As GOP's repeal bill struggles, Democrats ask whether they gave it life
PowerPost - Analysis
By David Weigel September 24 at 2:37 PM
This week, as Senate Republicans scrambled one more time to unravel the Affordable Care Act on a party-line vote, some Democrats asked whether it all could have been prevented with a little more strategy.
What if “Chuck and Nancy,” as President Trump had come to call the Democrats’ congressional leaders, had not cut a Sept. 7 deal on the debt limit that cleared the calendar? What if progressives, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), had delayed the Sept. 13 release of a Universal Medicare for All bill until after the Sept. 30 deadline on repeal?
Democrats “spiked the ball in the end zone a little too early,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this month.
“I’m not sure single payer vs Graham-Cassidy is the debate we want right now,” tweeted Tommy Vietor, an Obama administration veteran and a co-host of “Pod Save America,” after Sanders agreed to a CNN-hosted debate on health care with the repeal bill’s sponsors.
Backbiting and nervousness among Democrats is a norm in Washington, and all of it would disappear if the repeal push fails. But some of the panic had trickled down to the grass roots. The rules of budget reconciliation, which gives the majority party one shot each fiscal year to pass a bill with just 51 votes, had quickly risen from obscurity to infamy. Democrats who once cheered when an unelectable-seeming Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination had become experts in focusing on the cloud over the silver lining.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/24/as-gops-repeal-bill-struggles-democrats-ask-whether-they-gave-it-life
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