Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.
At The Bulwark, Jonathan Cohn notes the lack of deliberation about the budget reconciliation bill:
Consider where this process was just one week ago, with no legislative language and no commitment to specific proposals. The only indications of what GOP leaders had in mind were broad statements they made in speeches and other appearances, along with ambiguous leaks to the press.
When they released an actual bill last Sunday evening, they announced at the same time that the Energy and Commerce Committee would take it up on Tuesday—not even two days later, and so quickly that the Congressional Budget Office wouldn’t have time to produce a full, detailed cost estimate. Then came the hearings themselves: an uninterrupted, 26-hour run through deliberations (the “markup” of the legislation) that ended with a party-line vote to approve the bill and send it to the Budget Committee, where it now sits.
In all, lawmakers had less than 72 hours to digest, debate, and vote on deep Medicaid cuts that—according to CBO’s preliminary, partial estimate—will cause more than 7 million Americans to lose health insurance and millions more to face higher medical costs.1
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But the longer the debate goes on, the more indefensible those claims look. Every passing day gives analysts more time to publish damning information, like these analyses showing coverage losses by state and congressional district. And the more this information gets out, the easier it is for organizations and activists to press their case.
Something along these lines happened in 2017, when Republicans were trying to pass legislation that would repeal the Affordable Care Act. Every time a new projection showed big coverage losses, every time a major organization announced it opposed legislation, every time activists showed up at a congressional town hall, passing repeal became more difficult politically—until, finally, the effort failed.
As it happens, the GOP leaders from that time tried to do what the current GOP leadership is doing now: ram legislation through before the opposition could stop it. And they were doing so even after having, for years, insisted Democrats somehow hadn’t given the original Affordable Care Act enough time for debate
In April, Trump told House Republicans: "Close your eyes and get there."
