GOP sticks two-pronged fork in #ACA: defund Medicare, cut taxes leaving no $$ for replacement

[Rollo]

3. Let's hope...

Let's hope that at least some of the R's who voted for last winter's reconciliation budget bill that would have defunded the ACA and Medicare did so in full realization that Obama would veto it, and are unlikely to risk voting the same this time around.

Defunding the ACA is bad enough, but stiffing millions of seniors on Medicare would be quite another. Despite the rise of the alt-right and Trumpism, Medicare and Social Security are still the twin third rails of American politics. Mess with either at your own risk.

And it's difficult to imagine a replacement for the ACA that would renounce what essentially was a conservative Republican plan all along, as proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the 1990's and signed into state law by Romney in the aughts. Even the much maligned mandatory insurance provision was a conservative idea, and without which any proposal short of single payer would surely fail.

The ACA does need tweaking, but the R's do not seem inclined to do anything that constructive. If they add ruining Medicare for millions, they will sealing their own defeats in the subsequent congressional election cycle, never mind who wins the White House.