The Senate votes on a motion to proceed, beginning debate on the legislation. However, unlike typical Senate procedure, many lawmakers are unclear on what the actual healthcare reform bill will be.
♦ Latest: 2:40pm Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have voted against proceeding. All other republican senators have voted to proceed. (live stream link)
3:00pm Senator John McCain arrives to vote “aye”.  Senator Ron Johnson also votes ‘yes’. Senator Joe Manchin has voted “nay”.  All Democrats are voting along party line no defectors..
3:10pm With final vote to proceed tied at 50/50 Vice President Mike Pence casts the tie-breaking vote and the motion to proceed passes.

3:15pm Senator John McCain took to the floor to deliver a speech (video added below). McCain stated he voted to proceed with debate, but he will never vote for the Senate bill.  Instead McCain demands the entire process begin again; starting over in committee (time for more lobbyist $$).
McCain then delivers a 10 minute speech filled with virtue signaling, pearl clutching, and ‘reach-across-the-aisle’ “isms”; while demanding that all senators stop listening to the American people and return to the preferred way of indulging in their own Senatorial best interests.   McCain communicated to the chamber that the American electorate are too stupid to know what’s good for them, and the Senators should rule over the proles.
Despite his looming incapacity and terminal brain cancer, McCain refuses to resign.
Donald Trump was entirely right about John McCain.
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At approximately 3:15pm EDT President Trump is scheduled to deliver a healthcare speech in an effort to confront congressional intransigence.  Many people believe this will be the final olive branch extended by POTUS to avoid the ‘Big Ugly’.  The speech will be covered live on most major TV networks and several livestream options are available.
WH Livestream Link – RSBN Livestream –  Alternate Livestream #1 – Alternate Livestream #2
UPDATE Video Added:

Republicans have a last chance to do the right thing on Repeal & Replace after years of talking & campaigning on it.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017

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Everything is proceeding according to a natural and predictable path.  Mr. Scaramucci is now in charge of White House messaging, the focus can now look toward the Capitol and go on offense; the “Big Ugly” is very clearly on the horizon.

Anxious Trump voters have been understandably frustrated by the lack of speed with which President Trump is able to force the MAGA agenda onto an unwilling DC political apparatus.  However, if you step back and look at the scope of the challenge, the situation is entirely understandable.
Donald Trump was a 100% pure political outsider, a citizen politician.  There was never any underlying organizational apparatus to support victory.  There was Dan, Hope, Michael and Corey; later Paul then Kellyanne and Steve. Everything else needed to be constructed from scratch and even the party apparatus didn’t support candidate Trump.
On November 9th 2016 President-elect Trump did not wake up with a staff of 50 political career employees sitting at Trump desks with Rolodexes filled with a network of affiliate political allies, personnel and associates to call upon to create the Trump administration.  Consequently President Trump needed to import the entire administrative personnel architecture to support the move to the White House. (more…)

If you watch or listen to the interviews today with new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and then overlay them against a backdrop of ongoing events (including last week), there’s a very solid outlook that Reince Priebus is close to being replaced as Chief of Staff.

Scaramucci says today: “If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.” Where “they” are clearly White House staffers who have been identified as leaking to the media.
When you step back and remind yourself where “they” came from, you recognize this staff is primarily made up of former RNC staff brought into the White House by Reince Priebus the former head of the RNC and now Chief of Staff.
When you step back further you find yourself reminded what ideology those same RNC staffers carried before following Priebus to the White House. Then we quickly realize these are Scott Walker/Ted Cruz type GOPe loyalists who have no affinity for the populist approach of Trump.
There’s the problem that has existed in nuanced form from the outset of the decision to keep Reince Priebus inside the Trump administration as a bridge to the parties legislative and political apparatus in DC.
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The “Big Ugly” Preparation – President Trump has announced Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House Communications Director. Mrs. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is also announced as the permanent White House Press Secretary. Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer is released from his duties; Spicer will finish out August and then exit the White House.
Video from today’s Press Briefing follows:

