Republicans who decried Obamacare secrecy now writing legislation in secret
The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
Rarely, however, has the double standard been so flagrant as now, when Republicans are scrambling to keep their promise to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Exhibit A: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is set to produce a draft of a bill to be voted on next week.
Back when the Affordable Care Act passed on a party-line vote in 2010, the then-minority leader was full-throated in his denunciation of “the partisan route” that majority Democrats had taken and of the “closed-door sweetheart deals that were made to gain the slimmest margin for passage of a bill that’s about their health care.”
If Republicans got back in control, McConnell vowed in 2014, “there’s not a chance” they would act as Democrats did.
But that earlier process — which also included many months of committee hearings and bipartisan negotiation — was as transparent as a fish tank compared with the drafting of a health-care bill that is taking place privately in McConnell’s office, largely with a small cadre of aides. The leader himself has acknowledged it is a “Republicans-only exercise.”
Read entire article and see video here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-who-decried-obamacare-secrecy-now-writing-legislation-in-secret/2017/06/21/05ff180c-55f2-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.f5e7a6033781