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For the past few decades it seemed like hardcore socialism was a thing of the past in the United Kingdom.

The Conservative and Labour parties had both accepted a liberal consensus that markets were good, and that aggressive redistributive policies and nationalization of industries was bad for everyone.

Yet a shocking election result on June 8 has made the green and pleasant land see red again.

Its true that the Conservatives won the most seats in the election, but their slim majority was erased. They will now serve as a minority government and rely on the Democratic Unionist Party a Northern Irish political party with a reputation for corruption, thuggery, and a social conservatism that would make Republicans in the Deep South blanch.

U.K. elections have to happen at least every five years, but unstable governments can collapse at any time. So despite the results of this election, another could be not far down the road. In fact, given Prime Minister Theresa Mays embattled condition, another early election could be in the cards in just a couple years.

With the Conservative image now severely tarnished, and Labour riding high, it is no longer impossible to imagine that the current Labour leadership could form the next government and that is a problem.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition, spent many years isolated to the left-wing lunatic fringe of the Labour Party. Yet his late blooming has left many aghast, even within his own party.

Elected leader after the 2015 election, on the back of protest votes, Corbyn has been viewed by the majority of his own parliamentary party as a usurper. Yet his deft work building up grassroots supporters within the party kept him in charge. The election this month was supposed to be his death-knell; with him and his host of socialist crazies sent packing by Middle England. That, of course, did not go as planned.

Instead, Labour increased its seat total, which is astounding considering a month before the election many polls showed them losing more than 50 seats. Corbyn has, of course, taken this as validation for his brand of politics, and his critics within the party have been silenced.

The danger is now very real that Corbyn and his allies could actually govern the country one day. In a matter of months, the Overton Window has shifted further than it has in years. Marxism is back on the menu.

John McDonnell, Corbyns top deputy and the likely finance chief in a Corbyn government, has openly admitted he is a Marxist. Corbyn and his friends have long lambasted capitalism, in all its forms.

Should they come to power, it could mean a radical reversal of Britains progress since the 1970s.

Almost everything about British politics today has a 70s feel to it. The Conservatives are committed to a big government right-wing policy while Labour has aggressively embraced its socialist roots. Corbyn wants to re-nationalize industries and re-empower labor unions, just as a start. He is also vigorously anti free-trade.

Now Corbyn is validated to continue to deliver on that agenda should he come to power; and now the MPs who still believe in Tony Blairs New Labour approach, one that accepted that free markets are a prerequisite for a prosperous economy, have little political capital.

Corbyn was supposed to be discredited. Instead, he is the most popular leader in the country.

He can look forward to years of political turmoil in the government with a high level of dysfunction in the Conservative Party as it sorts itself out and tries to govern and negotiate Brexit. His day may yet come when he actually becomes Prime Minister. That however, would mark a disaster for the U.K. and for the community of market-friendly nations.

Theresa Mays brand of conservatism is far from libertarian or liberal, that is true. But given the now very real and terrifying alternative, any lover of personal freedom should shudder at the thought of it.

This post was written by John Engle.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

John Engle is a merchant banker and author living in the Chicago area. His company, Almington Capital, invests in both early-stage venture capital and in public equities. His writing has been featured in a number of academic journals, as well as the blogs of the Heartland Institute, Grassroot Institute, and Tenth Amendment Center. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and the University of Oxford, Johns first book, Trinity Student Pranks: A History of Mischief and Mayhem, was published in September 2013.

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Marxism Returns to the UK The Right Engle - Being Libertarian

Capitalism has been, perhaps, the most misconstrued and misused term Ive ever come across. For an average person, capitalism is evocative of extraordinary images of colonialism, suffering and slavery, or the sight of a billionaire whose convoy passes through the streets, whose sidewalks have been an unfortunate residence to many. Those willing to ponder about capitalism often come across those who carry the same misconceptions and misinformation. The misinformation about capitalism proliferates among people and only worsens when people use emotionally appealing arguments that often treats reason as a secondary. And as a consequence, today, here we are in a world where people take moral refuge in glorifying socialism. These socialist sympathizers who practice Marxism in every policy they propose forget that the very Russia that they thoroughly detest has socialism and Marxism in its roots. George Santayanas aphorism that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

