Obamacare repeal not on GOP’S agenda for this year
WASHINGTON — Arizona’s new senator says he’d vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
It could well be too little, too late. Top Republicans are showing no appetite to quickly refight the repeal battle.
“I’m not going to be asking for another vote on that this year,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-texas, said last week when asked if he favored reopening the issue in a post-election session. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-LA., said, “We need to win this election and then get more seats next year.” Each is his party’s chief vote counter.
Republicans seemed to gain ground last week when Sen. Jon Kyl replaced John Mccain, who died in August from brain cancer. Kyl said in a brief interview that he would have backed the measure that Mccain opposed, a pivotal vote that would have sustained the repeal drive.
“It seems to me that would have been a useful thing to do,” Kyl said.
Yet the two other GOP senators who voted no, Maine’s Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, haven’t relented. With Republicans controlling the Senate 51-49, the GOP remains short of the 50 votes they’d need.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., has ruled out revisiting the health care fight before November’s midterm elections, citing the crush of spending and other bills facing Congress.
“I haven’t even thought about it,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-wis.
A lame-duck session would last barely over a month and likely would be absorbed with lingering budget disputes and picking the new Congress’ leaders. That would leave scant time for health care work.
Explaining the diminished urgency, Cornyn cited Congress’ repeal last December of the tax penalty on people who don’t buy individual insurance.