Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) decision to not vote for the latest Obamacare repeal effort, should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the past weekend. McCain already said during an interview with Face the Nation on September 17, that he would vote "no" on the latest bill because it was not a sign of normal order being restored to the Senate.

The fight over ignoring the CBO score

Americans have witnessed the lack of normal order for years under the Obama administration, and now for the entirety of 2017 under the Trump administration.

This is especially true as President Trump's lack of any effort or interest to legislate has only influenced Republicans in Congress to do their worst, as they continue to push the limits of partisan legislation in order to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare.

The latest effort comes from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who met with the administration in July to talk about replacing federal funding under Obamacare with block grants to states. This would allow those states to spend that money for their citizens, but the recent effort still does not have a score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asked for on September 15.

The CBO was expected to have a preliminary score by Monday but, a more detailed report won't be available until the September 30 deadline. During the last repeal process, the Trump administration was among many who were pushing governors from all states to ignore the CBO score, even publishing an OpEd with the Washington Post to make the argument that the score wasn't important.

More senators kill chances of repeal bill passage

Nonetheless, Mitch McConnell has been requesting scores throughout the entire legislative process. The recent push by Republicans to go without the CBO is further confirmation of how little they care to know if the bill will do any good for the American people. But it was said almost two weeks ago -- as lawmakers were moving into their positions, that McConnell said he would only bring the latest effort for a repeal to a vote if Graham could get enough support to make sure it would pass.

McConnell's reason for getting enough support first was to avoid another embarrassment, which already seemed to be on the horizon with McCain's refusal to vote "yes" for the bill. To add to the potentially devastating defeat looming over the Senate Majority Leader this week, many of the same Republican senators who sunk the last two repeals, also indicated that they would sink this one. Those Republican senators are Rand Paul (KY), Lisa Murkowski (AK) Susan Collins (ME) and as of Sunday, Ted Cruz (TX). President Trump reacted to McCain's refusal to vote for the bill, saying that if it didn't pass they would repeal it eventually.
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