House Speaker Paul Ryan is getting desperate as his window for passing Zombie Trumpcare shrinks. He's losing Republicans—important Republicans—every day. Meanwhile, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a well-timed objection to a vote going forward: the lack of a Congressional Budget Office Score.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has told Pelosi's office a score of the GOP's repeal-and-replace plan is not coming this week, despite hopes from the White House that it could happen this week.
"Republicans are clearly terrified of their Members and the American people seeing the full consequences of their plan to gut critical protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions," Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday.
"Now, House Republicans are hoping to bring the latest version of Trumpcare to the Floor before the CBO can reveal its catastrophic impact on millions of American families," she added.
"The American people have a right to know the full consequences of Trumpcare before their representatives vote on it."
Ryan doesn't want a score—he wants his members to vote in blind faith in his lies that this new iteration of the bill won't leave even more than the original 24 million uninsured, and that it won't leave people with pre-existing conditions stranded again. When the CBO score does come down, the costs are likely to be higher both in terms of spending (for the dubious "high-risk pools") and in the number of people who will lose insurance. Ryan doesn't want those numbers to come out before the vote, numbers that his members have every right to see before they follow him down a sinkhole.
Pelosi doesn't have the power to stop a vote from moving to the floor, but she does have the power—and the microphone—to remind Republicans that this is a bad way to do the people's business. It also gives those Republican "moderates" a great reason for opposing this—fiscal responsibility, transparency, whatever they need to justify saving their own skins on this one.
This is about to break. Ryan is about to lose. Help. Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121, and demand they vote NO on a renewed Trumpcare that is worse than the one before. Remind them they work for you.