Something I've sure wondered about.
Posted on: March 27, 2017 at 08:22:45 CT
GA Tiger MU
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There's plenty that could have been done, at the stroke of a pen, IMO. WTF?
Colossal GOP failure and not just on health
Why aren't bills on infrastructure, tax reform and free speech lined up like planes on a runway?
The plan to replace Obamacare with a new bill crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan has failed, and embarrassingly so. And that failure is part and parcel of a larger failure of the Republican-led Congress to push an agenda in the new administration.
Talking to a friend at lunch not long ago, he expressed his amazement that the House and Senate leadership didn’t have bills “lined up like airplanes on a runway” ready to take off in the new year. I was surprised, too.
It’s not like the need to do something about Obamacare was a surprise. Republicans have been promising to repeal it for most of a decade. And it’s not like Obamacare was popular or successful. Premiums are rising, providers are dropping out, and costs are going up. It’s true that the Obamacare bill, pushed through on a procedural technicality that avoided a filibuster but left it impossible to fix at the time, was a mess. It’s also true that the legislation was drafted, and the regulations implementing it were designed, in part to make it hard to undo.
Nonetheless, the Republican inability to deliver a bill that could get a majority in the GOP-led House is a colossal failure, and pretty much undercuts its entire reason for being. For years the congressional GOP leadership failed to deliver on promises to constituents, and offered the excuse that it couldn’t do anything without control of the White House. Well, they’ve got that, so what’s their excuse now? And where are the bills on infrastructure, on tax reform, on free speech?