TRUMPCARE BILL DEAD ... AGAIN
2 more GOPers nix Trumpcare, sinking it in Senate
MAJORITY LEADER Mitch McConnell’s fight to roll back Obamacare was dealt a near-fatal blow Monday when two more GOP senators opposed his replacement bill.
Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Mike Lee of Utah dropped their news simultaneously Monday, just hours after the Senate was brought back into session.
McConnell’s bill “fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address health care’s rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one,” said Moran.
Lee said McConnell’s legislation doesn’t repeal enough of the ACA’s taxes and “it doesn’t go far enough in lowering premiums for middle-class families, nor does it create enough free space from the most costly Obamacare regulations.”
Moran and Lee now join GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky in opposing the Senate health care bill that President Trump strongly supported.
Democrats, most major medical groups and insurers opposed the bill.
After his defeat Monday, McConnell said he will try again — this time with an Obamacare repeal bill that Senate Republicans approved 52-47 in December 2015.
Former President Barack Obama a month later vetoed the legislation that would have overturned ACA and stripped federal funding from Planned Parenthood.
McConnell said he plans to have the Senate vote on the 2015 legislation, which gives lawmakers two years to create a new system before the repeal goes into effect.
But there’s no guarantee this last-ditch effort will go anywhere, since many moderate Republican senators have said they won’t vote to repeal without a viable replacement.
President Trump, who urged Republicans to support McConnell’s replacement legislation at a dinner just hours before it fell apart, wasn’t ready to concede Monday night.
“Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!” Trump tweeted after Moran and Lee announced their defection.
Their opposition left McConnell at least two votes shy of what he needed to begin a debate on his overhaul of the Affordable Care Act.
The Kentucky senator already delayed a vote on the bill last week because Sen. John McCain (RAriz.) was recovering from surgery.
McConnell also had to cancel a vote last month when it became clear his first version didn’t have enough support — a crippling blow to the Republican Party’s sevenyear caterwauling, boasts they could produce a better bill and struggle to overturn one of former President Barack Obama’s signature achievements.