility. If Republicans fail, McConnell says, they’ll have to work with Senate Democrats. And with Democrats refusing to budge on their demand that Obamacare remain in place, it’s hard to see what Republicans will be able to do.
The task is immense.
Still, there was no choice but to delay the vote. After all, in its current form, the bill isn’t just dead on arrival; it’s a rotting corpse. To pass the Senate, the bill needs 50 senators and the vice president. At present, however, at least five Republican senators and the entire Democratic Senate caucus are “nay” votes. Three of those votes need to shift. And that’s assuming those Republicans who have stayed quiet about their voting intentions will vote “yea.”
Ultimately, what we’re seeing here is the revenge of arrogance. Republicans believed they could sweep into power and pass a new healthcare law. But ignoring the internal frictions within their own ranks, that which they all oppose, Obamacare, has remained untouched. It’s the height of political irony.
