The Unit­ed States Sen­ate has vot­ed by the nar­row­est of mar­gins to begin con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion with unknown pro­vi­sions that would evis­cer­ate the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act signed into law by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma sev­en years ago.

Fifty Repub­li­cans vot­ed in favor of advanc­ing the bill, while two Repub­li­cans (Lisa Murkows­ki and Susan Collins) vot­ed against, along with all forty-eight Democ­rats. With the Sen­ate dead­locked, Mike Pence then cast the tiebreak­ing vote.

Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor John McCain of Ari­zona returned to the Sen­ate floor to cast the deci­sive “aye” vote, and then pro­ceed­ed, with­in moments of cast­ing said vote, to give a long speech hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly call­ing for a return to “reg­u­lar order”.

McCain was recent­ly diag­nosed with brain can­cer and had a blood clot removed from above his left eye at Mayo Clin­ic Hospital.

Con­sid­er­ing what John McCain is going through, he ought to under­stand bet­ter than any sen­a­tor how immoral it would be to rob mil­lions of Amer­i­cans of their health­care by gut­ting the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act.

Today’s vote was only pro­ce­dur­al. As such, the fight to save Amer­i­cans’ health­care goes on. But it is grave­ly dis­ap­point­ing to see that only two mem­bers of the Repub­li­can cau­cus stood up to Don­ald Trump and Mitch McConnell.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

VOTING AYE: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

VOTING NAY: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Democ­rats con­demned the vote in strong­ly word­ed statements.

“It’s incon­ceiv­able that any of our nation’s lead­ers think our health care sys­tem will be improved by rip­ping away health care from 22 mil­lion Amer­i­cans and vast­ly increas­ing the costs for mil­lions more,” said Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

“[Don­ald] Trump promised Amer­i­cans he would improve our health care sys­tem. He promised he would not cut Med­ic­aid, and that his plan would make health care more acces­si­ble and more afford­able. [Trump­cuts] doesn’t deliv­er on a sin­gle one of those promis­es. In fact it exac­er­bates each of them.”

“This isn’t about repeal, or repeal and replace. Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al lead­ers and Trump want to instead repeal and redi­rect this fund­ing to an enor­mous tax break for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans. The Sen­ate bill is being writ­ten entire­ly in secret. Not even Repub­li­can sen­a­tors know what they will be vot­ing on today.”

“But we know that every pro­pos­al put for­ward in the Sen­ate has been just as bad or worse for our state than the bad bill passed by the House in May.”

“I urge every sen­a­tor to reject this cru­el mea­sure. And I encour­age all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to con­tin­ue con­tact­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Con­gress to tell them to pur­sue real bipar­ti­san solu­tions that pro­tect and build upon our state’s progress improv­ing health care access, qual­i­ty and affordability.”

“And final­ly, I want to thank Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell for their hard work defend­ing the peo­ple of Washington.”

Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki echoed Inslee.

“Today is a shame­ful day for the U.S. Sen­ate,” Pod­lows­ki said.

“Repub­li­cans have just vot­ed to move for­ward on the repeal of the Afford­able Care Act, some­thing we know will end health care cov­er­age for tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, send insur­ance pre­mi­ums through the roof, and slash essen­tial pro­tec­tions for women, seniors, and those with pre-exist­ing conditions.