Trump: Health bill not ‘far off’ passing
WASHINGTON — Making a final push, Donald Trump said he doesn’t think congressional Republicans are “that far off ” on a health-care overhaul to replace “the dead carcass of Obamacare.”
Expressing frustration, he complained about “the level of hostility” in government and wondered why both parties can’t work together on the Senate bill as GOP critics expressed doubt over a successful vote this week.
It was the latest signs of highstakes manoeuvring over one of his key campaign promises, and the president signalled a willingness to deal.
“We have a very good plan,” Trump said Sunday on “Fox & Friends.” Referring to Republican senators opposed to the bill, he added: “They want to get some points, I think they’ll get some points.”
Trump’s comments come amid the public opposition of five Republican senators so far to the Senate GOP plan that would scuttle much of former president Barack Obama’s health law.
Unless those holdouts can be swayed, their numbers are more than enough to torpedo the measure developed in private by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and deliver a bitter defeat for the president. That’s because unanimous opposition is expected from Democrats in a chamber in which Republicans hold a narrow 52-48 majority.
Trump bemoaned the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, having belittled prominent Democrats himself.
“It would be so great if the Democrats and Republicans could get together, wrap their arms around it and come up with something that everybody’s happy with,” the president said. “And I’m open arms; but, I don’t see that happening. They fight each other. The level of hostility.”
Trump has denigrated Democrats on numerous occasions, including a jab at Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the same interview: “She’s a hopeless case. I call her Pocahontas and that’s an insult to Pocahontas.”
Warren, a leading liberal and defender of the Affordable Care Act, has opposed efforts to pass a bill to replace the law. The Democrat reiterated her opposition in a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday, saying the health-care bill being pushed by Senate Republicans is a “monstrosity.”
Sunday, Trump did not indicate what types of changes to the Senate bill may be in store, but affirmed that he had described a House-passed bill as “mean.”
“I want to see a bill with heart,” he said, confirming a switch from his laudatory statements about the House bill at a Rose Garden ceremony with House GOP leaders last month.
McConnell is willing to make changes to win support in the week ahead, plenty of backroom bargaining is expected. He is pushing for a Senate deal before the July 4 recess.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House measure predicts an additional 23 million people over the next decade would have no health-care coverage, and recent polling shows only about one in four Americans views the bill favourably.
Conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he is opposing the Senate bill because it offers too many tax credits that help poorer people to buy insurance. Trump thinks Republicans in the Senate are doing the best they can to push through the bill.
“I don’t think they’re that far off. Famous last words, right? But I think they’re going to get there,” he said of Republican Senate leaders. “We don’t have too much of a choice, because the alternative is the dead carcass of Obamacare.”