Friday, September 22, 2017

What is the point?

That Republicans' latest awful push the Graham-Cassidy bill makes no sense. They say its because they need to pass a repeal and replace bill after promising one for the past seven years,  but didn't they already fail at doing that a few months ago? They already took the political hit for the failure, why bring it up again? I guess if they succeed in passing something, they can claw back some of the blow to their reputation. But  there is a bigger chance that they will fail, which will mean reminding everyone once again that they could not pull off their signature campaign promise.

Plus, as we have seen with every other particular repeal and replace bill, this bill is really unpopular. Whatever promises they made before, that was in a different era, when Obama was president and telling voters you will get rid of Obamacare was more of a coded way of saying "Obama sux!" then commenting on actual policy. Circumstances have changed. On plenty of other issues, Republicans have had no problem changing their position when the political climate shifts (e.g. trade agreements). Why are they so hung up on this one?

And the crazy thing is that if this bill does pass, the results will be so dreadful, they will forever be haunted by the consequences of their vote.

How could this effort possibly be worth it? Why didn't they just move on to giving rich people massive tax breaks (i.e. "tax reform") like they said they would just a few weeks ago, instead of going back to rerun their biggest legislative failure?