If youre like me, then to you the absolute of capitalism would be a utopia where you have the freedom as an individual to mind your own business, both figuratively and literally, without the fear of being unfairly squashed by a government gavel. But this perception was most likely not something that you always had, thanks to liberal indoctrination. To those who have been liberally indoctrinated, the rights desire for capitalism would mean an authoritarian state where the poor are exploited for the benefit of the rich, where theyre destined to remain poor forever. The disconnect is this: when the left hears capitalism, what they think about is corporatism. So, they think of an authoritarian state run by the corporations that want to exploit ordinary men for their profits. The lefts prescribed solution to this is to have an authoritarian state run by the ordinary man in the form of a collective that wants to exploit corporations for their profits! Which is retributive justice. Mike Buchanan, a British politician, argued that if we were going in for retributive justice then perhaps each black American should be given a white slave. So we ought not be emotional, but rather rational about it because the political system effects all our lives. The rational way to go about it is to have a political system where the businesses have their freedoms and so does the ordinary man, and they deal with each other with mutual consent. Wherever there is coercion against one another, the government jumps in to resolve the dispute through law and order. Which is what capitalism is all about, its freedom. Free markets give everybody the freedom and the opportunity to be rich or poor. Because of these differences in the perception of capitalism, when the left and right debate each other, its not a discussion, its a confrontation.

This phobia of capitalism understandably comes with history. A history filled with enormous suffering caused by colonialism and slavery, where businessmen were addressed as capitalists has indeed left an indelible mark in peoples minds. While the leftist intelligentsia makes vitriolic attacks on capitalism for its dark history, they conveniently push under the rug the evils of socialism, claiming that it was actually this divine concept that went terribly wrong every single time. This adulterated history caused the phobia of capitalism, which is not unique to the west, by the way.

India, after independence from the British empire, was shattered in all forms, having gone from being the richest country in the world at that time to one of the poorest[1], adopted the Soviet Unions economic model and an isolationist foreign policy in the hopes of confronting this plight. The Indian leaders were unwilling to allow privatization and open up to the rest of the world. They were infused with concerns and skepticism of allowing foreign companies to do business in India. Because the last time, when India paved the way for a foreign company to do business on its land, it ended up being colonized for the next two hundred years. This went on until the highly propagandized paradise of the Soviet Union finally collapsed in the 90s. India was also heading towards an economic fiasco. This socialist approach had to be changed and capitalism had to be embraced. The game-changing economic liberalization took place where private companies could be established, markets opened up to foreign trade, and India started getting increasingly capitalist. Fast forward 26 years, and it has maintained consistently higher rates of GDP and is the 7th largest economy. Its at a point where one wouldnt have anticipated a couple of decades ago. This only goes to show, as Shashi Tharoor puts it, that sometimes history can teach you the wrong lessons.

If youve been following Reuters on Facebook, or the folks in Hollywood who give cosmic importance to politics over their movies, then you must have witnessed a series of articles regarding the Trump administrations repeal of regulations. There has been some new repeal, or at least a proposal, almost every day, and this went on for quite some time. For every article that said there has been a repeal of a certain regulation, it was showered with angry reactions. For instance, if it were a certain social program, the reaction was that Trump did it because he hated the women and poor. if it were the repeal of a certain environmental regulation, the reaction was that trump did it because he hated the environment. Now I know we all care for the environment, but the principle remains the same. The comments were filled with grief and contempt for allowing corporations more room in their profit-making endeavors. This frustration is a consequence of a conclusion based on the conflict of the lefts adopted morality from altruism, where you are virtuous when you do things for people around you and hold no expectations in return, and then apply it to economics, where the businesses work exclusively on self-interest and profit.

