Senate Republicans today announced that they would not hold a vote this week on their latest bill to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after it became clear yesterday that it was a vote they couldn’t win.
The announcement amounted to an obituary for the bill sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), the fourth Republican repeal-and-replace bill in the Senate to go nowhere.
Republicans, who control 52 seats in the Senate, wanted a vote before week’s end to take advantage of a parliamentary procedure that would have made the Graham-Cassidy bill impossible to filibuster, but only through September 30. Accordingly, the bill would need only 50 votes for passage, with Vice President Mike Pence in the backup role as a tiebreaker. After September 30, however, unified Democrats would be able to filibuster any repeal-and-replace bill because Republicans would not be able to muster 60 votes to end it.
However, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) came out against the bill yesterday, joining Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as “no” votes that would cause bill supporters to fall short of the 50-vote mark.
Follow Robert Lowes on Twitter @LowesRobert
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