GOP rebellion forces delay of vote on bill
At least five GOP senators— conservatives and moderates— said they would vote against beginning debate on the health care bill. How Florida’s Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott influenced the bill’s delay. Protesters gather outside Rubio’s office.
WASHINGTON — Minutes after he delayed a vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare when a number of Republican senators said they could not support it as written, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell retreated to his office.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) were waiting for him.
The pair met with McConnell for half an hour, and after the meeting Rubio said the vote delay was “helpful to us.”
“I’m going to view this entirely through the lens of what this means for Florida,” Rubio said. “The one unique advantage that we have being from Florida is thatwe have done what this law is going to ... encourage other states to do.”
Rubio and Scott never publicly opposed the bill, which stalled after a number of senators told McConnell they could not vote for the legislation in its current shape. But their tepid response, with Rubio summoning health care staffers from Tallahassee to review the bill and Scott declining to say hewould vote for it if he could, is evidence of the work Senate leaders need to do to get a bill passed.
“Look, legislation of this complexity almost always takes longer than anybody else would hope,” McConnell said. “But we are going to press on. We think the status quo is unsustainable for all the obvious reasons we have discussed over and over and over again. And we are optimistic we are going to get to a result that’s better than the status quo.”
Scott, an ally of President Donald Trump and former health care executive, packed his day in the capital with meetings and television appearances, with the goal of stressing to Republican senators that the bill to repeal Obamacare must not penalize states like Florida that chose not to expand Medicaid.
“We’re not treated the sameway as a state like New York,” Scott said, arguing that New York gets $23 billion in federal dollars for health insurance while Florida gets $14 billion, despite Florida having more people to cover than New York.
“Our federal tax rates aren’t lower, so why should we get paid less?”
But Florida gets paid less because it declined to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The state left as much as $66 billion in federal money on the table over 10 years after it decided not to expand Medicaid. Scott countered that expanding Medicaid would cost Florida$ a year, but the actual cost to the state would have been closer to $500 million and wouldn’t kick in for a few years.
Tuesday was supposed to have been a day of last-ditch lobbying for Scott as Senate leaders said the bill would come up for a vote by the end of the week. He now has some time, although Senate Republicans are facing pressure fromall fronts. The party base that supports Trump is upset with moderates like Nevada Sen. Dean Heller for his opposition to the bill, while conservatives like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said they will not vote for the bill inits current form because it doesn’t go far enough to overturn Obamacare.
“There’s constant conversations and it’s changing, so you can’t say where it is right now,” Scott said less than two hours before Senate leaders announced the bill was being delayed. “Let’s all focus on the biggest here, and the biggest issue here is cost reduction. What I’m talking about to him right no ware the things that are important to our families and our taxpayers.”
Scott also met with Vice President Mike Pence, a former congressman who enjoys close relations with many Republicans on Capitol Hill. Pence declined to answer questions as he left the GOP’s weekly luncheon where the delay was first announced.
Rubio said the delay won’t faze him, even though he’s likely going to be bombarded with protests at his offices around the state during the July 4 recess in an attempt to influence his vote.
“I ran for election and reelection as an opponent of Obamacare,” Rubio said. “I don’t think I’ve ever misled people aboutmy views on it. I’m in favor of repealing it, we’re just debating how to do it.”
After the meeting with McConnell, Rubio joined his Republican Senate colleagues on a bus to the WhiteHouse.
“I think the Senate bill is going to be great,” Trump said at the WhiteHouse.
Rubio and Scott never publicly opposed the bill, but gave it a tepid response.