Only 26% of Republicans Support the Senate’s Tax Cut as Health Care Bill

Only 26% of Republicans support the Senate’s tax cut as health care bill, according to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll.

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“Even among Republicans, only 26% support the Senate bill; 17% oppose it. A 52% majority say they need more information before they can express a view.”

Only 12% of Americans support the GOP tax cut as health care bill, officially dubbed with an Orwellian title: The Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017.

Fifty-three percent say Congress should leave Obamacare alone or tweak it to fix any problems.

The low approval rating among Republicans is likely in part due to the rushed way Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to jam this bill through before the July 4th recess, and in part due to it revoking Trump’s promise not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

It’s not that Republicans admit to loving Obamacare (many of them don’t know that they are on indeed “on” Obamacare, in terms of not only the marketplace but the regulations that are protecting them or offering their kids insurance in their early 20s), because 8 in 10 Republicans support repealing Obamacare. It’s that they don’t approve of the Republican bill or don’t know enough about it to say.

McConnell is known as deal maker, but he hasn’t ever tried to do something as big as healthcare. The public and media should take note as they watch Republicans struggle to accomplish the thing that Democrats did the harder, but more correct way. That is to say, Democrats allowed public debate on the ACA/Obamacare. They allowed Republican amendments.

McConnell tried to threaten Republicans that if they don’t pass the tax cuts bill that McConnell is calling a health care bill, he will work with Democrats to pass a health care bill.

Earth to McConnell: Democrats already passed a health care bill and the people like it and want to keep it. Democrats will not be working with McConnell to save him from political humiliation while he kills health care for millions of Americans.

If McConnell wanted Democrats to help him, he could have done what anyone who actually wanted to legislate would have done: He would have participated in Obamacare and would be working to fix it instead of undermining it to destroy it, as he currently is.

As Paul Kane wrote today in The Washington Post, Senate Republicans are learning an old Sam Rayburn adage: “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Building things is always harder than trolling them. Even if McConnell gets this tax cut passed, he has not built a health care bill. It is a tax cut bill that gives a tax cut to the rich by killing vulnerable people. I wish that were hysteria, but sadly it is a fact.

Sarah Jones

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