Republicans on Capitol Hill are sending their long-sought Obamacare repeal on a kamikaze mission to the president’s desk. The GOP has big reasons to move ahead with a doomed mission: to force the president to veto the bill, to fulfill a promise to its base and to lay the groundwork to truly repeal Obamacare under a Republican president in 2017. It’s not just optics. Republicans are carefully constructing a legislative strategy, based on Senate rules and precedents, to make it easier to unravel the health law in 2017 if a Republican wins the White House.
The Senate on Thursday approved legislation, 52-47, to repeal the most significant parts of the Affordable Care Act under special budget rules, called reconciliation. Democrats couldn't filibuster reconciliation under the rules, and it only needed 51 votes to pass.
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