Projection 101
by digby
Remember, whatever they accuse the other side of doing, it’s what conservatives themselves do:
Eight years ago, Senator Mitch McConnell, who is now leading the repeal effort in the Senate, complained that the Affordable Care Act was “being written behind closed doors, without input from anyone.”
But so far, Republican lawmakers have had just nine days of public activity on the repeal bill, compared with 43 for the Affordable Care Act during the same six-month period.
The House committees held four hearings and the Senate committees one related to health care changes, all before a bill was drafted. Neither the House Republicans nor their Senate counterparts held a hearing on their versions of the bill before unveiling the legislation.
“At the hearings, there are experts testifying who bring different points of view,” said Allison Hoffman, a health care policy expert and law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “You see problems that wouldn’t come up otherwise, problems that when you’re 13 men behind closed doors you may not surface on your own.”
Amid criticism even from his own party, Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, created a 13-member working group consisting entirely of men to lead the health care overhaul. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a member, said even he had not seen a draft of the bill two days before its release.
While lawmakers often draft major legislation in private, they usually refine, debate and amend it in open committee sessions.
This year, the two House committees involved in drafting legislation each held one markup session — the closest thing to a public writing and approval of a bill — with each lasting a day. In 2009, the Senate health committee spent a total of 13 days marking up the bill that became the Affordable Care Act, seven of them during Congress’s first six months.
Republican lawmakers have spent just two days debating policies related to their bill on the House floor. The Senate, so far, has spent none, and is planning to vote on the bill as soon as the leaders have enough votes to pass it. The Affordable Care Act was debated on the House and Senate floors for 31 days before the bill passed.
And, by the way, they get away with this because they have no shame and don’t care about their reputations. And neither do their voters. They just want to “win” by any means necessary.
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