GOP Senators Call “Skinny” Repeal Bill a Fraud—But Say They Might Vote for It Anyway

Lions of the Senate.

Lindsey Graham

Tom Williams/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Update 10:15pm ET: The Senate just released text of the “skinny repeal” bill. 

Original post below.

In a highly unusual press conference Thursday afternoon, a group of four Republican senators called on House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to block a health care bill that the senators themselves might vote for.

After several different GOP proposals to dismantle Obamacare died in the Senate this week, it became clear that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) last-ditch option was a so-called “skinny bill.” While the contents of this bill are still secret, the legislation would apparently repeal Obamacare’s requirements that individuals have health insurance and that employers provide insurance to their workers, while leaving other pieces of Obamacare in place. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, repealing the individual mandate could increase the number of uninsured Americans by 15 million and raise insurance premiums by 20 percent.

Needless to say, the skinny bill is broadly unpopular, even among GOP lawmakers. So at Thursday’s press conference, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Bill Cassidy (La.) announced that they would each vote down the skinny bill unless the House promises that it won’t pass the measure as is. The GOP senators instead want assurances that the legislation will simply be used to advance the health care debate to a conference committee, in which Republicans appointed by the House and Senate leadership would hammer out a different bill altogether. (Conference committees are used to reconcile different versions of bills passed by the House and Senate; the House passed its own Obamacare repeal bill earlier this year.)

In other words, these four senators are saying that they are willing to vote for a bill they don’t support as long as congressional leaders promise it won’t actually become law.

Graham’s criticisms of the bill he might vote for were the most scathing. “The skinny bill as policy is a disaster,” he said. “The skinny bill as a replacement for Obamacare is a fraud.”


Graham demanded that Ryan guarantee that the skinny bill would only be used to kick off a conference committee. That contradicts Ryan’s actions so far. The House leadership set up rules that would allow the body to take up the bill immediately after it passes the Senate. On Thursday, Ryan’s spokesperson said that a conference committee between the House and Senate is “one option under consideration.”

Of course, even if Ryan promises to take the matter to a conference committee, there’s no guarantee that the process would produce a new bill that could pass both the House and the Senate. If the conference committee failed, there’d be nothing stopping the House from simply passing the Senate’s skinny bill into law. And in that scenario, Graham is quite right that it would be a disaster.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate