Last week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act, which will repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law.
The bill still has a long way to go until it gets passed, and its fate in the Senate, where the Republicans maintain a slim 52-48 majority, is uncertain.
While Democrats have gone into hysterics about how the law will kill millions of people somehow, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has revealed his proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare with one piece of legislation, and defeat Obama’s law forever. And it can be described in one word: reconciliation.
A group of 13 Republican Senators, including Cruz, have been working on their own Obamacare repeal bill, one that includes “cross-state insurance purchases, and includes medical malpractice reform, health savings accounts and the expansion of association health plans.”
Ted Cruz shops one-and-done bill to repeal and replace Obamacare https://t.co/AORWLHTjmG pic.twitter.com/shKhTQMH5A
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 9, 2017
Under Senator Cruz’s proposal, the Obamacare repeal could be packaged into one single budget resolution and passed with only GOP support using reconciliation. In other words, we can get rid of this national disgrace the same way Democrats shoved it down our throats.
From The Washington Examiner:
Republicans have described a three-part plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, beginning with limited repeal and replace language passing under reconciliation. The second phase would include the bulk of the GOP’s proposal to replace Obamacare, while the third phase would reform healthcare through changes carried out administratively by the Trump administration.
But Cruz worries the second phase might never make it into law because the legislation would require hard-to-get by necessary Democratic support in the Senate. “Senate Democrats are listening to their radical left wing base of their party and so no health care reform legislation will garner 60 votes because there are not eight senators who will vote for any of the legislation,” Cruz said.
“I think the answer, very simply, is to put it all in one bucket,” Cruz added. In other words, pass everything under reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes instead of the typical 60. Cruz believes the provisions can be included in the reconciliation measure without running afoul of the Senate rules. Every one of the reforms reduces premiums and has a significant budgetary impact and therefore, under the terms of the statue, those reforms are permissible under reconciliation,” Cruz said.
The current proposal for Obamacare’s repeal is going to face steep opposition from Democrats, who may be able to delay the entire bill. Rather than repealing Obamacare in three phases, Senator Cruz’s proposal is much more politically savvy, and could defeat any of the obstructionist tactics likely to be used by Democrats.
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What’s more, despite the Congressional Budget Office’s inability to accurately score legislation, the Senate cannot truly begin crafting its own version of the House’s Obamacare repeal bill until the CBO scores the bill, which is not expected until May 22 at the earliest.
This problem exists, according to Politico, because “the Senate version has to save at least as much money as the House bill — otherwise the measure would violate the budget resolution and the GOP repeal effort would come to a swift end.”
Cruz’s proposal is what all Republicans should be fighting for. This is what we were promised for years.
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