The Congressional Budget Office delivered some very bad news to Senate Republicans Monday afternoon
And it’s those more centrist Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — that McConnell needs if he wants to pass the legislation. The CBO score suggests that, in terms of the raw number of uninsured, the Senate bill is barely an improvement on the House one — which many of these centrist Republicans made clear they could not be for.
Which brings me to a new feature I am going to do every day between now and whenever we get a Senate vote on the health care bill: An emoji-based assessment of the chances of the health care legislation passing.
There are three options: 1) Smiley face (good chance of passage) 2) Meh face (50-50-ish chance) and 3) Sad face (less than 50% chance) . Every day I’ll write a post with an emoji update of the bill’s chances.
Here’s the first one!
That’s right. It’s sad-faced emoji today for Senate Republicans. Any centrist Republican looking for a reason to be against this bill just got a very good one from the CBO. And more problematic is that the deficit-reduction numbers, which far outstrip the House version, are most appealing to a group of senators who are, broadly speaking, already on board with the measure.
McConnell always had to thread a needle on this bill. The CBO just made the eye of that needle even smaller.
