In the end, three Republican senators -- Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain -- torpedoed the monstrosity that was intended to put an end to Obamacare. And now they are faced with another monstrosity. E.J. Dionne writes:
The GOP bill that should be called the Cut Taxes on President Trump and Other Very Rich People Act of 2017 always had a secondary purpose: to jack up the deficit so Republicans could later cry out in horror, “Look at that awful debt!” They’d then use the pools of red ink they created to justify deep cuts in social programs.
But people who call themselves conservative are shovelling out so much money so fast to corporations and the privileged that they needed some health care cuts upfront — at the expense of coverage for millions of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.
And so on Tuesday, the Senate majority took an appalling bill and made it even more atrocious. To their ungainly concoction of tax breaks for the various interests that support them, they added the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Most Republicans are still trying to get rid of Obamacare. They're also pushing a huge corporate tax break. And, as with their health care legislation, they are rushing to pass it:
Let’s take a step back and ponder the exceptional irresponsibility of what’s transpiring here. The same people who complained that more than a year of hearings, analysis and debate around Obamacare constituted “rushing” the bill are now recklessly spiriting through the system a gigantic piece of legislation that would touch all corners of the American economy.
They are changing it willy-nilly, day-by-day, to accommodate this or that political problem. They are rationalizing their thrown-together product with false claims about everything from whom it will benefit to how it will affect the long-term deficit. They are using a tax bill to punish their political enemies (people in high-tax blue states, major universities, low-income Americans) and reward their friends and donors (corporations and the very affluent).
And, with all of the sound and fury about Judge Roy Moore, they may succeed in passing their legislation -- unless the same Republicans -- with a couple of additions -- stand up for their constituents.
These days, it's hard to find profiles in courage in the American Congress.
