Putting on a show for the voting public

America’s roads and bridges are crumbling, and the nation’s veterans aren’t getting anything close to the help they need and deserve, but the priority this week for Republicans in the U.S. Senate is yet another pointless, politically motivated vote to kill the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow GOP lawmakers intend to use reconciliation with a House bill as a vehicle to repeal parts of the ACA and also take aim at funding for another frequent conservative target, Planned Parenthood. While they may well succeed in approving the measure (reconciliation requires only 51 votes to pass and cannot be filibustered), it faces a veto by President Obama, and there almost certainly will not be enough votes to override that veto.
What that means is that this is purely for show, and to give Republican candidates the ability to go out and campaign on their votes to cripple Obamacare and deprive Planned Parenthood of federal funding.
“Obviously, we’re not anticipating a presidential signature,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “But I think the president should have to take credit for this, for the debacle that this legislation has created.”
Perhaps we missed it, but we don’t recall the president trying to distance himself from the signature piece of legislation of his time in office, and he most certainly isn’t shying away from “blame” for the 17 million people who have acquired health care coverage since the main provisions of the ACA took effect two years ago.
McConnell may have a bit of cajoling ahead in order to round up all the votes he needs. In October, senators and presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, warned that they might not support McConnell’s push because the House bill that is the subject of the reconciliation did not go far enough to hobble the ACA. Not to worry, says Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas. He claims the Senate’s version is “bigger and better.”
On another front, McConnell faces resistance from the few remaining moderates in his party in regard to the targeting of Planned Parenthood.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told The Huffington Post that the Planned Parenthood provisions currently in the measure “are extremely broad and would result in the closure of virtually every Planned Parenthood clinic in the United States, this depriving millions of Americans some basic health care – cancer screenings, family planning services.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination for 2016, put the attack on the ACA in stark terms, noting that before Obamacare, 45,000 Americans died annually because they did not have health insurance and the resulting access to a doctor.
“How many of those people will not be able to get the prescription drugs they need? In fact, how many of those people will die?” he asked. “And let’s be frank – when you throw 17 million people off of health insurance, people will die.”
Let’s say the Republicans in Congress could overturn the ACA in its entirety. How would they fill that void and make sure all Americans could access needed health care? It’s harsh to say this, but it might not be a stretch to suggest that some of them probably just don’t care about the health care options of the less fortunate among us. These are the same people, after all, who would privatize Social Security in order to put more money in the pockets of the folks on Wall Street, and would end Medicare as we know it in favor of a voucher program that would leave our senior citizens with lesser health-care coverage at higher costs.
At least we can rest easy in the knowledge that this is, at least for now, simply more of the same tired political posturing and preening. But after next year’s elections, it could become reality.