legislative day have a geja vu. three senators now saying they will vote no, meaning there is zero chance this bill gets 50 votes. it s all over, right? not so fast. maybe they ll do a little reconciliation changes. i have a great group, starting with garrett hake who has been working 24/7 on capitol hill. will they even vote on this bill. we ll have a better idea of that question after republicans meet for their weekly lunch today and hash this over. this is a zombie bill right now. it s dead. it s just shuffling around on capitol hill waiting for republican leaders to decide whether it will die in private or public. susan collins yesterday joined john mccain and rand paul as the three republican no votes necessary to block this bill. it came after a day full of protests here on the hill. it came after the cbo said we can t tell you much about this
respond to democrats that participated in that process. look, i think that this is definitely a zombie bill and it will probably rear its ugly head and we ll have to the activists will have to take that bill and put it back into the zombie grave, absolutely and that is going to have to happen. and we hope that democrats on the senate will listen to us and make sure that whatever is happening, whatever mitch mcconnell does, it doesn t take away health care from mills of people. and one thing to point out, two years ago, john mccain and murkowski voted to repeal health care. i think what happened now is obamacare became popular and people did not want their health care being taken away from them. and people stood up. american people, activists stood up and they went to the streets and made phone calls and said this is not going to happen and you re not going to repeal obamacare. but if we go back six months ago, this was supposed to be an easy one for republicans. on day one, donald
but, ron, i just want to go with people with senate experience. let s just put this marker down. if this thing comes back, if it comes back to life somehow in the senate, that will be something we ve never seen before on a bill like this. yeah, that s right, lawrence. i mean it s not just i agree with julie. it s died and come back before certainly in the house and in earlier versions. what s different this time is these senators are laying down specific markers. the premiums for middle class people need to be lower. there needs to be pre-existing conditions. the things you re hearing in the lee and the moran statements, the self-contradictory things are a series of petards they re going to get hoisted on. it has to come back over very difficult terrain if it s going to come back at this point of time. there s another way to think about this zombie bill. another way to say it is it comes back and it dies, it comes back and then it dies. let s listen to what the president said
problems with the affordable care act, particularly the people who earn too much money to get subsidies but who buy their own insurance. they re really getting hammered. they re paying way too much, and yet nothing in any of these bills would do almost anything to help those people. so, you know, they re coming up with sort of the right problems. they re asking the right questions, and they re not quite giving the right answers to them. i should also point out that, yes, while we re sort of pronouncing this bill dead, it s been pronounced dead several times before. the health reporters who have been covering it keep calling it the zombie bill because it keeps dying and coming back to life. but, ron, i just want to go with people with senate experience. let s just put this marker down. if this thing comes back, if it comes back to life somehow in the senate, that will be something we ve never seen before on a bill like this. yeah, that s right, lawrence. i mean it s not just i agr
what s different this time is these senators are laying down specific markers. the premiums for middle class people need to be lower. there needs to be pre-existing conditions. the things you re hearing in the lee and the moran statements, the self-contradictory things are a series of petards they re going to gueet hoisted on. it has to come back over very difficult terrain if it s going to come back at this point of time. there s another way to think about this zombie bill. another way to say it is it comes back and it dies, it comes back and then it dies. let s listen to what the president said about how he was patiently sitting in the white house with his bill-signing pen in hand. and apparently doing absolutely nothing else to help pass this bill. let s listen to this. i am sitting in the oval office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me.