Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced he would not support Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other conservative senator's in a bid to prevent Democrats from restoring Obamacare funding in the Senate. Following the House of Representatives passage of a continuing resolution that funds the entire budget accept Obamacare last week, Senate Democrats intend to rewrite it to restore funds needed to keep the Affordable Care Act in existence.
“Hey, how much do you love Mitch McConnell,” Glenn asked on radio this morning. “Seriously, piece of garbage these guys are. They're telling their own people, ‘Don't worry about it.’ They're getting the exceptions! I mean it is a monarchy that we are running here. We've got the people who are in the Royal Court in Congress – everybody else, you know, gets to play by the king's rules. But we have to be on the other side of the gates. I don't even understand it.”
In the three years since the President’s signature healthcare legislation was passed, we have seen Republicans and Democrats come out against the bill.
“And not even the Democrats like this bill. They know it's a train wreck. They know it's not ready for prime time. They know it's not ready for the American people,” Pat said. “And they won't do anything about it. What they should do if they're insistent on making this bill happen and stick and stay in perpetuity is they should delay the whole thing until they get it all fixed. They won't do it.”
Glenn explained that Democrats are fearful that if they delay the implementation of the law any longer, it will never actually come to fruition. Obamacare has become a last resort of sorts, but the true transformative progressives , who recognize the bill’s flaws, also recognize the opportunity to crush the private insurance market.
“But they know if they delay it, it won't come back. This was their best thing. So they would rather have the train wreck than have that fold and then try to fix it from scratch,” Glenn said. “If I'm a progressive and I've waited for this moment the whole time – I'm a transformative progressive. What I say is, ‘You put this in and it's going to destroy the private industry.’ So there won't be any private insurance left. There won't be any private industry. This thing is going to be a train wreck. Yes, it is. But if you back off, look how hard it was to get this. If you don’t get this out, you'll never get another shot at it.”
Furthermore, Glenn looked at the war-gaming aspect of this whole ordeal. Regardless of what happens to Obamacare, the progressives will be able to blame the resulting nightmare on Republicans.
“Can I tell you something? I've been trying to war‑game this as a transformative progressive again, and I actually am on the other side of it,” Glenn explained. “I actually would make the case, ‘Guys, let the Republicans take the blame because we've already done so much damage to healthcare in this country. And this now hanging out there in limbo and us not having anything is going to destroy American healthcare anyway. So we'll always be able to blame that on the Republicans because the Republicans never let us do this.’”
“I think you're right,” Stu agreed. “If they were to, you know, get rid of this program at this point, there's a good chance it would help the country but it would not help Republicans. Because whatever problems happen in our healthcare system anyway would just be blamed on them. We haven't seen worse yet. You know what I mean? People wouldn't be able to compare it to what this President's healthcare will be.”
While Stu is correct that Republicans are in a ‘fail if you do, fail if you don’t’ situation with the funding of Obamacare, Glenn truly believes this is the last chance to stop the law.
“The problem is once you install this, you will never undo it,” Glenn said.
“And that's the thing. They will get [Obamacare] in like this and what will their argument be? As it is with schools and everything else,” Stu asked. “Well, we don't have enough money for the things we said we were going to do. We just need more money. And they will make it larger and larger until what you said happens: It's a single‑payer program. And then they will say they need more money for that. That's the only reason that's not working. That's what they do with everything. When they have something that fails, it usually means they get a bigger win because when their programs fail, they just say they need more money to finally correct it. And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.”
“And the problem is that we didn't rout out the progressive disease early enough in the Republican Party… Remember when I went to CPAC and I gave that speech? And I said it is a Republican disease just as much as it is the Democrats. And I really took on John McCain? Do you remember how much trouble that caused,” Glenn asked. “If we would have routed it out then and really buckled down and really been able to convince enough Republicans, we might not be in this situation now. But we couldn't. We did our best. You did your best. Now it's in God's hands. George Washington was right: The event is in the hands of God. You've just got to do your best, and the event is in the hands of God.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP
