May recess is not going well for House Republicans, at least not well for those few who were courageous enough to actually face their constituents in public meetings. They weren't done any favors by their president with his Tuesday Night Massacre firing of FBI Director James Comey, but they brought it mostly on themselves. It's their vote for what is undoubtedly the worst piece of legislation passed out of the House in memory: Trumpcare. They're being asked very tough questions at home, and they're having a helluva time staying on message when they're looking into the faces of their constituents, the people they're taking health care away from.
In interviews and at town halls packed with pro-Obamacare protesters, Republicans have struggled to explain the plan they just approved. Lawmakers are telling audiences conflicting things about how the bill would affect consumers. Others slammed a process they actively participated in or admitted they hadn’t read the entire bill before voting on it — even though GOP leaders spent months hawking a website called ReadTheBill.gop.
Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) told frustrated constituents on Monday that "nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care" […]
At one town hall this week, Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) agreed with a constituent who described the bill’s approval as "rushed." He said he backed the measure because it was preferable to Obamacare, but he ripped the process that House leaders employed to push the bill through — without hearings and lacking updated fiscal analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. [...]
Rep. Jeff Denham of California, one of 23 Republicans representing a district won by Hillary Clinton last year, told constituents that the legislation, which was approved without a single Democratic vote, passed after a "bipartisan" process. In North Dakota, Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer said the bill’s shortcomings were the result of arcane Senate budget rules that prohibited an up-or-down vote on repealing Obamacare altogether.
And in TV interviews the day the AHCA passed the House, Reps. Tom Garrett (R-Va.) and Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) said they didn't believe any of their colleagues had read the entire text before passing the bill.
Help us hold them responsible by helping future Democratic challengers with your $1.
Speaker Paul Ryan and team decided not to hand out talking points in preparation for recess town meetings, instead deciding to have a question-and-answer session and telling them to go to the ReadTheBill website. But members who weren't going to read the bill before they voted on it sure as hell weren't going to read it afterward. Like they're going to do homework after the fact. Instead, they're trying to bluff their way through with excuse-making and the always handy "the Senate will fix it."
That's not working in these these town meetings, and it's not going to work in 2018. They can't pass off their shoddy work on anyone else.