Skip R&R, just repeal & replace: Sasse says

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse on Sunday joined the chorus of GOP voices calling for the Senate to cancel its August recess if lawmakers are unable to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

“Republicans ran on repeal and on replace. The president ran on repeal and replace. We’ve been working on that for four months, and if [Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell can get us across the finish line in a combined repeal and replace, I’d like to see that happen. It needs to be a good replace,” the Nebraska lawmaker told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

But, Sasse added, if the Senate can’t accomplish a simultaneous repeal and replace, legislators should keep working and pass a repeal bill with a delay in implementation that would give them time to put together a replacement.

“We should do a repeal with a delay. Let’s be clear, I don’t want to see anybody thrown off the coverage they have now. I would want a delay so we could get to work,” he said before urging President Trump to call on the Senate to cancel the August recess.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an opponent of the current Senate health-care bill, said lawmakers were at an “impasse” with the measure.

“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with the bill we have,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re at an impasse. Every time you add more federal money, more spending for the big-government Republicans, it offends the conservatives.”

“The bill is just being lit up like a Christmas tree, full of billion-dollar ornaments,” Paul added.

He said he favors separating repeal and replace into two bills and working on them concurrently.

Last week, after McConnell delayed a vote on overhauling ObamaCare, a group of Republican senators — including Joni Ernst (Iowa), Mike Lee (Utah) and David Perdue (Ga.) — wrote to the leader urging him to cancel the recess to work on legislative priorities.