LINDSEY GRAHAM ON OBAMACARE REPEAL: I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING [View all]

[kpete]

Now that it has fizzled out, the lead author of the measure, known as the Graham-Cassidy bill, has an admission to make: He had no clue what he was doing.

“It’s been the most amazing journey of my life. I’ve taken the eye off the ball on terrorism, I’m just amazed the whole planet hasn’t crumbled because I wasn’t on it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of the weeks he’s spent leading the health care repeal effort.

Toward the end of the senator’s bid to rewrite the health care system, as the mirage of the bill’s momentum began to be exposed, the typically charming and witty Graham began to turn acidic in the halls of the Senate, denouncing colleagues in both parties who were objecting to his legislation. “I’m speaking English, right?” he snapped at one reporter.

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A reporter pointed out that such ignorance at this late stage is itself hard to understand. “You’ve been working to overhaul this for seven years. Why is this so hard?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been doing it for about a month. I thought everybody else knew what the hell they were talking about, but apparently not,” Graham clarified, adding he had assumed “these really smart people will figure it out.”

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When Graham realized the people he thought understood health care were actually clueless, he figured he and a former senator who is perhaps best known for his name becoming a word to describe the byproduct of a sex act might as well take a crack at it.

“So, this idea came about from a conversation at a barber shop,” Graham said. “Rick Santorum — I was getting my hair cut and he says, you know, you’ve got an opt-out bill — opt out of Obamacare if you don’t like it, take the money and do state-controlled systems. Why don’t you do what we did with welfare reform in ‘96, which is basically take the same amount of money and block grant it?”


the rest:
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/27/lindsey-graham-on-obamacare-repeal-i-had-no-idea-what-i-was-doing/