EDITORIAL: If the Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body, it should act like it

July 28--Disaster. Fraud. Terrible. Half-assed. Horrible. A pig in a poke.

Those are all the disparaging ways Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, described the so-called "skinny" repeal of Obamacare that the Senate rushed to a vote in the wee hours of Friday morning in Washington, D.C. And Graham voted for it.

What a farce. Americans can't agree on much these days, but can we all agree the Senate isn't acting like the world's greatest deliberative body?

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has repeatedly called on Congress to work to fix the failings of Obamacare that have left tens of thousands of people in dozens of U.S. counties with no insurers in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces -- and millions of people in hundreds of counties with only one insurer available to them. One-third of all U.S. counties have just one insurer on health care exchanges, often offering policies with the double whammy of high premiums and high deductibles. It's why we met Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky's supposed call for a bipartisan solution three weeks ago with such optimism.

Then the Senate tried three times to repeal Obamacare in perilous ways, culminating with a vote on the "skinny" bill that would have eliminated mandates that individuals buy insurance and that companies provide it, boosted premiums and left 16 million more Americans uninsured over a decade.

Republicans sought to end Obamacare much the same way Democrats handled a 2009 health care vote of their own -- rushing, behind closed doors, with little debate, at midnight. McConnell himself blasted that early morning vote then, saying, "If the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn't be forcing this vote in the dead of night."

This time though, in a stunning development, three Republicans -- Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and, most surprisingly, John McCain of Arizona -- sided with 48 Democrats to reject the half-baked GOP health care plan that supporters said could be fleshed out in later meetings with the House of Representatives. Only 49 senators supported it as 51 opposed it with Vice President Mike Pence waiting to break a tie vote.

Days earlier, McCain had returned to the halls of Congress following his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer and decried his colleagues' crafting of a proposal "behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them it's better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition."

So what now? McCain's approach sure sounded smart Tuesday when he railed against the process.

"We've been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle," he said. "That's an approach that's been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires."

Democrats and Republicans must work together now to repair Obamacare, and President Donald Trump should foster such collaboration instead of letting it "implode," as he keeps saying he will. Yet our deal-making president instead said Friday the Senate should change its rules to do business with 51 votes instead of 60. Here's hoping McCain's message resonates far more than Trump's in the Senate.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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