This mind-set that removing a regulation would give more room for self-interest, and hence more evil, is the source of all arguments to justify the use of law-making as a weapon for combating the so-called evil. This stems from the notion which is at the core of every leftist, the idea that human beings are inherently evil in nature and therefore they must be controlled and corrected by the rest of the society. So, according to this philosophy, your sacrifice for others makes you a good person, but working for your benefit and self-interest makes you a bad person, which is incompatible with businesses. This is an artificial construct that goes against the natural survival instincts of species and therefore the conclusion is to make human beings good by the use brute force. A lefts version of original sin. They denounce religion, even ridicule it, but then practice the same principles, however, by replacing God with government. Although today, some would argue that to the left, government is not just god, but a mom and a dad. And thats why the left would cheer for Bill Gates when he invents Windows and makes all our lives better, but would detest him when they see him make huge money out of it. He is good as long as he keeps talking about donating and helping the needy, but would turn out to be an evil person as soon as he thinks well for himself. The societys imposition on you to have you exhibit remorse for the crime of being successful. Their apprehension for freedom is what drives them. And thats why the left advocates for more regulations and bigger government. This is the difference between the leftists and the right-libertarians. The libertarian right doesnt believe that human beings are inherently evil in nature and are against the imposition of their morality on others.

Another reason, apart from history and philosophy, would be envy. As Ayn Rand put it, Today youre supposed to apologize to every naked savage anywhere on the globe, because you are more prosperous. Because you earned the money, you have to feel guilty and apologize for it while he hasnt and doesnt intend to learn from you, he just wants your money.

This is the most vindictive, collectivist, and uncivilized behavior of all. They pass a law that seems so kind and compassionate and the society applauds the government for passing such a law, which potentially wins it a number of votes. You are fine as long you comply, but the moment you dont, the next thing you see are guns and handcuffs. There is no other way out because every law is indeed a governmental enforcement. They are carried out at gun point, there is no room for your opinion. And what is the outcome? If you dont comply, you are the evilest person. If you do comply, however, you are fine, but you have to sacrifice and suffer enough in order to satisfy the rest to be applauded as a good person.

Whats more striking is that this is not attacking man for his mistakes or his crimes, but for his success and for his virtues. Its not caring for the needy and poor, its the hatred of the good for being the good. The problem is that the left considers ones prosperity as evil. The richer and more successful you are, the eviler you are to the left, and you must be dragged down since many others are living far worse off than you are. But if you do remain poor, then they love you and care for you, and will fight on your behalf to tax the rich and distribute that money to you. If this is not parasitic, I dont know what is. The poor and the needy is not a reason, but an excuse to moralize and justify their atrocities against the successful.

We need to protect our freedoms from the leftist depredations. I hold adulterated history, self-destructive philosophy, and the tribal instincts of human beings as the primary reasons why the left hates capitalism. This leaves out many other reasons, such as the emotional-appealing left vs the logical right, the top 1% fallacy, and the deceptive term crony-capitalism. But these are only 3 of the top reasons why the left hates capitalism, i.e., freedom.

* Abhilash Korraprolu does libertarian political commentary on the YouTube channel: Al Righty.

[1] British economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective has demonstrated, Indias share of the world economy was 23 per cent, as large as all of Europe put together. (It had been 27 per cent in 1700, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzebs treasury raked in 100 million in tax revenues alone.) By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to just over 3 per cent. Excerpt from: Shashi Tharoor. An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India.

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Why Leftists Hate Capitalism - Being Libertarian

The fire that consumed Grenfell Tower last Wednesday was an unimaginable sort of horror. Parents threw children out of windows to onlookers below; entire households perished; there are reports that no one from the top three floors survived. The death toll is still increasing. It was almost certainly the worst fire in the United Kingdom in decades.

And it was entirely preventable. For an additional 5,000 (about $6,400) the apartment block could have been refurbished with fire-resistant cladding, rather than the highly flammable materials banned in the United States and Germany that were used instead, and that probably transformed a run-of-the-mill high-rise fire into a national tragedy. For 138,000 ($176,000), the entire building could have been retrofitted with sprinklers. Residents had complained for years that the building was unsafe and could not be safely evacuated in the case of a serious fire.

It should not be shocking, then, that Megan McArdle has received a blizzard of rebukes for suggesting that it may be misguided to criticize the London authorities for not installing sprinkler systems. McArdle does not make any conclusive claims about the sprinklers: She acknowledges that the former housing minister who decided not to require developers to install sprinklers may have made the wrong call. But, McArdle argues, all expenditures must be justified and balanced against the possible trade-offs: Every dollar [the government] spends on installing sprinkler systems cannot be spent on the health service, or national device, or pollution control. And McArdle, as a good libertarian, points out that requiring developers to install sprinklers would increase rents and impose other costs, while leaving the issue unregulated would allow potential tenants themselves to choose whether sprinkler systems and other safety features are worth the cost.

