Trump will take health care credit or cast blame
If congressional Republicans succeed in repealing and replacing the Obama-era health law, expect a big Rose Garden celebration with President Donald Trump taking credit.
If they fail? Trump has already indicated he will hold Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responsible, setting up an intraparty blame game that could be devastating for the GOP.
“After all of these years of suffering thru ObamaCare, Republican Senators must come through as they have promised!” Trump said in a tweet early Friday while in Paris.
Trump has made it clear that the onus for delivering a major Republican achievement and fulfilling seven years of those promises is on the six-term Kentucky senator, who is battle-hardened by legislative negotiating — and not on the president and author of “The Art of the Deal.”
“Mitch has to pull it off. He’s working very hard. He’s got to pull it off,” Trump said in an interview for the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.”
Trump has cast himself as a bystander in the monthslong process. “I will be at my desk, pen in hand!” he tweeted Friday as he described the wait to sign a bill erasing much of former President Barack Obama’s 2010 law.
Trump is reminding GOP lawmakers who promised so often to repeal and replace, and voted repeatedly but never finally to do it, that they better not blow this best shot.
And if they do, “I will be very angry about it, and a lot of people will be very upset,” the president has said.
After brokering deals with individual lawmakers before a health care bill barely made it through the House in May, Trump has largely stayed on the sidelines as the Senate has dealt with the issue.
That’s partly because McConnell had made his preference clear that Trump keep out of Senate business, according to associates. Trump has mostly acceded to the request, partly because McConnell had earned his respect by shepherding conservative jurist Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court confirmation in April. That still stands as Trump’s most significant achievement since taking office.
But McConnell’s stewardship of the health care issue has proved less adroit. He had to abruptly cancel a vote last month on a bill he drafted largely in secret after it became clear support was lacking. He’s now struggling to nail down votes to pass the latest version next week.
The president has shown some patience with McConnell’s predicament, telling reporters on Air Force One on the way to France that “the only thing more difficult than peace between Israel and the Palestinians is health care.” He then repeated his confidence in a successful outcome.
But he has delivered no major speech in six months on health care either before Congress or outside Washington, addressing it only in a few tweets and a couple of asides at rallies in Iowa and elsewhere.
Pressed on what the president is doing to secure the votes for the Senate bill, White House aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration has provided “technical assistance throughout the process.”
In comparison, Obama aggressively used the bully pulpit of the presidency to secure passage of his Affordable Care Act, with at least five town halls in Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado and Virginia, primetime speeches to Congress, health care summits at the White House and elsewhere, and personal lobbying of lawmakers.
GOP lawmakers insist that Trump has been helpful, though sometimes they’ve struggled to depict exactly how. But his distance from the process could help him to avoid blame if failure is the outcome.