President promotes health bill
Source: Trump still considering repeal-only legislation
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is making a weekend push to get a Republican Senate bill to repeal and replace Obamacare “across the finish line,” Trump’s top legislative aide said Sunday, maintaining that a repealonly option also remained in play if Republicans can’t reach agreement.
Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, said Trump was making calls to wavering senators and insisted they were “getting close” on passing a bill.
But Short said Trump continues to believe that repeal-only legislation should also be considered after raising the possibility last Friday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has dismissed that suggestion and said he intended to proceed with legislation being negotiated over the July 4 recess.
Trump on Friday tweeted the suggestion of repealing the law right away, then replacing it later, an approach that GOP leaders and the president himself considered but dismissed months ago as impractical and politically unwise. But the tweet came amid continuing signs of GOP disagreement among moderates and conservatives over the bill. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate. Just three GOP defections would doom the legislation, because Democrats are united in opposition.
Trump’s suggestion had the potential to harden divisions within the GOP as conservatives complain that McConnell’s bill does not go far enough in repealing Obamacare while moderates criticize it as overly harsh in kicking people off insurance rolls, shrinking the Medicaid safety net and increasing premiums for older Americans.
McConnell has indicated that if Republicans fail to reach agreement, he will have to negotiate with Democrats, who want to fix Obamacare without repealing it.
Short said the White House remained hopeful after Senate Republicans submitted two versions of the bill to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring over the weeklong recess. Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing a conservative version that aims to aggressively reduce costs by giving states greater flexibility to create separate higher-risk pools. The other seeks to bolster health care subsidies for lower-income people, perhaps by preserving a tax boost on high earners.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said negotiations over the Senate bill were focusing on ways to address the issue of Medicaid coverage so that “nobody falls through the cracks,” combating the opioid crisis, as well as giving families more choice in selecting their insurance plan.
“We think that Leader McConnell and his senators within the Senate are working to try to get this piece of legislation on track,” Price said.
But conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he didn’t think a repeal-andreplace bill could win 50 votes. Both he and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have been urging McConnell to consider a repeal-only bill first.
“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with the bill we have. We’re at an impasse,” Paul said. He criticized Senate leaders, saying they were seeking to win over moderates with multibillion dollar proposals to combat the opioid epidemic and boost tax subsidies to help lower-income people get coverage.
“The bill is just being lit up like a Christmas tree full of billion-dollar ornaments, and it’s not repeal,” Paul said. “I think you can get 52 Republicans for clean repeal.”