General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I found this on reddit about the repeal vote. [View all]tblue37
(68,445 posts)Oct. 1, but unless it is revenue neutral, they won't be able to use reconciliation, so they would need 60 votes. However, if it is neutral (achieved through spending cuts), then they can do it through reconciliation.
If they had succeeded in getting rid of the significant taxes and expenses in the ACA, then they would have had hundreds of billions of dollars as a cushion when they went to cut taxes (the House bill, for example, cut $864 billion from Medicaid over a decade).
But if the tax "reform" bill isn't revenue neutral over 10 years, then the tax cuts would automatically expire in 10 years, the way the Bush tax cuts did under Obama. That is something the GOP wants to avoid. They want the tax cuts to be permanent.
Obviously they could do a tax bill with cuts that would last for just 10 years, and my guess is that ultimately that is what they will do, since they can probably get 51 R votes for that.