It would appear that President Donald Trump might have solved the problem he and Republicans had in their initial attempt to "repeal" the ACA, with the problem being the President himself. As Blasting News pointed out in an op-ed about why they failed to repeal Obamacare, a.k.a the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and/or replace it with their American Health Care Act (AHCA) the first time around, was because Trump couldn't convince members of the Freedom Caucus -- known to be the most conservative lawmakers in Congress -- to agree to accept the bill. He likely didn't count on representatives who actually felt they had to come through for their constituents as opposed to blowing everyone off as Trump has done most of his life.
During that time, headlines said that Trump wasn't the dealmaker he had made himself out to be after all. However, this time around, the president was reportedly able to win over at least two skeptical Republicans after he invited them to speak with him at the White House. The results were as promised, that they would hold a vote to pass their AHCA on Thursday and that it would pass. Just over a week ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan stated that they would only vote on the bill when they had the votes and suddenly, within days, they did.
House Republican's eerie confidence
House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy left a meeting Wednesday night saying that they had at least 216 votes and that he felt confident they could go forward with passing their bill on Thursday.
In fact, so confident that one has to wonder how they were able to get Republicans who were initially against it to change their tune so quickly. It would seem that they suddenly resorted to "Trumpism" and went for empty promises just to get the bill through.
In other words, it was adjusted enough just so they could force it through, never mind if the bill made any sense in the end.
And now, the Republicans in the Senate are faced with having to pass something incoherent which leave's everyone else in the dark as to whether the Senate is going to put together a more cohesive bill, doing the House Republicans' work for them or if they're going to just start from scratch, just as the House of Representatives should have done and with support from Democrats.
But they went for it by themselves without any votes from Democrats, which Ryan had already promised they would do after their last failure.
At least one Republican, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, has said that the Senate was going to write their own bill, thus, creating two health care bills that they believe would eventually come together at some point. But this isn't what Trump -- who took credit for passing the bill -- initially believed would happen or at least he won't admit to being ignorant about the process. Even Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) said they would cannibalize what they could from the House bill and make their own. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) even said that he had no idea what the House just passed and perhaps one of the most outspoken of them all, Sen.
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), that the bill needed to be viewed with suspicion, especially because it wasn't scored.
Senate will undermine constituents to pass AHCA
An explanation of their process is that the Senate have to make the bill that was passed reconciliation-compliant before they're even able to start writing their own. An earlier version of the bill was given a CBO score before other amendments were added to pass it, but this new version didn't get one this time. The Senate will reportedly try to get that first before doing anything else which they said overall with creating their own bill would take some time.
Trump has said recently that he thinks Congress works too slow and really follows too many rules to get things done.
If we're to believe that Trump knows the inner workings of congressional legislation; really, this claim would be no different from his bluster of when he said during his campaign that he knew more about ISIS than the generals did. As said in a Blasting News article about his first 100-days, it explains that Trump's level of thinking that he can shove Congress around isn't working. Jake Sherman of Politico was on Washington Week on April 28, where he said that there's no one on Capitol Hill to guide Trump so that he knows who the "honest brokers" are or able to know who he can go to.
When asked about the AHCA and whether its journey through the Senate would just be more drama or a political reality, he said that he didn't think the bill would stand much of a chance in the Senate and that if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted the bill to pass, it would be significantly changed.
And this is where we return to the idea that they would simply write their own bill and return it to the House for another vote. But this is also the same Senator who said they would repeal Obamacare "root and branch", and so it's likely that we could take an unconventional route to get a vote for it on the Senate floor and pass their American Health Care Act no matter what the political repercussions are.
If that's the case, then we're looking at House and Senate Republicans being compromised by Trumpism. In the same Washington Week program, Michael Scherer of Time Magazine said that Republicans were positioning themselves to blame each other. Until we know that for sure, the Senate might be the only hope left for those opposed to Republican efforts to repeal and replace, that they won't be able to, leaving signs that House Republicans have been compromised by Trumpism and the first signs of it in action in American government. Welcome to Trump's Republican Party.
