GOP eyes two-year goal on healthcare
• U. S. President Donald Trump says he is deeply “disappointed” by the collapse of the GOP effort to rewrite former president Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that Republicans have been talking for years about repealing and replacing “Obamacare,” and he is disappointed they couldn’t deliver.
It’s time to “let Obamacare fail,” the president said, adding,“I’m not going to own it.”
Allowing Obamacare to fail will encourage Democrats to come to the table and negotiate, he said.
Trump also said he did not blame Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the decision by two more Republican senators to come out against the legislation, effectively killing the bill.
“Most Republicans were loyal, terrific & worked really hard,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “We were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans.”
The two GOP senators — Utah’s Mike Lee and Jerry Moran of Kansas — sealed the measure’s doom l ate Monday when t hey announced they would vote “no” in an initial, critical vote that had been expected as soon as next week. That meant that at least four of the 52 GOP senators were ready to block the measure — two more than McConnell had to spare in the face of unanimous Democratic opposition.
On the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell conceded that the legislation repealing the 2010 law and replacing it with GOP- preferred programs “will not be successful.”
He said instead, the Senate would vote on legislation dismantling much of Obama’s statute that would take effect in two years, which Republicans say would give Congress time to approve replacement legislation. But such legislation seems unlikely to be approved, with many Republicans concerned the two- year gap would roil insurance markets and produce a political backlash against the GOP.
The re t r e at was t he second stinging setback on the issue in three weeks for McConnell, whose reputation as a legislative mastermind has been marred as he’s failed to unite his chamber’s Republicans behind a health overhaul package that highlighted jagged divides between conservatives and moderates. In late June, he abandoned an initial package after he lacked enough GOP support to pass.
The episode has also been jarring for Trump, whose intermittent lobbying and nebulous, often contradictory descriptions of what he’s wanted have shown he has limited clout with senators.
McConnell’s failed bill would have left 22 million uninsured by 2026, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a number that many Republicans found unpalatable.