
A warning to Senate Republicans: We’re ready to write the attack ads.
This is a piece about opposition research. No, not Russia, or meeting with foreign lawyers. It’s about the vote that Democratic researchers around the country will use to show voters how their Senators threatened their health care.
That vote is scheduled for today. While the details of the underlying bill are still being debated (and apparently kept from the senators expected to vote on the bill), the CBO scores seem to get worse and worse, and the number of health care groups coming out against this effort are increasing, one truth remains: voting for the motion to proceed today is the same as voting for health care repeal.
And we will make sure voters know that come Election Day.
For those not versed in parliamentary procedure and the arcane language too often used to obscure what Congress is actually doing, a motion to proceed ends debate on a bill and allows it to move forward to a vote for passage. As might seem obvious, if you want to stop this health care bill, you would vote AGAINST the motion to proceed. If you want the bill to continue on its legislative way and be passed into law, you vote FOR the motion.
The answer here is clear, senators: you should be fighting to stop this health care bill.
While we don’t know the exact details of the bill — again, another reason to vote AGAINST proceeding on the bill — each version of the bill has cut Medicaid and put key consumer protections provided by Obamacare at risk. Literally millions of Americans will lose health care. Millions more will be forced into far worse care than they currently have. These bills will repeal Obamacare, which has created the lowest uninsured rates in decades, defund Planned Parenthood and undermine care, all to give massive tax cuts to the very richest Americans.
Your job as a member of Congress is to be a voice for your constituents through your vote. And every single one of them matters.
With every vote, you are taking an action.
You are making a choice.
And you are offering an opinion on the issue at hand.
Put simply, a motion to proceed on this bill is effectively the same as voting for the bill.
This is far from the first time a procedural vote has been used against a member of Congress — and it won’t be the last. In fact, it won’t even be the first time THIS potential procedural vote has been used in an ad. Just last month, a Trump-supporting super PAC started ads against Nevada Senator Dean Heller when Heller came out against the first attempt at motion to proceed, angering the Trump White House.
So yes, these attack ads write themselves. They would be devastating. And given how incredibly unpopular this bill is, those ads could well cost you some seats. But even political hacks like me will tell you: we’d rather not run them. We’d just as soon give up the best political attack of the year in return for you voting against the motion to proceed tomorrow and killing the bill.
Deal?
