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politics and politicians Title: Who Owns Obamacare Now? Who Owns Obamacare Now? Mark Meadows and the so-called Freedom Caucus. Otto von Bismarck famously said, Politics is the art of the possible. This is a reality that President Trump and the GOP congressional leadership understand. Sadly, a small clique of rigid ideologues constituting about 10 percent of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is clearly ignorant of this fact. These people call themselves the Freedom Caucus. Yet, by refusing to support the American Health Care Act (AHCA) last week, they preserved one of the most outrageous assaults on individual liberty ever signed into law. They have virtually guaranteed that Obamacare will never be repealed. Now they own it. Some commentators have attempted to blame the AHCA debacle on the failure of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the Republican leadership to live up to longstanding campaign promises. In a column bearing the hyperbolic title, GOP cave on Obamacare repeal is the biggest broken promise in political history, Philip Klein takes this position. Klein belongs to an unofficial group of conservative-leaning journalists that the immortal Jean Kirkpatrick might well have labeled the blame Republicans first crowd. These commentators habitually ignore inconvenient political facts and produce absurd assertions such as the following: They failed in the case of the Freedom Caucus, primarily because Mark Meadows and his accomplices wouldnt take yes for an answer. Meadows first claimed that his primary objection to AHCA was its refundable tax credits, which he characterized as a new entitlement program. However, when the leadership showed signs that they might be willing to compromise on this issue, he suddenly decided that the bill also had to contain a provision eliminating Obamacares essential health benefits mandate (EHB). Meadows knew perfectly well that such a provision was almost certainly going to run afoul of Senate reconciliation rules. In other words, Meadows and most other members of the Freedom Caucus simply werent dealing in good faith. They insisted on full repeal, which they knew would never pass either house of Congress. President Trump has not been reticent about pointing this out. Yesterday morning, he took the Freedom Caucus to task thus: Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club for Growth and Heritage, has saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare! When asked by ABCs George Stephanopoulos about the gleeful Democratic response to his handiwork, Rep. Meadows made the following preposterous claim: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
#1. To: Gatlin (#0)
How can that be? No vote was ever even held. You want to blame the brave Freedom Caucus for...not having voted. Just like every other GOP member of the House who also...didn't vote on it. And there were plenty of other 'no' votes among conservatives and from liberal northeastern country-club Republicans too. It was a badly crafted bill, hastily slapped together (like 0bamaCare was) behind locked doors with no one being allowed to offer any amendments. And they rushed it through in about 20 legislative days. The Dems at least worked on their bill for over a year before finally passing it.
Hey, you're right! Hmmmm. But why was no vote ever even held? Do you know? Of course you do. You can't be that stupid.
Of course I'm right. No vote was held. Period. And it was Trump who told Lyin' Ryan to pull the vote. So who is to blame for having no bill? I'd say it is Lyin' Ryan and Dumb Donald. Donald should have known better than to think that Priebus and Ryan could cook up anything to revamp 1/6th of the economy in less than 3 weeks.
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