Trump: Health vote is last chance for GOP to do right thing
President Donald Trump pressured Republicans on Monday to approve the Senate’s wheezing health care bill, saying a showdown vote planned for this week is their “last chance to do the right thing” and erase the Obama health law.
Trump’s prodding came a day before leaders have said the Senate will vote on legislation shredding much of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Lacking the votes to push it through his chamber, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., postponed one roll call last month and hasn’t yet announced exactly what version of the measure lawmakers would consider Tuesday.
“Republicans have a last chance to do the right thing on Repeal & Replace after years of talking
& campaigning on it,” Trump tweeted Monday.
Trump’s contentious tone toward members of his own party underscored the high stakes as he tries winning Republican votes for a goal the GOP has trumpeted since the statute’s 2010 enactment.
Characteristic of his scattershot
effort on his party’s health care drive, Trump also spent the morning tweeting insults at Democrats, the news media and his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, about their handling of investigations into his 2016 campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.
On Sunday, the Senate GOP No. 3 leader said McConnell will decide soon on which health care bill to bring up for a vote, depending on ongoing discussions with GOP senators.
Sen. John Thune, R- S. D., sought to cast this week’s initial vote as important but mostly procedural, allowing senators to begin debate and propose amendments. But he acknowledged that senators should be able to know beforehand what bill they will be considering.
“That’s a judgment that Senator McConnell will make at some point this week before the vote,” Thune said, expressing his own hope it will be a repeal- andreplace measure.
Senate Republicans are considering legislation that would repeal and replace Obama’s law and a separate bill that would simply repeal “Obamacare” with a two- year delay for implementation to give Congress more time to agree on a replacement.