Senate to Hold Phony Graham-Cassidy Hearings So That They Can Pretend to Deliberate
Senate to Hold Phony Graham-Cassidy Hearings So That They Can Pretend to Deliberate
By Ed Kilgore September 19, 2017
Everybody, but everybody, knows these hearings are about one thing and one thing only: providing John McCain, who is three-fourths of the way to giving his “amigo” Lindsey Graham his extremely critical vote for the bill, a fig leaf to cover his intended retreat from complaints that the Senate has abandoned “regular order” in considering this and indeed every other bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. A big part of “regular order” is hearings, so presto: the GOP is ordering one up.
That these hearings will be about as deliberative as a Trump tweet is obvious enough. But they will check a box. And holding fake hearings is in its own way an appropriate climax to the entire GOP health-care-policy charade that has been running all year, characterized as it has been by secrecy, misdirection, pure partisanship, and the systematic violation of Senate precedents. The only thing that would make the contempt of the congressional GOP for transparency any clearer would be to use the hearings to announce the rushed, absolutely minimal CBO “score” of Graham-Cassidy that won’t tell us the bill’s impact on the budget, health coverage, or insurance premiums.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/senate-to-hold-phony-graham-cassidy-hearings.html?utm_campaign=nym
