Senate adds repeal of Obamacare mandate to tax reform bill

  It now appears as if the Senate is prepared to add a repeal of the Obamacare mandate to the tax reform bill now being debated. Here is more:

The proposed Republican tax reform bill will include repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate requiring most Americans to have some form of health insurance or pay a tax penalty, GOP leaders said Tuesday.

The decision means that Republicans, yet again in 2017, will attempt to gut a key element of the Affordable Care Act.

So far, such efforts have failed because not enough Republican senators have backed the idea of repealing the mandate, which would lead to an estimated 13 million more people lacking health insurance.

 

“We’re optimistic that inserting individual mandate repeal would be helpful,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. on Tuesday afternoon after a lunch meeting with the Republican conference.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said, “I’m pleased the Senate Finance Committee has accepted my proposal to repeal the Obamacare individual mandate in the tax legislation.”

“Repealing the mandate pays for more tax cuts for working families and protects them from being fined by the IRS for not being able to afford insurance that Obamacare made unaffordable in the first place,” Cotton said. “I urge the House to include the mandate repeal in their tax legislation.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Tex., said, “We’re going to repeal the tax on poor Americans.”

  Normally I am opposed to adding amendments to legislation which are not related to the original legislation but the mandate has been ruled a tax by the Supreme Court and therefor this is an appropriate place to try this repeal.

  This will draw the ire of the Democrats but more than likely no Democrats were going to support the tax reform bill anyway. The Republicans were hoping to sway a couple of vulnerable Democrats into voting for the legislation just in case there were any Republican defectors but this most likely will end that possibility.

  So the question becomes, will this sway the usual Republican suspects who might defect from voting for the legislation to vote for it, thereby eliminating the possible need of any Democratic support, or will they continue to break their campaign promises simply because they do not want to hand Donald Trump a victory?

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium