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Today is failure theater in the Senate.
Democrats’ three-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies isn’t going anywhere and neither is the Republican plan for health savings accounts. But could there be a second act?
“I guess we have to demonstrate our failures first before we can apply our successes,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, one of the more optimistic voices.
There’s a palpable distrust underlying the entire exercise: Democrats think Republicans are ideologically inclined against propping up Obamacare and Republicans think Democrats want a campaign issue more than a solution.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., called the HSA plan “the most partisan sh*t you’ve ever seen.” And Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who helped write the bill, is skeptical of Democrats. “We need to see if they want to deal. I don’t know if they want to.”
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Republicans have released a flurry of proposals in the past few weeks, and even one or two that Democrats might take a hard look at in the coming days, like the two-year extension of the ACA subsidies with income caps from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. It might be too late for a solution by Jan. 1, however, with the Senate scheduled to leave town at the end of next week.
“It would have been in the ballpark, but it sounds like it’s more of them doing a last-minute effort without being able to bring enough votes from the Republican side to make it workable,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., of the Collins-Moreno bill. “The Republicans do not want a solution to this.”
But Murkowski said there could still be a light at the end of the tunnel, citing overlapping ideas in the various plans floating through Congress. She said lawmakers need to just take pieces of each and then “cobble [them] together into one package that makes sense.”
Today will look like a partisan mess to most people. And some senators are worried that the failed vote will be the end of the road. But it’s possible the consequences of doing nothing are so great that there’s another bipartisan stab at this.
“There sometimes have to be votes on Democratic and Republican proposals. And if each fails, then that opens the door to other discussions,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.