Milbank: Republican Party has its own Obamacare now

“No concerns whatsoever,” Ryan replied. He blamed the bill’s unpopularity on opponents and the media spreading “mistruths” and said opinions will improve when people experience what’s in the bill. “When people see their withholding improving and see bigger paychecks, a simpler tax code,” Ryan said, “results will make this popular.”

Where have I heard this before? Ah, yes, it was March 2010, as Obamacare was about to clear the House. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said people should look beyond the “controversies” surrounding the bill, to when people experience its “very exciting” benefits. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she said.

Obamacare did much of what was advertised, and its popularity grew. But it didn’t do everything that was promised, and anything Americans didn’t like about the health-care system became the fault of Obamacare, even if unrelated to the law. Now, Republicans are making impossibly high promises, and if anything goes wrong — if the economy doesn’t boom, wages don’t soar and the middle class doesn’t rebound — it will be the fault of this legislation.

The parallels are eerie. In 2010, as now, lawmakers who drafted the legislation were confident it would be transformational. Then, as now, the legislation passed on an entirely partisan basis, with the opposition complaining about a hurried process and side deals.

Actually, the Trump Tax is in worse shape than Obamacare was. USA Today reported last week that the bill had “the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades.”

In March 2009, the Quinnipiac poll found opposition to Obamacare exceeded support by nine points; the latest poll finds opposition to the tax bill exceeding support by 29 points.

GOP now owns health care

Republicans worked hard to convince Americans that Obamacare was a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor. Democrats can now argue, truthfully, that the Trump Tax is a transfer of income from the middle class to the wealthy and big business.

While the “forgotten man” Trump lured with phony populism gets little benefit, the things that bothered the forgotten man about the tax code — a tangled mess of loopholes for businesses, the rich and Wall Street — remain intact.

Plus, Republicans now claim ownership of health care. The tax bill kills the individual mandate that underpinned Obamacare, which will leave 13 million additional people without coverage.

Tuesday morning, Ryan declared (falsely) that the bill would “especially” benefit middle-income families. He said it would “bid up” wages, repatriate jobs, provide economic growth of 3 percent a year and create upward mobility.

Maybe he’s right and all those blue-chip economists and the nonpartisan analyses by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office and others are wrong. Maybe growth will exceed forecasts, millions will find work, wages will soar and the $1.5 trillion tax bill will pay for itself. But if all that doesn’t happen, the Trump Tax will be blamed.