Once a moderate, this NJ Republican cannot dodge his Trumpcare …
Leonard Lance doesn’t want to see New Jerseyans lose their health care, and he doesn’t want to destroy the Affordable Care Act just for the thrill of watching it die, like most leaders of his party.
The 7th District congressman insists he likes some of its provisions, but he finds Obamacare flawed and unaffordable, which may be why he has voted to repeal, defund, or dismantle portions of it dozens of times.
So call him conflicted. He is a moderate Republican who is routinely overwhelmed by the over-my-dead-body caucus that rules his party, but there’s no escaping the fact that at the moment of truth, he voted to pull the plug on Obamacare in March of 2017 without much regard for the consequences.
It came at a time when his party’s quest to provide universal health care proved to be as sincere as a presidential compliment: Lance’s own Energy and Commerce Committee held no open hearings, it rejected every Democratic amendment, and it refused to wait for a score from the Congressional Budget Office before it advanced the repeal bill in a 31-23 party line vote.
In the end, the people charged with reforming one-fifth of the American economy chose to treat the health of 24 million Americans as collateral damage – until the bill was ultimately torpedoed with a theatrical thumbs-down from John McCain.
