I understand all the issues, I think. But I still think that open discussion of a potential law is a good thing, not a bad one.
I wholeheartedly believe that McCain deserves the best health care our government can provide him with.
I also believe that he’s making a total dick move by ensuring his fellow Americans are denied access to the same kind of life-saving care. If he had the same kind of coverage he’s about to stick his constituents with (including many of his fellow Veterans) he’d likely be dead already.
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The motion to proceed vote puts this bill - whatever it ends up being, because Republicans have basically refused to talk about it in public so far - on a path to passage, because the amount of time it can be debated is limited by Senate rules. We discussed the ACA as a country for over a year in a hugely public (and disingenuous, on the right) process before the Senate voted to proceed to debate on it. What Republicans are doing is not how you “discuss” a massive piece of legislation. It’s how you force it to a final vote as quickly as possible before too many people catch on to what you’re doing.
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You don’t see the upside to this? The upside to 30+ Senators going on the record as pro-chaos - when the next elections come around?
I want as many (R)s to sign on to it as possible, just shy of the votes to repeal. Let them proudly declare to their constituents that they just took away an entitlement. And you think this is a bad thing? Can only go very very wrong despite their track record on this issue??
If you are right, then why don’t they just pass it immediately? Since they haven’t, I’m assuming the “as quickly as possible” part is not entirely accurate. Maybe they don’t vote immediately because they know the votes aren’t there?
or defeat, your omniscience and ignoring of 7 years of not being able to do it, the public statements of a sufficient number of senators to assure defeat, and the clear indication that it’s on the table only to allow senators to vote up or down AND MOVE ON, aside.
But sure… it -could- pass. Maybe they could pass a re-naming of the act? Any change to the entitlements is clearly off the table, despite being formally put on the table -as defeat in the senate tends to take things off the table where they don’t come back often - unlike in the House.
Uhm… we’ve been hearing about this for days. What this is, is failed leadership in the Senate.
ensuring it? That assumes passage, and that’s not what has happened yet, nor is it likely to as he is one senator that won’t be voting on the measure, and their margin of victory on the vote - if they had one to count on, would be one senator. They don’t have that, so no surety is on their side. Surety is on the other side.
McCain showed up to postpone a formal and thorough defeat, in a way that lets them all move on from the issue having shaken their fists at the other side, and changing nothin’
Because it’s procedure in the Senate. They’ve got a lot of very arcane rules to follow, one of which requires the motion to proceed to pass a certain amount of time prior to the regular vote on the bill. The motion to proceed is the one that normally takes 60 votes, and is what can be filibustered. Under the reconciliation process, a majority (50 +VP in this case) votes are needed for the motion to proceed. The final vote only ever takes a majority.
It has nothing to do with public debate. All bills are public prior to this, they’ll be scored by the CBO and reported on by the media. Unless of course, the leaders in the Senate want to keep the contents of the bill secret and are using whatever procedures are available to keep them as secret as possible, and then getting the vote as soon as possible.
If this vote had failed, they would have had to vote to pass the motion to proceed at a later date, postponing the final vote on the bill and giving more time for it to become public through whatever means. And by at least one report I read, through normal procedures, requiring the 60 vote threshold.
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It can’t be passed immediately, again, because of Senate rules requiring a certain period of time for debate after the motion to proceed is voted on. What they’ve been doing is keeping it under wraps and fast-tracking it as much as the rules will allow. They’re counting on confusion and lack of communication to mask their double-dealing to get “moderates” (Heller, Capito) and extremists (Paul, Cruz) on board at the same time, while keeping the bill out of the public eye for as long as possible because it gets less popular the more anyone hears about it.
While I will happily use this vote against every single one of these rat bastards, I’m just a little tired of being happy about flirting with disaster for the sake of scoring political points. I’m also nowhere near as confident as you are that this will go down in flames. Portions of it have an uphill battle against the Senate parliamentarian, but McConnell is determined to make something happen, and anything they come up with is basically guaranteed to ruin my family’s access to health care. You may also have noticed there have been enough “no” votes to defeat this thing multiple times. Yesterday Capito and Heller were the two extra “no” votes who would have kept this from proceeding, yet here we are, still talking about how it’s guaranteed to fail because surely, three Republicans can find it in the shriveled husks where their hearts are supposed to be to vote against taking health insurance away from 10% of the country.
I’ll grant you failure of leadership on the grounds that this was supposed to be a slam dunk almost a month ago (and, ironically, probably would have been if the repeal-or-bust extremists in the chamber had all lined up like they were all expected to), but crafting legislation in secret and rushing to vote on it before the CBO has had a chance to tell everyone how shit-awful it is has been fairly effective in keeping the bill from receiving as much public scrutiny as it would have if it were being drafted publicly. There’s been a lot of outrage generated over it, but only in small bursts whenever they try to sneak another draft past the CBO and word gets out. There’s been no sustained, months-long scrutiny of it in the media because there just hasn’t ever been enough made public to talk about at considerable length.
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McCain’s supposed “maverick” reputation is built on pure bullshit. He likes to spout progressive sounding bluster and act like he’s going to go against the grain but when the moment of truth arrives, he goes and follows party lines. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Fuck that guy.
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I’m just gonna leave this here: http://www.theonion.com/article/firebrand-john-mccain-demands-immediate-investigat-56026
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OK, thanks to you and GutRot for the helpful information. I guess we’ll see what happens.
Unfortunately, that’s plenty of time to buy 3 senators. Yes, they are more expensive than reps, but they stay bought longer and you get more hold on them just because you know you bought them, and can reveal it in as ugly a way as possible.
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Actually the technical term for a cancer patient who leaves their
hospital bed to steal health care from fellow cancer patients is
“asshole”I guess John McCain’s got his healthcare.
Or not. Casting this deciding vote could be the terminal symptom that his brain has truly been destroyed by the cancer.
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While I agree in spirit, I do not in substance. There is no way he could stop it. He could have voted no now, or not shown up, but these friggin asswipes would have found a way to move forward anyways. There is no stopping this particular crazy train until it runs out of coal and grinds itself to a stop. They have been at this for 8 stinkin years. Do you think that McCain has the sole power to stop this madness? It would only have been temporary.
So we have to think, what would cause them to vote yes on repeal? I’m sure they can be brought into it. They’ve built a reputation out of hating Obamacare completely. Illogically, because they don’t want big insurance bailouts, but they also don’t want the controls on gouging. So which is it, chumps??? That’s the question. They’ll be brought to heel, I have no doubt.
To clarify: I was referring to today’s specific vote, and McCain’s hypocritical behavior during and immediately after it. I have no doubt that they would’ve come back again later with another attempt, and I’m under no circumstances counting on McCain to be our one true savior from this madness, but he could have taken responsibility and killed this particular attempt, and he didn’t. Given the option between protecting the legislative norms he claims to care so very much about, and proceeding to debate on a mystery bill that will likely take health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans, he voted in favor of the latter. He doesn’t care about regular order, or if he does, he cares about it less than partisan political point-scoring.
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At this point, I honestly have no idea what McCain is thinking, or even if he is.
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been there, done that. it can be a relief to be an ex-pat. for a time. but, i missed home, friends, and spoken english.
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Absolutely. This is a deeply unpopular move; any Senator who votes to take healthcare away will find it very difficult to spin that as anything remotely positive when elections roll around.
I’m simply agape at the incredible hypocrisy of a POW and cancer survivor tacitly giving a thumbs-up to work on taking healthcare away from millions of war vets and cancer patients.
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