McArdle was savaged on social media for these transparently reasonable sentiments; one particularly asinine Slate article was mockingly titled, Would I Cross the Street to Spit on You If You Were on Fire? Theres Always a Trade-Off. People dont, it turns out, particularly appreciate the notion that safety is a trade-off; they particularly dont appreciate hearing about the importance of such trade-offs in the aftermath of an unbearable tragedy. At times like these, people want to hear about requisitioning the empty houses of rich people, as Jeremy Corbyn suggested. They want to hear about greedy developers going to prison; they want politicians unseated. People want something to be done, even if that something doesnt make much sense or will not be particularly helpful.

This, of course, is a problem with people, not a problem with Megan McArdle, whose column appeared obnoxious precisely because it was reasonable and levelheaded at a time when one is not supposed to be either. McArdle is right that there is always a trade-off and that the government should install sprinklers in public housing only if that is the best use of the money. McArdle is right, too, that requiring developers to install sprinklers in every single building would price low-income households out of units they could otherwise have afforded, and would deprive people of the ability to determine for themselves what level of risk they are willing to pay for.

But McArdles analysis is incomplete. Any perfect cost-benefit analysis, after all, should take into account not only the fiscal costs and benefits directly implicated in a decision but also the costs and benefits associated with the long-term repercussions of the decision.

In this case, the decision not to install more expensive cladding at Grenfell was a catastrophic failure for the cause of responsible governance. The tragedy has galvanized England and will almost certainly bring in its wake a less compromising, and less proportionate, attitude toward building regulations. A flurry of laws will surely be passed to assuage the horror and the sense of national culpability. Some of these laws may be reasonable and well designed, but it is likely that most will not be. And that is the best-case scenario. Londons mayor, Sadiq Khan, has suggested that the tower blocks of the 1960s and 70s, which provide low-income housing to thousands in a city with a severe housing crisis, may be systematically torn down. And if, as seems possible, the Grenfell fire leads to the fall of Theresa May and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, then a libertarian approach to building regulations will ultimately have produced the first genuinely left-wing government the United Kingdom has seen since 1979.

There is very little that is worse for skeptics of big government than a tragedy. Since people demand action after a tragedy, tragedies tend to lead to greater regulation, and regulation is subject to a ratchet effect: Once regulations are passed, they are hard to reverse and the new regulatory climate becomes normal. The political effects of a tragedy can shape society for decades it was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan that brought about new regulatory standards in factories, and the Titanic changed maritime safety forever.

It stands to reason, then, that conservatives and libertarians have an interest in promoting modest, cheap, and popular safety rules and regulations. If the United Kingdom had banned the flammable cladding used in Grenfell, as America and Germany had, no one would be talking today about tearing down low-income housing across London, and the cost would be only a few thousand pounds more per development. If the authorities had prevented factories in lower Manhattan from locking their employees in, the garment workers would probably never have unionized. If the Titanic had been forced by law to carry enough lifeboats, maritime regulations would probably be far simpler today.

Libertarians in particular will find these preventive regulations difficult to stomach. But most of the world is not libertarian certainly, not after a trauma of this magnitude and so, difficult to stomach though they may be, safety rules and regulations, carefully chosen and managed, are a worthwhile investment in a slightly more libertarian future.

READ MORE: Assigning Blame for Londons Tower Inferno The Tragedy of Grenfell

Max Bloom is an editorial intern at National Review.

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What Conservatives and Libertarians Should Learn from Grenfell - National Review

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on June 20 that Americans will have "plenty of time" to look at the health-care bill before it goes to the Senate floor for debate. (The Washington Post)

In Washington, the need to spin is strong. Which is why it's so amazing that Senate Republicans aren't even trying to spin their secret health-care negotiations as anything but: Yeah, this isn't good.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked Tuesday by MSNBC's Willie Geist if getting a first look at the bill this week and then votingon it next week allows for enough time.

