A fifth GOP senator won’t back health bill
Republican seen as vulnerable says cuts are too deep
A key Republican senator joins four colleagues in saying he can’t support the Affordable Care Act repeal legislation, but he’s the only one in the GOP denouncing it for cutting too much rather than too little.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, perhaps the most vulnerable Republican facing reelection in 2018, said Friday he would not support the newly released Senate health care overhaul as written, dealing a serious blow to his party’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act just days before a showdown vote.
Using remarkably caustic language, Heller, who is seen as a pivotal swing vote, denounced the Senate-drafted health care bill in terms that Democrats swiftly seized upon.
“I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans,” he said at a news conference in Las Vegas, standing next to Nevada’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, who accepted federal funding in the health law to expand Medicaid.
After vowing for the last seven years to tear up what they call “Obamacare,” congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are under pressure from their conservative base to fulfill their campaign promises. But Republican lawmakers in swing states face an excruciating choice: risk angering their grass-roots supporters by walking away from the repeal effort or expose themselves to ferocious Democratic attacks by pushing through a deeply unpopular bill.
So far, five Republican senators have said they cannot vote for the Affordable Care Act repeal as written: Heller, whose concerns are with the bill’s benefits cuts, and four hard-line conservatives who say the bill is too generous.
Heller did not rule out ultimately voting for a version of the bill, leaving the battle for 50 votes ahead of a Senate showdown as early as next week still alive. But his denunciation of what is one of the pillars of Trump’s agenda gave fresh hope to Democrats that they may be able to torpedo the measure.
And it offered a needed morale boost to the Democratic Party after a trying week full of recriminations about why it lost a special congressional election in Georgia on Tuesday, the latest in a series of demoralizing defeats it has suffered this year.
“It’s an all-handson-deck moment,” said Anna Galland, the head of MoveOn.Org, an advocacy group firmly on the liberal wing of the party. “We are unified out of urgent, building-is-burning-down necessity. And health care is by far our top priority.”
Scrambling to halt or at least slow the Senate’s repeal effort, a range of Democratic and progressive leaders said Friday that they intended to intensify pressure on Republican lawmakers.
Liberal groups have already organized protests against the bill, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., plans to lead a campaign-style tour this weekend through West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, three states with Republican senators that also expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.