Trumpcare Megathread: It's dead (for now)

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Here's where we're at after the latest developments:

Current Whip Count

No: 51
All Dems, Paul, Collins, McCain

Lean No: 1
Cruz

Toss-Up: 3
Murkowski
Lee
Capito

Lean Yes: 3

Ernst
Portman
Moran

Definite Yes (for now): 42

All Other Rs

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Moran should be in the undecided column.

What little I've heard about his position has a lot more of a "dodging the question" flavor, which a lot of senators have been doing when questioned alone. But I edited the post and moved him to Lean Yes to be cautious.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

So is this year's 50-vote barrier bill wasted?  And next year will be for tax cuts? 

Apparently, though there's been mention of using next year's reconciliation for a YUGE bill that would do both ObamaCare Repeal and Tax Reform. Of course, such a plan would rule out any democratic support - Heitkamp, Manchin, and Donnelly have left the door open to supporting a bill that is just tax reform.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

CNN has some anoymous sources telling them no vote this week:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politics/health-care-republican-senate-vote/index.html

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I'm a little confused on reconciliation.  Assuming Republicans use year 2018 to pass tax reform with no healthcare stuff, in order to bypass the Dem filibuster, then they say they could use year 2019 for Trumpcare sometime before/after the election.  Are they allowed to do that?  I would have figured the year 2019 reconciliation couldn't be used until the next Congress begins?

Reconcillation is done by the FISCAL year, not the Calendar year. The fiscal year runs from October 1-September 30. So 2019 Reconciliation could happen as soon as October 1, 2018 (assuming a budget for 2019 is passed by September 30, 2018 with a section stating an intent to use reconciliation for health care) - a month before the election.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

As today is the reconciliation deadline and the Senate isn't even in session, I request that this thread be locked and unstickied. TrumpCare is dead.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If there's one thing the GOP won't let happen, it'll be letting a bipartisan ObamaCare bill take the 2018 reconciliation slot instead of Tax Reform. Reconciliation can only be used once per fiscal year. If any sort of bipartisan ObamaCare bill is to pass, it will do so through the standard legislative process: i.e. 60 votes plus.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

All bow to ObamaCare, our newest entitlement program, now basically safe forever.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

All bow to ObamaCare, our newest entitlement program, now basically safe forever.

No that it's out of the way, we can go all-in on single-payer.

Thankfully single payer will never actually pass.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

All bow to ObamaCare, our newest entitlement program, now basically safe forever.

No that it's out of the way, we can go all-in on single-payer.

Thankfully single payer will never actually pass.

Hillary, is that you?

May as well be

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What Trump's done so far (cutting Outreach, basically repealing the birth control mandate) doesn't help.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I will postpone judgment on this until I see the actual bill.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Ed Markey, one of the most liberal members of the Senate, more or less gave his blessing to the deal just now on CNN.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

^ Trump's point of view has always been that if you allow ObamaCare to collapse, you create a crisis so bad that it eventually forces even the democrats to accept repeal. For him to accept the Murray compromise would actually be a notable flip. Also, while senate republican leadership has given up on repeal, it's not as if that's going to make house and senate conservatives suddenly stop hating ObamaCare.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Alexander talking about his and Murray's deal on the Senate floor right now. Says he has 22 cosponsors, 11 from each party.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

This won't pass. No sane Democrat will vote for this as it guts key ACA provisions, allows junk insurance to be sold & gives states multiple waivers.

Obamacare as people know it will be dead. This will be a new modified, more conservative version. It is like a Graham Cassidy bill, only it doesn't penalize the blue states & doesn't approach a block-grant approach to the fund being raised.

All 48 senate democrats support it. It has my support as well.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Someone please unsticky this dead thread. Potential repeal of the individual mandate is being addressed in the also-stickied tax cut thread, and no one has posted here in about 7 weeks.

Let it go, please.

No, this thread must remain stickied until Republicans give up on their dream of committing mass murder on millions of Americans.

Disagree.  We don't need to keep threads stickied that aren't going to get any comments for like a month or two.  Then they're just a waste of space.  If it comes back in the news, and there's more for people to talk about, then it can be re-stickied.  Or better yet, should that happen, start a new thread.  This one's almost at 2000 replies as it is, so it's close to being ready to be locked anyway.  If a new health care push happened now, it should get a brand new thread, rather than letting this zombie thread stumble forward.

EDIT: I mean, for those saying "I don't trust the GOP to not bring it up again", you do realize that this thread being stickied or not has zero impact on what actually happens in Congress, right?  It's not like you're going to stop the GOP agenda based on which threads show up in this forum.

The safe thing to do is assume what we do does have an effect in Congress. I do think this forum has a lot more publicity than people think, and would not be surprised if prominent elected officials ate signed up here under pseudonyms.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Any chance Virginia could expand soon given the improved HoD situation?