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This communications transition must be considered against the backdrop of an executive office accepting the intransigent nature of the DC Administrative State, the Deep State and financial interests, has finally reached a point where direct conflict is unavoidable.
President Trump’s election was the disruption the American electorate voted for. The DC based Administrative state will not allow this disruption.
The middle-class economic agenda, the primary focus of the Trump administration, is now being intentionally blocked by the UniParty and their lobbying financiers in the professional political community.
The UniParty decision to impede healthcare reform is, necessarily, also carrying the motive of specific intent to derail the sequential tax reform policy.
The down-stream budgetary impact from retaining ObamaCare will destroy the U.S. economy. The multinational corporations and multinational banks are positioned favorably toward this endeavor.  They have built this position over decades.
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“For seven years you promised the American people you would repeal Obamacare. People are hurting and frankly inaction is not an option.”
~ President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump held a luncheon for Senate Republicans on Wednesday and delivered stern remarks toward their failure to reach agreement on repealing or overhauling Obamacare.  President Trump demanded they keep their campaign promises and find a new healthcare approach.

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President Trump told the 49 senators who came to a White House luncheon today they should not leave Washington for a planned August recess until they can find common ground on healthcare and do the job Americans are paying them to do.
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It would appear Mitch McConnell, and the larger congress, just lit the fuse on “the big ugly“.  Winter is coming.

• President Trump has requested all Republican Senators to attend a White House luncheon, held entirely in their honor, tomorrow.  • President Trump has also announced a MAGA rally to be held in Youngstown Ohio, next week.   • Not coincidentally this rally announcement comes on the same day Ohio governor John Kasich writes an op-ed in the New York Times gleefully celebrating the defeat of the senate healthcare reform and  ObamaCare repeal. • HHS Secretary Tom Price is NOT HAPPY.
Oh yeah, the Big Ugly is coming.  President Trump is not a politician.

The failure of congress to pass Obamacare reform means the tax reform agenda for the middle class is now far less likely.  The UniParty Congress know this.  The UniParty Congress is doing the bidding of the lobbyists.
The escalating costs of ObamaCare, specifically because of the Medicaid expansion, means increased tax revenues are needed to pay for the program.  John Kasich, and his crew of like-minded governors (there are eleven) demand their state get more federal dollars.  This means more income tax revenues are needed.  This means no middle-class tax relief.
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Many years ago we accepted the UniParty.  Shortly thereafter CTH broke away from political identity framed around arguments of party and personality; we chose to focus on policy and outcomes.  Washington DC is a singular party, a UniParty. We have been explaining, countering and fighting “The Big Club” in DC for years; always following the money.
President Trump is the first political entity in our lifetime that not only comprehends the faces of the false arguments (the personalities of false choice and controlled opposition), but more importantly sees the architects behind the Potemkin villages represented by those faces. When it comes to domestic economic policy, the architects are the BIG CLUB.
So, what is “The Big Club“?  …What “Deep State” is to intelligence, military intervention and foreign policy – the “BIG CLUB” is to matters of domestic economics…
Politicians do not write laws. Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer do not sit in their offices writing out scripts of laws and legislation; no politician does. Politicians are the faces who sell legislation that unseen hands create. The Big Club represents the hands that actually create legislation; lobbyist hands.
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Various senators deliver remarks following the collapse of their ability to reform and replace ObamaCare with any alternative.  Beginning with the controlled opposition position of Rand Paul and continuing with Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP leadership (at 15:00 of video).

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What these insufferable politicians well understand is that any substantive tax reform will necessarily also be compromised by the flawed dynamics inside ObamaCare. That will have a negative downstream impact on any hope for economic growth. However, they are not stupid – they know this – that is their unified UniParty goal.
The increasing taxpayer costs to keep big government ObamaCare operational, for non-taxpaying medicaid recipients, means the middle-class is once again sacrificed at the altar of the Big Club.
American workers on the individual market will not only see increased insurance rates, but their income tax rates will also be higher as the need to subsidize the lower-income non-working group (medicaid) remains.
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President Donald Trump expresses strong “disappointment” in the GOP healthcare bill failure:

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As we have said since before last year, the senate will not vote on a ‘repeal only’ bill because: A.) repeal takes 60 votes, and B) there are not even 50 republican votes for a repeal.
Again, as we have said from the beginning, changing the senate rules to a 51 vote threshold for legislative passage is not workable because: A.) it takes 67 senators to agree to change the rule (eliminate the Byrd Rule), and B.) The senate doesn’t want to change the rules.
The GOP have never voted to repeal Obamacare because the GOP doesn’t want to repeal Obamacare.
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