August break for senators cut short
McConnell delays recess to complete work on health care bill
WASHINGTON —Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday that he would cut the chamber’s August recess in half, saying the GOP needed more time to achieve its legislative goals given the protracted negotiations over health care legislation and continued opposition from Democrats on several fronts.
“To provide more time to complete action on important legislative items and process nominees that have been stalled by a lack of cooperation from our friends across the aisle, the Senate will delay the start of the August recess until the third week of August,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.
In addition to health care and appointments, the Senate will also devote time to passing a defense authorization bill “and other important issues,” McConnell said. The Senate will now remain at work through the week of Aug. 7.
The fate of the Senate’s health care bill remained uncertain Tuesday, although McConnell told reporters he plans to release a revised bill by Thursday morning and hopes to receive a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the new version by the beginning of next week so the chamber can vote quickly.
McConnell’s announcement appeared designed to give Republicans time to move to other matters, such as raising the federal debt ceiling, after dispatching with a health care vote.
“The debt ceiling must be raised,” McConnell told reporters.
The ongoing debate highlights the party’s struggle to devise a health-care plan that can satisfy a broad swath of lawmakers.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is pressing fellow Republicans to embrace a significant change to the Affordable Care Act that would allow companies to offer minimalist plans on the private insurance market that do not meet current coverage requirements.
The Cruz proposal would let insurers offer plans, such as coverage for preventive care, mental health care and substance-abuse treatment. While this would lower premiums for some Americans, health experts say it would also siphon off younger, healthier consumers and could destabilize the market for more generous plans.
Tuesday’s lunch offered Senate Republicans the first chance to convene as a group since they left for a weeklong holiday recess, during which many constituents and industry groups attacked Senate leaders’ plan to rewrite the 2010 law known as “Obamacare.”
In an interview with Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Vice President Mike Pence endorsed the Cruz amendment and the idea that lawmakers should repeal the Affordable Care Act outright if they cannot devise an immediate substitute.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director, said it appears that Cruz’s amendment would send all of the young, healthy people who are cheaper to cover into one insurance pool — and leave sicker, older people “in a glorified high-risk pool.”
Eliot Fishman, Families USA’s senior director of health policy, and Cheryl Fish-Parchman, the group’s director, wrote in a blog post Tuesday: “Bottom line: If you create one pool for healthy people and one pool that only covers sick people — those with pre-existing conditions — you are thrusting sick people into a pool that is the very definition of a death spiral.”