Corker's answer: Well, that's it looks like the time that's going to be allotted. He went on: I would have liked, as you already know, for this to be a more open process and have committee hearings. But that's not what we're doing.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was more blunt:

And Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) just straight up acknowledged the fact that in 2010, Republicans might as well have been criticizing their future, 2017 selves:

This is not how Republicans wanted this to go.

They control Washington. They can finally make good on their near-universal promise to repeal Obamacare. And instead of publicly celebrating that, they're negotiating a bill in secret and more or less criticizing themselves for it. The Senate could vote on a version of the House's health-care bill as soon as next week, and key senators as well as the health and human services secretaryand possibly even the president haven't seen it.

[Are Republicans leading the most secretive health-care bill process ever?]

(Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reportersTuesday that the bill could become public by Thursday.)

Republicans might not be able to defend keeping their health-care bill secret until the last minute, but they have a reason for doing it: They're calculating that the blowback for keeping it secret is a lesser evil than the blowback for negotiating it in public.

Last month, they watched House Republicans negotiate their bill in the open, and they saw a torturous process. Every iteration was extensively reported by the media. Lawmakers went home and got yelled at by their constituents for supporting a bill that could cut their benefits or that wouldn't fully repeal Obamacare. Republicans had to pull the bill from the floor at the last minute because they couldn't get enough support from their own party; an embarrassing and humbling moment.

Senate Republicans have been crafting their version of the bill for more than a month now. But because most of them don't know what's in it, we haven't written any stories about it, and opposition hasn't had time to harden.

Actually,opposition probably won't have time to coalesceif McConnell gets his way: There will be about a week between the bill's introduction and a vote, and lawmakers won't have more than a long weekend back home.

By contrast, the 2009-2010 Obamacare negotiations included months of public hearings before they were ultimately finished behind closed doors. In 2010 and now, both sides say they were forced into secrecy by a minority party that wanted only to stall.

But Republicans have taken the secrecy to a new level, refusing to even hold committee hearings.

The result is that, yes, McConnell gets awarded flip-flops from The Washington Post's Fact Checker for overseeing the most secretive health-care bill process ever. Yes, Democrats get to thrust hypocrisy in the faces of their colleagues. And yes, Republicans are doing something that, by their own definition, is indefensible.

But from Republicans' perspective, they don't have a choice.Their party is too ideologically fractured, and the margin of victory in the Senate too slim (Republicans can afford to lose just two GOP votes), to craft a health-care bill in the open, despite the fact that most Republican senators wish this process were more transparent.

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Republicans aren't even trying to defend their secret health-care negotiations - Washington Post

Jun. 20, 2017 at 4:23 PM

While the Senate Republicans bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has been shrouded in secrecy, at least one thing is all but certain: the final bill will include hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, mostly for the richest Americans. It might seem unsurprising that Republicans are proposing tax cuts, except for one fact: The cuts would go disproportionately to Democratic-leaning states.

To fund the insurance expansion, the Affordable Care Act created a variety of new taxes. Some, like those on medical devices, pharmaceuticals and health insurers (and lets not forget tanning salons), were levied on consumers via the health care industry. But a hefty portion were charged directly to the wealthiest taxpayers. One such tax is a 0.9 percent payroll tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year, often referred to as the Medicare surcharge. The other is a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income, also for people who earn more than $200,000. These taxes largely affect the top 5 percent of earners, with the majority of the money collected coming from the top 1 percent of earners.

A look at who is paying these taxes, based on Statistics of Income data from the Internal Revenue Service, reveals that of the eight states that paid the most in 2014, six voted for Hillary Clinton in last years presidential election. Those six states collectively accounted for 47 percent of all the money raised by the taxes in 2014.

That pattern holds when we look at all states and the District of Columbia, too: These taxes as a whole both in terms of dollar amounts paid and the share of people paying them are largely coming from states that leaned Democratic in the 2016 election. That doesnt necessarily mean the specific people paying the taxes voted for Clinton, of course, but it is revealing in terms of the decisions legislators are making in supporting or rejecting the current health care reform efforts. People in states that backed Clinton in 2016 filed just 44.6 percent of all 2014 tax returns. But residents of those states accounted for 56.3 percent of all taxpayers who paid the investment tax and 59.0 percent of those who paid the Medicare surcharge. In all, states that voted for Clinton paid 17.3 billion dollars, which is 59.9 percent of the combined ACA-related taxes. In short, in repealing these taxes, Republican senators would be giving tax breaks predominantly to states that favor their Democratic opponents.

