Senate GOP’s ObamaCare replacement bill is ‘very liberal’

Senate Republican leaders outlined a “very liberal” ObamaCare replacement bill during their weekly lunch with their members on Tuesday, sources said.

“The moderates are very happy,” an aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of the Senate’s most conservative members, told The Post. “It was a very liberal bill.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters that the upper chamber is “getting very close to having a proposal to whip and to take to the floor” on health care.

His comments came after the leaders met with President Trump at the White House to discuss health care reform.

According to one source, the document shared with members Tuesday excluded a provision that would allow state waivers for community rating rules — something that was added to the House bill shortly before its passage.

The source said conservatives emerged from the lunch feeling “very unhappy” about the current direction of health care reform.

>> Folks, we really need to get rid of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment. <<

Actually, the conservative senators opposing Obamacare-lite, (namely Ted Cruz and Mike Lee) would have never become Senators if it weren't for the 17th amendment. The GOP state legislators in their respective states adamantly opposed their campaign for Senate. Instead, party hacks like David Dewhurst would have been appointed Senator by the state legislature, and they'd happily rubber stamp RyanCare.

Facts are stubborn things, aren't they?

We might just be better off getting rid of the Senate entirely. It’s nothing but an impediment to halting the Deep State corruption. It’s certainly done nothing to stop the proliferation of big government, and this asshat idea that returning the Senate back over to corrupt state legislators to make it even more left-wing and spendthrift beyond where it is now takes the cake.

Here we go again.

No one likes the bill and attacks the Senate over it.

But the President is pushing for it, to the point he may go after the only vulnerable GOP Senator up for reelection in 2018 if he doesn’t support it. But he gets a pass while McConnell is “scum”.

I would likely oppose abolishing the U.S. Senate outright and switching to a unicameral legislature. The only state in the country that has done so is Nebraska, and I've spoken with Nebraska conservatives who say their "nonpartisan" unicamerial legislature is just as corrupt and full of lobbyists drafting bills behind closed doors as the other 49 states and federal government is. And like Nebraska, Unicamerial legislatures tend to exist in places with very sparse, limited population and size, for example New Zealand. It isn't practical in huge nations that span a continent.

Having one house represent population interests and the other represent geographic interests makes sense to me. If anything, I wish state legislatures had the same system as the feds. I dream of the day where Crook County gets only 1 seat in the Illinois Senate, instead of 50% of the seats like have now. Thank God the U.S. Senate isn't like the Illinois Senate, or we'd have 50 Barbara Boxer clones from California making up half the membership of the Senate.

More importantly, I agree with the premise that it's more important to kill bad bills than pass good ones, and the bottom line is that its much easier to kill or delay legislation when you need BOTH houses to pass it before it can get to the President's desk. If the Senate was abolished, RyanCare would have already made it way to the White House thanks to the House of Representatives giving it the green light. Requiring a majority in BOTH houses to pass the SAME version of a bill through an entirely different legislating process makes its very difficult and time consuming to enact ANY laws in this country, and even harder to override a presidential veto. I see that as a positive.

I think the main problem with Nebraska is the absurd “nonpartisan” part, not the unicameral part. Unfortunately we don’t have a clean example of a unicameral state leg. The next time a state government adopts a new constitution I’m sure the idea will come up. RI has the newest constitution, 1986. Meanwhile MA still has their original. Louisiana has had 11! And Georgia 9.

I’ve suggested it at the state level, since the Supreme Court outlawed having an upper house not based on equal population districts. But as you say it’s usually better to make it harder to pass things. I recall after the GOP kept the House in 2012 and won the Senate in 2014 libs started whining that they wished we had a parliamentary system.

Federally I’d definitely lean strongly against abolishing the Senate. I love when libs whine about Cali and Wyoming each having 2 Senators. Most people who suggest abolishing it are libs. If we don’t have a nice gain next year I might change my mind. ;p

All this constant “let’s abolish the 17th amendment and go back to a wondrous past that never actually existed” talk ignores the fact that the more important differences between the House and Senate are that the suffrage of the states is equal in the Senate, and they serve longer terms, staggered so only a third of the body is up every 2 years.

If we can finally start exercising the advantage we should have in winning Senate seats...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.