Things Are Worse Than I Thought

I’m writing this on Tuesday night, and the series of events that went on before the House passed the Elon Musk Gets Another Tax Cut and Granny is in a Snowbank Act, a.k.a., the budget, are yet another indicator that the rules of politics are being bent beyond recognition.

At the onset of voting, it was clear that Pastor Mike didn’t have the votes. In fact, the House recessed and was going home for the night. Aaron Fritschner, who works for Rep Don Beyer (D-VA-8) posted these two skeets on BlueSky:

Hakeem Jeffries had worked his caucus to get everyone who he could there. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO-7), three weeks postpartum, flew in from Colorado and brought her baby to the floor. Kevin Mullin (D-CA-15), recovering from three surgeries, a blood clot, and an infection, also flew in and made it for the vote. The only Democrat who didn’t make the vote was Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-3) who is being treated for lung cancer. The final vote was 217-214, with the only Thomas Massie (R-KY-4) voting Nay. Massie has made it his life’s mission to vote against everything after his wife died.

Between the time that members were sent home and were called back, something happened that made three members who had committed to vote against to change their votes. They were Tim Burchett (R-TN-2), Warren Davidson (R-OH-8) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN-5). TPM has a more detail on how the vote went down.

This vote is reminiscent of the vote for Johnson for Speaker, where the vote was held open for an hour while arms were twisted off the floor. At that time, the story that went around was that members were taken into antechambers of the House floor and talked with Trump.

I stand by the post I wrote earlier today, saying that this vote is political suicide for any Republican in a tight district that receives a lot of Medicaid money. That said, how do you get people to vote against their political interests? You threaten them with something. What that thing is will probably come out soon. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. This vote shows that our crisis is deepening. Conventional wisdom would make one think that Johnson would be short at least a handful of votes. And, at the start of this vote, he probably was. But the call went out, threats were made, and Reps got in line.

What this means to me is that the same thing will probably happen in the Senate: the skids are greased. This bill is going to kill people. It is political and policy poison. Maximum delay needs to be applied by Democrats in the Senate. More on that in future posts. Until then, call your Senators and tell them that this bill is terrible.