Trump and Republicans want SCOTUS to delay death of Obamacare until after election
The background: The Trump administration and several red states have backed a — ridiculous, mind you — challenge to the Affordable Care Act arguing that Congress’ removal of the tax penalty connected to Obamacare’s individual mandate has made the entire law unconstitutional.
Republicans hate Obamacare so much — because you can’t spell “Obamacare” without “Obama,” apparently — that they’ve turned themselves into pretzels trying to destroy it, even as it’s slashed the uninsured rate, just as it was intended to do.
For his part, Donald Trump has never missed a chance to heap scorn on Obamacare, because he has no clue what Obamacare is, other than, again, the “Obama” part of it.
But one thing Trump and other Republicans, who have come at Obamacare hammer and tongs for a full decade now, do know is that if they succeed in killing Obamacare before the election their political careers will likely die with it.
How’s that for cynicism? They know destroying Obamacare will fuck people sideways and that voters will (rightly) punish them for it, but they still want it done — after the election, when the fallout can no longer damage them.
Democrats have wisely petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the challenge to the ACA before November so that any uncertainty surrounding the law can be removed, and so the “right” people will get the credit for its glorious death.
But, strangely enough, Republicans don’t want the credit. In fact, they really, really don’t want it.
The Trump administration and Republican-led states are urging the Supreme Court to swat away Democrats’ request to immediately review a lawsuit threatening Obamacare, which would ensure the politically fraught case doesn’t get resolved until after November’s election.
The justices had asked the Trump administration and red states challenging the health care law to respond to a plea from state Democratic attorneys general to fast-track review of the case by this summer. The Democrats' request came after a federal appeals court last month ruled against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate but sent the case back to a federal judge, likely delaying a resolution until next year unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
…But the Trump administration, which is supporting the red states' challenge, argued the Supreme Court has no pressing need to intervene since the law remains in effect while it's on appeal.
“Far from being urgently needed, this Court’s review thus would be premature,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote for the Justice Department on Friday. A resolution in this case “will be facilitated, not frustrated, by allowing the lower courts to complete their own consideration of the question,” he wrote.
Well, isn’t that convenient?
Donald Trump wants to kill Obamacare once and for all, and he wants Thief Justice Neil Gorsuch, Brett “Bart O’Kavanaugh” Kavanaugh, and the rest of his merry men to do the garroting for him. But for some reason he doesn’t want to throw millions of people off their insurance and fuck over people with preexisting conditions (i.e., practically everyone in the country) until he’s safely reelected.
But if Obamacare is the disaster Trump insists it is, wouldn’t he want to scuttle it and propose his own wonderful plan before November, so people can bask in the numinous miracle that is Trumpcare?
Well, if he weren’t bullshitting 24/7 he sure would. And he would have proposed (and passed) said plan back when he still had full control of Congress.
So what’s this all about if it’s not just one more attempt to shit on Barack Obama’s legacy, consequences be damned?
Oh, you know the answer to that, don’t you?
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