Ulaven_Demorte
Non-Prophet Organization
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Congressional Republicans took a novel approach to announcing their Obamacare alternative this week: out with the old and… well, back in with the old.
On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee put out a news release announcing “Burr, Hatch, Upton Unveil Obamacare Replacement Plan.” The three men, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (Utah), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) and Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), are well-regarded legislators, and the press went along with this “news.”
...
Robert Pear of The New York Times reported that the plan was “drafted with encouragement from Republican leaders,” “devised” by Hatch, Burr and Upton, and included a “potentially explosive proposal.” Pear reported that “Republicans said the need for such an alternative had become more urgent.”
But Caroline Behringer, the eagle-eyed press secretary for Democrats on the House Ways & Means committee, was suspicious that this “urgent” and “explosive” new proposal had just been “devised.” So she did some sleuthing and discovered that the Republicans had lifted the thing — right down to quotes in the news release — from the rollout of the same proposal a year earlier.
This “new” plan in fact had something old, something borrowed and something blue: a two-page explainer borrowing virtually the same 700 words from the 2014 version and even set in the same robin’s-egg blue font. The only thing that appeared to be new was the name of Upton, substituted for that of Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who “unveiled” the plan with Hatch and Burr in 2014 but has since retired.
This exercise in cut-and-paste legislation would seem to suggest that Republicans are not serious about their “new” proposal. Like last time, the plan hasn’t been drafted in legislative language, so it can’t be reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office to see how much it would cost and how many would lose insurance.
Entire article HERE.
On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee put out a news release announcing “Burr, Hatch, Upton Unveil Obamacare Replacement Plan.” The three men, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (Utah), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) and Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), are well-regarded legislators, and the press went along with this “news.”
...
Robert Pear of The New York Times reported that the plan was “drafted with encouragement from Republican leaders,” “devised” by Hatch, Burr and Upton, and included a “potentially explosive proposal.” Pear reported that “Republicans said the need for such an alternative had become more urgent.”
But Caroline Behringer, the eagle-eyed press secretary for Democrats on the House Ways & Means committee, was suspicious that this “urgent” and “explosive” new proposal had just been “devised.” So she did some sleuthing and discovered that the Republicans had lifted the thing — right down to quotes in the news release — from the rollout of the same proposal a year earlier.
This “new” plan in fact had something old, something borrowed and something blue: a two-page explainer borrowing virtually the same 700 words from the 2014 version and even set in the same robin’s-egg blue font. The only thing that appeared to be new was the name of Upton, substituted for that of Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who “unveiled” the plan with Hatch and Burr in 2014 but has since retired.
This exercise in cut-and-paste legislation would seem to suggest that Republicans are not serious about their “new” proposal. Like last time, the plan hasn’t been drafted in legislative language, so it can’t be reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office to see how much it would cost and how many would lose insurance.
Entire article HERE.
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