After seeing John Boehner descend into the pits of purity hell over his failure to get an Obamacare repeal bill on Obama's desk, Mitch McConnell is not about to find himself on the same trajectory.
Brace yourself, because they have to pass a budget bill by December 11th, and Obamacare will be served up as the first course.
Senate Republicans will meet Monday evening to discuss plans to pass an ObamaCare repeal package later this week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is convening the meeting to walk through the special budgetary process known as reconciliation, which will allow Republicans to pass the package with a simple-majority vote.
Controversial legislation usually must overcome a 60-vote threshold.
But McConnell may not even have 51 votes because several GOP moderates don’t like an added provision defunding Planned Parenthood — and several conservatives think the core bill doesn’t go far enough to repeal ObamaCare.“We’re regrouping with the expectation that we're moving this week on it,” said a Senate GOP aide, who described the meeting as “a final get-together to find out where we are so we can move with ObamaCare repeal.”
If all goes well at the special meeting, scheduled after a 5:30 p.m. vote, the Senate is likely to vote Wednesday on a motion to proceed to the package.
That vote would be followed by 20 hours of debate and then a succession of votes on amendments and final passage — a so-called vote-a-rama — on Thursday.
You can expect me to be quite vocal about this as it proceeds, because our lives truly do depend on the Affordable Care Act remaining intact.
