GOP Wakes Up Today With All The Same Problems They Had Yesterday

Yesterday the House GOP faced a choice between three options for their health care ball, all of them very bad. They could delay a vote on their bill, vote down their bill, or pass their bill. They ended up delaying the vote. One downside of that strategy is that they wake up today facing exactly the same choice between exactly the same three options.

The problems remain the same. The most recent changes to the bill still have no CBO score. The most recent CBO score is horrifically bad. The bill is stunningly unpopular. There is still no final text of the bill, partly because it seems that leadership does not yet have the votes to pass the bill. The coalition opposing the bill comes from opposite sides of the political spectrum, so it’s impossible to appease one without losing more support with the other. And amid all this, GOP leaders insist that a vote will take place today.

If anything, their problems are only getting worse. Trump appears to be losing patience and interest. That’s bad enough for the House vote in isolation, but even if the bill gets through the House, it will slog through more debate and surely more changes if it is to have any hope of passing the Senate. If you’re a worried House Rep and you don’t want to go on record supporting an unpopular bill that the president and Senate will abandon later, this is not a good sign. Not to mention that the president’s own popularity is plummeting due to possible collusion with the Russian government, meaning that even full presidential support might not be worth much.

Moreover, by delaying the vote yesterday, leadership has lost more of what little credibility they had left. Ryan was saying all week that the bill “will pass Thursday.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer was telling the press yesterday afternoon, even as there was no final text for the bill, that the bill “it’s gonna pass, so that’s it,” and that there is “no Plan B.”

Each day brings more bad news for the bill. Quinnipiac released a poll yesterday showing that voters oppose it 56–17. Even white voters without a college degree, Trump’s core demographic, oppose 48–22. Last night, after Ryan, decided to postpone the vote, the CBO released its score of Monday’s amendments to the bill. The report shows the same number of uninsured, but almost $200 billion less in debt reduction than the original bill. That is, Ryan spent $200 billion trying to buy votes and still doesn’t have enough to pass the bill.

Another day delaying the vote also means another day of Representatives hearing from their constituents, from insurance companies, from hospitals, from advocacy groups, how much they hate the bill. Absolutely nobody likes this bill.

The House GOP’s only possible graceful-ish exit is to pass something — anything! — and then let the Senate, which includes Republican leaders who are at least competent politically if not fair-minded or public-spirited, write a completely new bill. This new bill would then come back to the House for a vote, and somehow a magic fairy comes and makes it pass, despite it surely being far from what the conservative Freedom Caucus is insisting on.

I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to happen today. Again, these people have no idea what they’re doing, which makes predicting their behavior difficult. Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration spent over a year in public debate over Obamacare, after an entire presidential campaign focused on health care. They involved Republicans and industry groups from the beginning. They had an economist (Jonathan Gruber) with a model of how CBO would score various provisions. Republicans have none of that. They’re still just mashing buttons in desperate hope that they can somehow pass a bill that preserves their coveted tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor.

But if Ryan decides, again, to postpone the vote, he will come back to Capitol Hill on Monday with all the same problems, only worse. The CBO may have scored their newest changes by then, and the score will probably be much worse, since many of the plans without essential benefits would not qualify as insurance under CBO rules. A projection of 35 million additional uninsured is not out of the question. Trump may have abandoned Ryan completely by that point. GOP members of Congress will have spent the entire weekend getting angry calls from constituents. And Republicans will still have no idea what they’re doing.