This is mostly a tag along to the last piece I wrote. Most of what's in here was originally in the last post as well, but that one was getting ungainly long so I decided to split them up in easier chunks.
There was an article yesterday about how wants Trump wants a complete and final healthcare from Congress by the August recess, which starts on July 31st and runs through September 4th. Keep in mind that it took two months of wrangling in the House just to get that version passed, and it's been almost another two months since that happened for the Senate to even present its version, and since it's not voting on it this week, won't even get a chance to edit or negotiate on the bill until they come back from the recess on July 12th. So Trump wants the Senate to rewrite and pass its version, and then conference out a final one with the House, and then pass the final product in seventeen days? For-fucking-get it, dude.
The urgency to get something done is going to become more apparent as the summer ends and fall comes in, though. I already mentioned Republican donors shutting down their funding in the last piece, but there's more at lay here than just the money. Given how much people hate the current healthcare bill and Republicans tax cuts for the rich in general, there's a decreasing window of time where Republicans can pass those initiatives and not have it bite them solidly in the ass. The further away you can pass something away from the next election day, the better. Just ask the Democrats how well passing the ACA in March 2010 helped their election outcomes eight months later. In case you forgot, it didn't.
So that's what is going to be driving the Republicans to try and grind a final bill out before the year's end so they can move on to tax reform. They are going to desperately want to pass something soon so that when next year comes the outrage generated by the bill will be too far back in the mist of time in the voting public's goldfish political memory. Of course, if the bill is so awful that it's consequences will drive them out anyway, but that isn't anything worth banking or hoping for, so just ignore anyone who tells you that will be a surefire way to success.
They also want to hurry because the longer the delays go on, the higher the risk that their base will desert them. The repeal of Obamacare has been the rallying policy cry for the Republicans for nearly ten years now, if they can't follow through with the one thing they explicitly promised to do, then their base just may not show up to defend them. Turn out in midterm elections is probably the most important factor, so even if just a small percentage of their base stays home, it could be enough for the rather fragile Republican majorities in both houses to either be lost outright or significantly reduced to be meaningless.
But there's going to be a major snarl in the timing of everything, and that snarl is going to be the rising of the debt ceiling. McConnell and Ryan's predecessor John Boehner turned the debt ceiling from a routine passing into a way to threaten budget initiatives and hamper the Obama presidency. Problem is, a lot of those guys are still around (it's how the Freedom Caucus came to be) and they are all true believers. The healthcare bill negotiations that ran through March-April showed that Paul Ryan doesn't have any kind of a stronger grip over his party or its internal dissidents than Boehner did, and I can guarantee that when the deadline starts creeping up, those same people are going to start demanding that the debt ceiling only be raised if its matched by corresponding spending cuts elsewhere.
Naturally, this is going to be a bit of a stir, and it's hard to imagine the Senate let alone Congress as a whole being able to stay focused on health care when they're having to maneuver around a possible shutdown initiated by the loons in their own party. The negotiations during Obama's term usually lasted about a month or two, and there's no evidence of things going any smoother with Trump's administration so it's reasonable to expect the same time line.
So, just to pull back a bit, we are currently at the end of June. Congress will be in recess from the end of this week to July 12th, where they'll be in session again for a little over two weeks when they take the full month of August off. The debt ceiling will hit at some point in the fall, which could swallow up September and possibly October as well. Then there's three weeks in November, out for Thanksgiving, and then another two or so weeks to adjourn Congress by December 15th.
Now, if I was a donor, or a Congressional leader, I would look at that time frame, look at what's left to do, reflect on how well things have gone so far, and in a quiet voice in the back of my mind, start panicking just a little bit.
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