mission impossible?
Democratic senators storm the CBO to try to get a copy of the Republican health-care bill
With a vote slated for next week and no draft health-care bill in sight, Democratic senators decided to take matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) took a cab over to the Congressional Budget Office in the hopes that maybe the office would let them see the "secret" GOP-backed health-care bill, Murphy tweeted.
Before releasing a draft of the bill, Republican senators handed it over to the CBO to be scored, which makes CBO staffers among the few people to have actually seen the bill. The bill is being written entirely by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his aides, and negotiations have gone on behind closed doors, enraging Democrats and even leaving Republicans unsure of what's in the plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday he still hasn't seen the bill, though he expects he'll get a better look at it later this week.
No word yet on whether the Democratic senators' mission was a success. Becca Stanek
Update 1:35 p.m. ET: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) confirmed later Tuesday that they were unable to get a copy of the bill from the CBO because of a "confidentiality agreement." Murphy said the CBO "would not confirm that they are working on the bill."