Senate delays health plan vote
Congress to reconvene after July 4 recess,
Senate Republican leaders announced Tuesday that they are delaying a vote on legislation to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, giving up their goal of passing the bill before Congress adjourns for the July Fourth recess.
“We’re going to continue the discussions within our conference on the differences that we have that we’re going to try to litigate,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters after informing GOP senators of the delay. “We’re still working on trying to get to at least 50 people in a comfortable place” to vote for the bill.
President Trump told Senate Republicans to keep trying.
“We have really no choice but to solve this situation,” Trump said after inviting GOP senators to the White House for a late-afternoon meeting. “Obamacare is a total disaster.”
It had become clear since the bill was released last Thursday that McConnell did not have enough votes among his own GOP members to advance the legislation to the floor this week. Conservatives complained that the bill does not go far enough to repeal Obamacare, while moderates feared it would hurt their constituents by throwing too many people off Medicaid. McConnell needs at least 50 of the 52 GOP senators to vote for the bill. Vice President Pence can break a 50-50 tie.
GOP leaders said they will continue negotiating with their members to try to reach consensus on a bill they can bring up after the recess. Many senators had complained that the vote was being rushed, giving them little time to study the proposal.
“I’m hopeful,” said Sen. David Perdue, R- Ga., after leaders decided to delay the vote. “I think this gives us ... breathing room.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said “the hope is we can at least have an agreement on what we can get enough votes on this week and turn to it as soon as we come back, but we’ll see.”
Senate leaders decided to delay the vote after it became clear that they couldn’t even clear a procedural hurdle to bring the bill up for consideration. Four Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky — said they would vote against a motion to bring the bill to the Senate floor without significant changes.
Johnson said he was grateful for the delay.
“Again this is very difficult and the pressure we’re under timewise is these (insurance) markets that are collapsing under Obamacare,” he said.
Leaders now have more time to make changes in the bill to make it more attractive to critics. They could add more money to fight opioid addiction, which has hit states such as Ohio and West Virginia especially hard.
The projected reduction in the deficit provided by the bill gives McConnell about $200 billion to put toward opioids, Medicaid or funding for rural hospitals — all things that could help win over some senators.