Obama Care Repeal Died Tonight...So did any chance for a defense increase...

via Roll Call.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pulled the plug late Monday on the Republican effort to overhaul the U.S. health insurance system and pledged the chamber will now focus on only dismantling the 2010 health care law.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” the Kentucky Republican said.

His statement came after GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas said they did not support the latest Senate health care draft and would not vote for a motion to proceed. Lee and Moran joined Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine in opposition to the procedural motion, leaving McConnell without the votes needed to move forward on the Senate bill.

McConnell said the Senate will now take up the House-passed health care bill and amend it with legislation the Senate supported in 2015 to repeal the 2010 health care law “with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable care.”

Story here. 

Many will look at this story as simply a case of the Republican leadership failing to pass a key piece of its legislative agenda.

They're wrong.

This is a multi-faceted story with many lessons to be learned, many clues included and illustrate for those willing to see it the changing landscape of the American economic/political and social scene.

*  Many Trump voters were against the repeal.  Why?  Because unlike all the economic reports that are floated out to show an improving economy its just not so.  Many Americans are in an economic hurt locker and in their quiet places admit that they need the socialized medicine that Obamacare provides.

*  The economy just hasn't improved.  How do we know?  Because IF things actually were better inflation would be roaring.  It isn't.  Full employment?  NOT bloody likely!  We'd see wage pressure.  Automation and globalization to blame?  Yeah kinda, but its more ominous than that.  Big business has cracked the code on exploiting workers in the new age.  This means something bad but I can't quite put it together.

But to the focus of this blog post it also means that ANY chance of a defense spending increase just died tonight.

Endless wars?

That won't be enough to shake the purse strings either!

We are in a catch 22 of our own making.  Obamacare repeal was the first step in controlling social spending in the US which takes up an ENORMOUS portion of our budget and is a huge driver of our debt.

With this program firmly in place and many others of the kind, we won't be able to go on a sustained rearmament.

Not only will we be unable to match the Chinese industrial output but we won't be able to afford leap ahead weapons (assuming we could get them to work) to make up the difference.

The biggest threat to US defense wasn't an outside enemy.  It was uncontrolled spending.

Now?

Faced with endless wars, social experiments with the military and runaway debt we've guaranteed that the Chinese will win the next war without firing a shot.

Obamacare repeal could have led to a turnaround in the decline of our great nation and would have signalled a return to principles of civic responsibility...putting the nation's needs ahead of the individual.

Congress and the American people failed.

That is why we will lose the next great war.