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Yes, Mitch McConnell’s secretive lawmaking is really unusual — in these 4 ways
When the Trump administration and GOP Congress ram through the secret AHCA healthcare plan, it will be 100% on them. They have accepted no input on this whatsoever from Democrats and Independents.
It's going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and they'll be judged in the midterm elections less than two years away.
Under the GOP House version, 23 million Americans lost all healthcare coverage and $630 billion of Medicaid funding was redistributed to the ultra-wealthy 1% of Americans via narrow-band tax cuts.
Additional: Senate leaders plan to rush a health-care bill to a vote, and there’s nothing Democrats can do about it
First, most closed-door bargaining in the Senate is bipartisan. True, Republicans are trying to repeal the ACA under special budget rules that eliminate the need for Democratic votes. Even so, it is highly unusual for the majority party’s senators to be kept in the dark on a top party priority. Even if House leaders often limit information on pending measures, McConnell’s tactics are far out of the norm for the upper chamber.
Second, when leaders close the doors, it’s often because the legislative process has ground to a halt. For example, negotiations over federal discretionary spending often take place in secret — but only after the annual appropriations process falters. But on health care, Senate Republicans went straight to closed-door negotiations among their own factions, without even trying to move the House bill — or their own alternative — through the usual public drafting and amending sessions in committee.
Third, McConnell’s tactics are particularly unusual because Republicans are trying to legislate on one of the nation’s most complicated policy issues. Health care affects one-sixth of the economy and may have life-or-death consequences for many Americans on Obamacare. Usually, issues that demand secret negotiations are must-pass measures about to hit a nonnegotiable deadline, such as failing to raise the debt ceiling or to fund the government on time. When the stakes are high and the consequences of failure broadly considered unacceptable, hiding negotiations from the public is usually easier to justify.
Fourth, it’s true that senators have in the past often resorted to small, bipartisan groups (such as the Gang of Six that struggled over health care in 2009 and the Gang of Eight that struck an immigration deal in 2013) working in secret on controversial policy matters. Even so, bipartisan deals that emerge from these “gangs” are usually then defended in public in committee and on the floor — and McConnell has said he won’t do that in this case.
When the Trump administration and GOP Congress ram through the secret AHCA healthcare plan, it will be 100% on them. They have accepted no input on this whatsoever from Democrats and Independents.
It's going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and they'll be judged in the midterm elections less than two years away.
Under the GOP House version, 23 million Americans lost all healthcare coverage and $630 billion of Medicaid funding was redistributed to the ultra-wealthy 1% of Americans via narrow-band tax cuts.
Additional: Senate leaders plan to rush a health-care bill to a vote, and there’s nothing Democrats can do about it