Republicans will try to repeal Obamacare again if they hold Congress.
Coverage of the 2018 midterm elections has been so focused on the question of which party will win—whether Democrats will take the House and, more distantly, the Senate—that the more significant question of what the winning parties would do with the 116thCongress has been oddly overlooked.
It’s not that complicated on the Democratic side. If they pick up either of the two chambers of Congress, the president’s legislative agenda would be foreclosed and we’d have stress-free gridlock, much like the final six years of the Obama administration.
But what if Democrats come up short? What would Republicans dowith a two-year extension of the unified GOP government?
A couple of fights will dominate much of the schedule. The current two-year budget agreement will expire, and there will be pressure from the conservative elements in both chambers (and the White House) not to renew the domestic spending boost they conceded to Democrats the last time around. The debt ceiling will have to be dealt with again. There will be more airy jibber-jabber about striking an infrastructure or immigration deal, leading to nothing.
The best bet for what a unified Republican government would do would be to finish its unfinished partisan business. In other words, they would try health care again.
“Many Republicans assume their party will take another stab at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act if the midterm elections go their way,” Axios reports, “even though GOP candidates aren’t making a big deal about it on the campaign trail.”
Republicans would be decently well-positioned to repeal and replace Obamacare if the midterms “go their way.” Going their way would mean they’d only lose, say, a dozen seats in the House, while picking up two or three seats in the Senate. The dozen members that they would lose wouldn’t have voted for a repeal bill in the first place, so it wouldn’t be a net-loss in the whip count. And if Republicans can hit 53 in the Senate—with, at some point, an actively voting replacement for Arizona Sen. John McCain—that would allow them to write a bill that didn’t require the votes of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, or Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementOr they might not even need to worry about Murkowski, and could manage with 52. The legislative model for repeal would be a revamped version of the Graham-Cassidy legislation—which failed in a last-ditch effort last September—that would replace Obamacare with federal block grants to the states. Murkowksi never explicitly rejected the idea but was irritated with the rush to pass it. And Axios quotes Murkowski as open to the idea of reconsidering repeal-and-replace in the next Congress.
And then, as Jonathan Chait writes, there’s the psychological factor. Republicans will feel invincible if they hold they House and expand their margin in the Senate in this political environment. They will have weathered the worst and be left standing. They could quickly repeal Obamacare early in the next Congress before watching it fade from the conversation as the presidential election, and what’s certain to be a sloppy Democratic primary, dominates the consciousness.
You should bank on Republicans making another all-out effort to repeal Obamacare if they retain control of Congress. What else are they going to do?
Tweet Share Share Comment(责任编辑:资讯)
- The OLED Burn
- Saturday’s protest to be watershed moment for Park
- LPGA record title winner Whitworth dies at 83
- How the weird fake trails on treadmill screens help clear your mind
- Tesla issues recall for 9,100 Model X cars
- [From the Scene] How ‘world’s first oil town’ is wrestling to become ‘green'
- US sees no imminent sign of nuclear weapons use by N. Korea: Kirby
- Reince Priebus rejects Steve Bannon's touch in awkward TV moment
- Help us, Star Wars coronavirus memes. You're our only hope.
- Sinkhole swallows up car, injuring 2 in Seoul
- Lena Headey parodies home beauty tutorials with some 'tips' of her own
- National park's prized safety system fails during coronavirus pandemic
- 南美松鼠猴:我的新家在碧峰峡
-
LG Display starts production of advanced OLED displays for gaming
A monitor equipped with LG Display's 27-inch 480Hz QHD Gaming OLED panel is on display. (LG Dis ...[详细] -
The emails Republicans don't want you to see
A trove of more than 7,500 emails and other documents were released on Wednesday revealing that Pres ...[详细] -
市民选购月饼随着今年中秋节的临近,月饼已成了近期市场消费的主角,而网购月饼也凭借其低廉的价格、新颖的外观,受到不少年轻市民的热捧。市消委会工作人员提醒,网购月饼还未正式纳入监管范围,买家维权困难,网购 ...[详细]
-
How coronavirus changed my mind on meditation
March Mindfulnessis Mashable's series that examines the intersection of meditation practice and tech ...[详细] -
I Deleted All My Social Accounts: Three Weeks Without Social Media
To say that a lot of people use social media is an understatement. At last count, Facebook had more ...[详细] -
Senator finds it hard to respond to criticism from a kid
My roughly 10-year-old cousin once wanted to take me on in ping-pong, using the table in my basement ...[详细] -
Apple releases fix for disastrous group FaceTime bug
Better late than never.Apple has finally released an update for iOS that fixes a serious bug in grou ...[详细] -
China's Xi tells N. Korea's Kim to bolster 'strategic guidance' over bilateral ties
New Chinese Ambassador to North Korea Wang Yajun, fourth from left, delivering a message from Presid ...[详细] -
Scientists detect water sloshing on Mars. There could be a lot.
A pioneering NASA robot detected over a thousand quakes on Mars. It also may have revealed a huge re ...[详细] -
It's never too early to eat lunch
There are many dumb, unofficial rules that we as a society abide by, but one of the most absurd is t ...[详细]
- Carbon neutrality law violates basic rights: Constitutional Court
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gives himself a 'C' in 'tech responsibility'
- 加大城乡结合部敞放犬只整治力度
- North Korea unveils tactical nuclear warheads
- What Ever Happened to Winamp?
- Saenuri dissenters to play key role after scandal
- Viral video shows TV reporter wisely avoiding bison herd