Perhaps a Thanksgiving miracle?
By:
LeRoy Goldman
Columnist
Tines-News Online
November 19, 2017
Perhaps a quarter-century of deadlock in Washington is ending. And amazingly, the issue that now gives hope is one that has been at the center of Washington’s descent into recrimination and paralysis — health care. Maybe it’s the key that unlocks what has shackled and crippled presidents and Congresses since Bill Clinton took office.
President Clinton asked his wife to take the lead on health care reform in 1993. She failed miserably. She devised a plan so complex that no one could understand it. It was a sitting duck for the devastatingly effective Harry and Louise television ads that the health insurance industry ran against Hillarycare.
More importantly, its collapse set the stage for the Republican tidal wave in the 1994 election that put Newt Gingrich and the GOP in control of the House for the first time in 40 years. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the House had impeached him.
Immediately following his historic victory, President Barack Obama unwisely decided to make health care reform his top priority and to do so on a partisan basis. In 2009, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. Thus Obamacare was rammed through Congress without any Republican support, assuring the upheaval that followed.
Upheaval’s name was “Repeal and Replace.” During the Obama presidency, two consequential things occurred: partisan stalemate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and a series of Republican election victories that has brought the GOP to its high-water mark not only in Washington but also in the states.
In 2010, the Republicans recaptured the House. In 2014, they took the Senate. They also defeated about 1,000 Democrats in state legislative chambers and won numerous governorships. And to almost everyone’s surprise, they won the presidency last year. Voter opposition to Obamacare fueled the meteoric rise of the GOP.
But delivering on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for the Republicans. So much of a disaster that the election results earlier this month make evident that it now threatens their control of Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Without a major course correction, the GOP is headed into oblivion.
However, that the course correction now appears possible. And we can thank Sen. John McCain for that.
Recall that McCain returned to the Senate in late July after having had surgery for brain cancer. His return occurred just as Senate Republicans were attempting to pass their version of the legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. However, like the House version of the same measure, it was deeply unpopular, principally because its enactment would result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance.
On July 25, McCain took the Senate floor and delivered a stinging rebuke to both Republicans and Democrats. In it, he said:
“The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare. And we shouldn’t do the same with ours. ...
“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. ...
“I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. ...
“Let the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under Chairman (Lamar) Alexander, and Ranking Member (Patty) Murray hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides.”
At 1:29 a.m. on July 28, McCain voted against the Republican bill, known as Skinny Repeal, thus killing it. An hour later, a petulant President Donald Trump tweeted, “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode, then deal. Watch!”
Thanks to McCain’s courage and then Alexander and Murray’s willingness to work together, regular order has broken out. Their committee has held hearings, workshops attended by more than 60 senators, and executive sessions on a bipartisan bill to stabilize the collapsing individual insurance market in Obamacare.
Their bill would also extend cost-sharing subsidies to insurance companies through 2019, thus enabling millions of Americans to retain their health insurance. In addition, it would enable states to obtain waivers to shape their own health insurance programs.
Their bill has two dozen co-sponsors equally divided among Republicans and Democrats. That means the bill is filibuster-proof!
The enactment of this bipartisan fix is the necessary precondition to the larger bipartisan overhaul that must follow. However, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will not bring the bill up unless the White House signals that Trump will sign it.
That signal would be worthy of Thanksgiving.
Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.