Net investment tax is a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year. Medicare surcharge is a 0.9 percent payroll tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year.

Sources: IRS, Cook Political Report

Of course, these taxes fund specific benefits, including the expansion of Medicaid and the tax credit that helps lower-income Americans buy insurance via the private health insurance marketplace. In the table below, we show the difference between the share of people in each state who receive the tax credits to buy insurance and the margin of voters the Democratic party won in the 2016 presidential election. Almost all the states where more residents pay the tax than receive the credit are blue, while most of the states where more people receive the credit than pay the tax are red.

The Obamacare credit is formally known as the Advance Premium Tax Credit.

Sources: IRS, Cook Political Report

The story is a bit different when it comes to the ACAs other major mechanism for increasing insurance coverage: the Medicaid expansion. The ACA intended to open Medicaid eligibility up to essentially all low-income Americans, not just children, the disabled, and other groups historically covered by the program. In 2012, however, the Supreme Court ruled that states didnt have to accept the expansion, and 19 states have chosen not to do so. Those states, unsurprisingly, lean red and tend to have Republican Senators; 17 have Republican governors and 17 voted for President Trump in 2016. Nonetheless, several red states, including Kentucky and Arkansas, did accept the expansion, and a large share of their populations are receiving coverage as a result.

One way to think about the tradeoffs of the ACA is to look at how many of a states residents directly benefited from the law (via tax credits or the Medicaid expansion) relative to how many paid the investment tax. That ratio shows that in certain red states, many more people are receiving financial support from the law than paying for it. In 2014, the three states with the highest ratio of beneficiaries to investment-tax payers were all won by Trump: West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas. In those three states, for every person who paid the investment tax, more than sixteen people benefited directly from either the Medicaid expansion or the tax credit that subsidizes premiums on private plans. To be clear, while the ratio of ACA taxpayers to beneficiaries may favor red states, that doesnt mean that residents of blue states havent received benefits under the law, and in far greater numbers than in those that paid additional taxes. In California, for example, 2.5 million people were newly enrolled in Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the expansion, whereas fewer than 600,000 households paid the investment tax.

Not all the ACAs taxes fall disproportionately on the wealthy. For example, the law also imposes a tax on people who dont have insurance, which affects far more people than the investment tax. (In fact, in 2014, more than twice as many people paid that tax as received tax credits for coverage.) In dollar terms, however, that tax is relatively small: It generates less than 6 percent of the amount raised by the investment tax and Medicare surcharge. Overall, 40 percent of the total cuts proposed by the Houses health care bill would go to people with the highest 1 percent of incomes, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Tax Policy Center. Again, these are people who are disproportionately likely to live in states that voted for Clinton.

The text of the Senate bill hasnt yet been released, so it is impossible to calculate the exact impact it would have on each state. It is possible that Republican leaders could sweeten the deal for specific states in order to pass the bill, a tactic Democrats also used to get Nebraskas then-Senator Ben Nelson to cast the 60th Obamacare vote in the Senate. (This cornhusker kickback was removed from the final version of the law.) But focus on state-level interests is certainly not the reason that Republicans are within striking distance of repealing the ACA.

Since our analysis suggests that Obamacare taxes are disproportionately paid by blue states and disproportionately benefit red states, in an important sense, Republican senators are lining up to vote against their states interests. Of course, the ACA taxes were originally enacted by Democrats, so prioritizing ideological and partisan commitments over the state-level costs and benefits is by no means unique to the GOP. But this trend does highlight a key fact about contemporary policymaking: Senators evaluating big-ticket bills like the ACA and the Houses American Health Care Act are looking at them through the lenses of partisanship and ideology much more than through the lens of how the bills will affect their states.

Tiger Brown, Saleel Huprikar, and Louis Lin provided research assistance. A Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority Award supports Dan Hopkins ACA-related research.

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Republicans' Obamacare Repeal Would Cut Taxes But Mostly In Blue States - FiveThirtyEight