GOP slowly replacing talk of full Obamacare repeal
As administration starts to shift tone, legislators push for a bipartisan fix
As the administration begins to soften its rhetoric, more legislators push for a bipartisan effort to fix the Affordable Care Act.
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — The Trump administration, thwarted in several attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, notably shifted tone Wednesday, opening the door for a bipartisan plan to “fix” the law.
The change came even as a fight escalated between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over who is to blame for the Republican Party’s failure to repeal the law also known as Obamacare.
“Both folks in the House and the Senate, on both sides of the aisle frankly, have said that Obamacare doesn’t work, and it needs to be either repealed or fixed,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on the Fox News program “Fox & Friends.” “So the onus is on Congress,” he said.
Talk of fixing the law is new for most Republicans. Price and Trump have long focused only on repealing or replacing it.
The Republican-controlled Congress, despite seven years of campaign promises, has been unable to come up with a repeal plan that can pass both chambers. And Democrats, who see the law as a signature accomplishment for both former President Barack Obama and their party, have been unwilling to participate in a repeal effort.
Both sides agree that changes are needed to stabilize insurance markets. Large insurers have pulled out of several markets, leaving some consumers with few or no plans from which to choose.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not back away from Price’s wording when asked whether the administration is serious about a plan to fix the law, rather than repeal it.
“We are always looking for best ways to improve and fix the broken Obamacare system,” she said in an email.
The shift comes soon after lawmakers intensified their own bipartisan efforts. Last week, Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, DWash., the committee’s senior Democrat, announced plans to begin working on legislation to stabilize the markets.
Even as talk of bipartisanship increases, Republicans remain concerned about political fallout from their core voters, many of whom may be angered by the failure to repeal the existing law.
Tension over that problem prompted the recent infighting between McConnell and the administration. McConnell told an audience in his home state Monday that Trump had raised expectations unrealistically, in large part because of his inexperience with legislating.
“Our new president has, of course, not been in this line of work before,” McConnell said at a Rotary Club in Florence, Ky. “And I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”
McConnell added that people think Congress is underperforming partly because “artificial deadlines, unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating, may not have been fully understood.”
That elicited a response from Trump, who used Twitter during his 17-day stay at his New Jersey golf course to fire back.
“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so,” he wrote. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”
The public nature of the intra-party fight is unusual. While relations between presidents and congressional leaders from the same party may often be tense, conflicts seldom break out into the open.
In another divide over the ACA within the GOP, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suggested that fellow Republican Sen. John McCain’s brain tumor and the after-midnight timing were factors in the Arizona lawmaker’s decisive vote last month against the GOP health care bill.
In a radio interview Tuesday with the “Chicago’s Morning Answer” program on WIND, Johnson answered questions about the collapse of the years-long Republican effort to repeal and replace the ACA, his criticism of the process and McCain’s dramatic vote, along with those of GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, to kill the proposal.
“He has a brain tumor right now. That vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning. Some of that might have factored in,” Johnson said.
Responding to Johnson, McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo said Wednesday, “It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and friend. Senator McCain has been very open and clear about the reasons for his vote.”
Johnson issued a statement on Wednesday, saying: “I’m disappointed I didn’t more eloquently express my sympathy for what Sen. McCain is going through. I have nothing but respect for him and the vote came at the end of a long day for everyone.”