June 04, 2017 08:14 PM UTC

Gardner's "Trumpcare Lite" Teeters On Edge of Failure

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• by: Colorado Pols

Politico reporting–while Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado was glad-handing with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte last week, the wheels appear to be coming off the U.S. Senate’s rewrite of the U.S. House’s dead-on-arrival American Health Care Act. You might remember this bill as one of Republican Party’s most cherished goals for the last six years:

Senate Republicans remain publicly pessimistic about their prospects of repealing and replacing Obamacare this year with several raising concerns this week about the party’s central campaign promise even as one of their leaders vowed to pass such a bill this summer.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) made the most direct prediction on Thursday, telling a news station in his home state that “I don’t see a comprehensive health care plan this year.” [Pols emphasis] Earlier in the week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested to home-state reporters that lawmakers might shift to a shorter-term plan that would keep insurance markets working, on the heels of negative comments from Iowa GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst.

The Senate is drafting its own legislation after the House narrowly passed its proposal to repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 health care reform law. But the House bill is widely regarded as too conservative to pass the Senate, making this week’s downbeat comments from Republicans both a realistic acknowledgment of their political challenges and a means to lower expectations ahead of their return to Washington.

Cory Gardner is one of the 13 Republican Senators allegedly working on a bill to replace the House’s health care bill, which despite the celebration from House Republicans after its passage had precisely zero chance of ever becoming law. Press in recent weeks has made much of the “test” Gardner faces in trying to bridge the divide between conservatives determined to make sweeping changes regardless of the harm it could do to beneficiaries of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and, well, every responsible voice in health care policy in the country.

The last we heard from Gardner, he was speaking confidently about the work being done on the Senate’s bill, and rhetorically crapping on Obamacare to justify what is increasingly an effort the public wishes would just stop. With a range of viable options to address the Affordable Care Act’s frozen-in-time imperfections and Democrats standing by to join any moderate coalition that emerges to save and not dismantle Obamacare, there’s just no need to do the harm that the conservative House will demand in order to pass anything Senate Republicans send to them.

If Gardner decides to suck it up and admit all this, he could help put an end to the madness. Like so many Republicans, Gardner is heavily invested in the low-information propaganda campaign against the ACA, so we’re talking about a big lift–but we can’t completely rule out the possibility of Gardner seeing the writing on the wall and jumping ship.

Or not, in which case Gardner’s growing unpopularity at home in Colorado is likely to worsen.