For quite some time, there was surprisingly little uproar from anyone about the fact that the Senate GOP has been trying to pass a health care bill in the dark. Admittedly, it’s hard to generate productive, targeted outrage about something you don’t know anything about. Still, it’s astonishing that Senate Democrats only began holding the floor in protest on Monday, when this process has been going on since early May, when Republicans rushed through a revised version of the American Health Care Act in less than 24 hours, without Congressional Budget Office review, because that would take too long, or something.
As it turns out, their bill as it was written would take away the health insurance of 23 million people, although it would save the government $119 billion. Rich Americans would see their taxes fall, but Medicaid would be savagely cut, leaving the poor without a lifeline to care. Since the CBO score came out, three weeks after the bill's initial passage in the House, the Senate has had a hold of the AHCA, and is ostensibly rewriting it—or at least a very small portion of senators are.
A bill that affects millions of Americans’ lives and a sixth of the nation’s GDP has, since that time, been in the hands of 13 white, male Republicans in the Senate. And they have been writing it cloaked in so much secrecy that other members of the Senate — even other members of the Senate GOP — do not know what’s in it.
Democrats are mad. That’s expected.
What’s less expected is the fact that Republicans are objecting too. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) says she doesn’t think this is “the best route to go.” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said he “would have liked this to be a public process.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said, in memorable fashion, “I think it’s being written, uh, by someone somewhere, but I’m not aware of who or where,” and asked NBC to send him a copy if they got ahold of one. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is a member of the group writing the bill, claims even he doesn’t know what’s in it, which he is “frustrated” by.
I might commend these Republicans for criticizing their own party.
Except that every single senator I’ve quoted has the power to put the brakes on the bill, and none of them are doing it. In fact, they and the other Republicans who have expressed unease with the lack of transparency surrounding the bill really appear to just be objecting for show. They know that it looks bad to criticize Democrats for shutting them and the public out of Obamacare and then turn around and do worse. So they’re publicly frowning on the process, while privately doing squat.
The fact is that Democrats can object all they want — they don’t have the votes to block it, if all the Republicans vote for it. Republicans, on the other hand, actually do have some power — if they don’t like the way the bill is being written, they can join the Democrats in objecting on the floor. They can withdraw consent for the day’s legislative activities to proceed as planned. They can vote against the bill, or pledge to vote against it unless it’s brought out into the light and given hearings.
None of them, so far, have done any of those things. Because they don’t really disapprove — they’re just trying to disclaim responsibility for the secrecy. They’re hoping that we’ll forgive them when they pass this bill — which only a fifth of Americans want — because they faked resistance.
The fact that Mitch McConnell is blithely tolerating their rebellion is a clue that they aren’t really breaking ranks — if he thought their votes were in danger he’d be kicking them back into line. Instead, he seems happy to allow them to pretend to care about his increasingly more undemocratic legislative gambits. So it’s unlikely that any of these righteous objectors have come to him, even in private, to take any kind of stand on dragging the bill into the light of day.
The senators who are ineffectually whining about secrecy are exactly as guilty as the 13 men writing the bill. They simply don’t have the courage of their hypocritical convictions.
Watch the Republican senators who object and see if they keep falling into the party line with their actions. If they continue to do nothing, don’t portray them as brave independents.
Paint them as the cowards they are.