Asked about behind-the-scenes work among Senate Republicans on hammering out the provisions of a healthcare bill, McConnell said, “I don’t know how we get to 50 (votes) at the moment. But that’s the goal. And exactly what the composition of that (bill) is I’m not going to speculate about because it serves no purpose,” McConnell said. Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority. In the event of a 50-50 tie, Republican Vice President Mike Pence would be called upon to cast a tie-breaking vote. McConnell opened the interview by saying, “There’s not a whole lot of news to be made on healthcare.” He declined to discuss what provisions he might want to see in the bill or provide a timetable for producing even a draft to show to rank-and-file Republican senators and gauge their support.

Of course, he is right. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who on Wednesday put out yet another statement excoriating the House bill, are not going to agree on much of anything. (In a written statement, Collins declared, “Unfortunately, the [Congressional Budget Office] estimates that 23 million Americans would lose insurance coverage over the next decade, and the impact would disproportionately affect older, low-income Americans. In addition, for a 64-year old with an income of $26,500, the out-of-pocket premium cost could soar from $1,700 to as high as $16,100, an 850 percent increase.”)

Along with Collins, there are several Republicans, including conservatives from states that expanded Medicaid, who won’t go for a rollback in Medicaid benefits. Moderates will not stand for an opt-out from a protection for those with preexisting conditions that would leave people with no access to affordable coverage. No one in the Senate has yet come up with a formula for keeping the same number of people covered while lowering out-of-pocket costs and repealing all the Obamacare taxes. (“Now that Republicans are in a position to do so with control of both Congress and the White House, they have struggled to come up with a consensus plan. The Republican leader compared the effort to solving a Rubik’s Cube.”)

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Left to their own devices, could Collins, other Senate GOP moderates and Senate Democrats come up with a compromise health-care reform plan of some type? Perhaps, but then Republicans in the House would never, ever accept it and the remainder of the GOP caucus in the Senate would filibuster anything that smacked of extending instead of repealing Obamacare.

By insisting on pursuing their ideological dogma — repealing Obamacare in its entirety — in a fact-free and public-opinion-free environment, Republicans irreparably damaged their ability to achieve much this year. If the House insists on the same all-or-nothing approach on taxes (a huge cut for the rich, no realistic means of plugging the flood of red ink it will create), it will be caught in another endless loop of internal fights, bad PR, false promises, rotten CBO scoring and bad polling. Unless and until they decide to pursue revenue-neutral corporate tax reform that has bipartisan support (and does not include a big break for wealthy taxpayers who set up pass-through companies), tax reform will likely join the GOP health-care bill in the legislative morgue.

Whether it is the health care bill, tax reform or the budget, the Trump White House and the GOP-led Congress have done a bang-up job of convincing voters that they are fiscally irresponsible and dishonest (both in their accounting and their representations as to what is in their legislation). Moreover, they have cemented the perception that Republicans are willing to wreak havoc on the most vulnerable in order to give big tax cuts to the rich. Instead of keeping funding stable and reforming safety-net programs, the White House has pursued a slash-and-burn approach that not even Republicans can support. The likelihood of reaching no deal and operating on continuing resolutions increases when Republicans start out with an absurd opening bid that its hard-liners fall in love with.

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