Remember "skinny repeal?" As a last-ditch effort to "repeal Obamacare," Mitch McConnell proposed the following totally batshit crazy idea-- repeal the individual mandate alone, then go to House-Senate conference and hope that the House-Senate conference committee would come up with a decent bill because everyone knew that just repealing the individual mandate alone would be totally batshit fucking crazy. Why? Take away the mandate requiring healthy people to get insurance and you make the pool of customers getting insurance sicker and more expensive to cover, and insurance is a low-margin business. McConnell had to assure everyone in the Senate that it would never actually pass-- the whole point was just to get to conference where the real bill would be written. But, Paul Ryan said he might just pass "skinny repeal," hand the thing over to Trump for a signature, and send the individual markets into a death spiral because the people buying insurance in the individual markets would be the sicker people.
As batshit crazy as "skinny repeal" was, as soon as McConnell proposed it, I posted this, back in July. Every other version of Republicans' "repeal-and-replace" plans was unlikely to pass, for a variety of reasons. Skinny repeal? I thought that one could pass. And it nearly did.
The only reason it didn't? John McCain's surprise last-minute decision to vote no. Collins and Murkowski were no votes all along, for everything, but McConnell was counting on that, and ignoring them. He could lose two votes, and he just wrote them off. McCain? McConnell assumed he had McCain, and so did everyone else. When McCain voted no on skinny repeal, casting the 51st no vote, it was shocking. To just about everyone. That was it. That was how close the GOP came to passing McConnell's batshit crazy "skinny repeal" scheme.
It's back. The Senate GOP is including it in their tax bill. Nothing else about healthcare-- just a repeal of the individual mandate. That's "skinny repeal," and it is just as completely batshit fucking crazy as doing it in one separate bill. But nobody is opposing it anymore! Even Collins, who voted no on skinny repeal, is only getting squeamish about it because she says it might make things "controversial!" (Remind me again why we are supposed to put "moderates" up on a pedestal?)
This is Legislation 101. If you have a provision that can't pass on its own, you attach it to a bill that can pass, and force opponents of the provision who support the overall bill to make a choice: sink the whole bill, which they support, or accept the provision they don't like. It looks like Collins is leaning towards accepting "skinny repeal." If she's on-board, so's Murkowski. McCain? Probably him too. Skinny repeal passes.
Once skinny repeal is written into the bill, there are two ways skinny repeal fails-- an amendment passes to strip the provision from the bill, or the whole bill fails.
Could an amendment pass? You might think so. If Collins, Murkowski and McCain voted no on skinny repeal, then if they were consistent, they'd vote for an amendment to strip "skinny repeal" from the bill (presumably introduced by a Democrat), and McConnell has limited capacity to block floor amendments, unlike in the House. Would they actually do so? It doesn't sound like it. Why not? Um... I'm not sure I have an answer, except that they aren't consistent. People often aren't. This should, though, serve as a warning that the kinds of spatial models with which I deal have a major problem because an amendment to strip skinny repeal from the tax bill and a floor vote on skinny repeal would be the same damned thing, and anyone voting differently is... not being consistent!
Then, there's the possibility that the GOP could just fail. They haven't accomplished anything so far, legislatively! Will they fail again? I doubt it. Right now, McConnell can lose two votes. Rand Paul is doing his dramatic posturing thing, but he won't be the guy to kill a tax cut. Bob Corker is saying he won't increase the deficit, but he's probably full of shit. At the end of the day, he's a conservative, and that means he loves him some tax cuts. McCain can be ornery, but you can never count on him to maintain his spine. Flake might flake. Collins and Murkowski are squishy. They voiced real opposition on healthcare from the beginning, and haven't done anything comparable on taxes so far, and if Collins isn't taking a stand on the reintroduction of skinny repeal now, she probably won't later. She's been cowed. At the end of the day, she's a Republican, and if you offer her a tax cut, she'll take it. Ditto, Murkowski.
Could any one of these people vote no? Sure. Two? Maybe. Three? Unlikely.
The complication, of course, is that Alabama Senate race. Roy Moore could lose to Doug Jones. But, if that happens, McConnell schedules an immediate vote so that he locks in Luther Strange's vote before having to seat Jones, and he's still operating with a 52-member caucus rather than a 51-member caucus.
Skinny repeal is back. When McConnell introduced it, I had a hard time seeing how it failed (McCain's move really was a shock to everyone). Now, I have a really hard time seeing how it fails. It is absolutely batshit fucking crazy, and totally irresponsible. Completely nuts. PredictIt has an individual mandate repeal by the end of 2017 trading at $0.28 as of this morning. Factoring in the likelihood of the tax bill being pushed into 2018, sure. Why not? But, I'd put the overall chances over 50%. How high? Eh... noticeably over 50%. Watch me be weaselly.