Senator John Thune says passing a multi-year Highway Bill is critical. But highway funding isn’t so important than Senator Thune won’t stop to grandstand on the Affordable Care Act. Yesterday he and his little buddy Senator Mike Rounds voted for an amendment that would have added ACA repeal to the Highway Bill.
Repealing ACA fills no pothole. It would increase the deficit, meaning less money for roads and other priorities.
The amendment in question failed 49–43. It would have repealed both the Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act passed one week after the ACA in 2010 to amend the health care law. So not only did John Thune and Mike Rounds vote to take away the guarantee that your insurer won’t yank your insurance when you get sick or hurt, but they also voted to do away with student loan reform that set a lower cap on loan payments, expanded loan forgiveness for good-faith borrowers who make timely payments, increased federal aid to schools serving poor and minority students, and increased Pell grants.
In other words, Senator Thune and Senator Rounds want Americans to have more student debt and less health insurance.
Update 09:05 CDT: The Senate rejected Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) effort to add Planned Parenthood defunding to the Highway Bill, with the Senate chair declaring Lee’s amendment out of order and not germane to the Highway Bill. Parliamentarians, help me understand how repealing the Affordable Care Act and student loan reform is any more german to the Highway Bill than taking health services away from women?
H.R. 22 was originally a bill designed to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act by exempting veterans and serving military from being required to secure health insurance coverage under the ACA.
The Senate added the amendment to make it the “vehicle” for the highway bill.
For more, see the US Congress web site at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/22?q={%22search%22%3A[%22\%22hr22\%22%22]}
How many of you Sodak capital “C” Conservatives were gullible enough to send money to Rounds and Noem when they guaranteed that Obamacare would be repealed? Doesn’t this vote make it all feel better?
ALEC just paid Rounds and Tehran John’s duty fees for the month with this vote. The boys will have a big ole smile on their mugs while they count their moolah. Good to be the king.
These boys are not interested in ending the ACA any more than they are interested in ending abortions. All smoke and mirrors for the gullible with the moolah.
Republicans are playing such mean and counter-productive games with the highway bill. It has one purpose, to provide necessary funds for the nation’s transportation needs. It’s all incredibly frustrating.
So will immigration man Rounds be the the new photo op.
Yesterday Rounds said there will not be a increase of the Federal gas tax. Today Daugaard said there should be an increase in the federal gas tax. Hmmm
Isn’t Thune precious? Right after trying to add toxic and unrelated amendments to the highway bill as veto bait, Thune has the gall to give a speech saying that Americans need a long-term highway funding solution. So we need it, but let’s try to kill it. Someone remind me what Thune is good for besides playing political games with important topics.
I don’t think we need any increase in the federal gas tax. What we need is for the federal government to scale back the scope of its road funding/work to only interstates, federal highways and bridges. Leave all of the state, county, city and township roads to those levels of government, and let those levels of government officials decide priorities and how to pay for them. Blue donor states probably won’t mind that a bit. Red welfare states will have to start taxing at an unsubsidized level that sustains their own needs and wants.
…Paul also introduced a separate legislation, S. 3359, which he described as “A bill to end the practice of including more than one subject in a single bill by requiring that each bill enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject.”…