Pence takes the lead on health care bill
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump began his all-hands meeting with Republican senators at the White House on Tuesday by saying they were “very close” to passing a health care bill, just as efforts to fast-track a vote this week collapsed.
If Republicans do manage to broker a deal — as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, pledged to do during a lively East Room back-and-forth with the president — it is not likely to be because of Trump’s involvement. Until Tuesday afternoon, the president was largely on the sidelines as the fate of one of his most important campaign pledges played out.
McConnell, who kept the president at a polite arm’s length while he oversaw negotiations over the bill, asked Trump to arrange the meeting with all 52 Republican senators during a morning phone call, in part to show senators the White House was in fact fully engaged, according to two people with knowledge of the call.
Using ties to Senate
When asked by reporters clustered on the blacktop outside the West Wing if Trump had command of the details of the negotiations, McConnell ignored the question and smiled blandly.
Trump and his staff played a critical role in persuading House Republicans to pass health care legislation in May, with the president personally calling dozens of wavering House members. But the Trump team’s heavyhanded tactics have been ineffective in the Senate, and White House officials determined that deploying Vice President Mike Pence, a former congressman with deep ties to many in the Senate, was a better bet than unleashing Trump on the half-dozen Republicans who will determine the fate of the Senate bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Trump, who is fond of telling friends he is a “closer,” became more involved over the past few days, reaching out to a few reluctant conservatives like Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who emerged from an Oval Office meeting Monday saying he was more optimistic about getting to a yes.
“The White House has been very involved in these discussions,” McConnell said in announcing that a vote on the bill was postponed until after the Fourth of July recess. “They’re very anxious to help.”
Yet over the past few weeks, the Senate Republican leadership has made it known that it would much rather negotiate with Pence than a president whose candidacy many did not even take seriously during the 2016 primaries. And some of the White House’s efforts have clearly been counterproductive.
Over the weekend, McConnell made clear his unhappiness to the White House after a super PAC aligned with Trump started an ad campaign against Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., after he said last week that he opposed the health care bill.
Ads: ‘Beyond stupid’
The majority leader — already rankled by Trump’s tweets goading him to change Senate rules to scuttle Democratic filibusters — called the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to complain that the attacks were “beyond stupid,” according to two Republicans with knowledge of the tense exchange.
McConnell, who has been toiling for weeks, mostly in private, to put together a measure that would satisfy hard-liners and moderates, told Priebus in his call that the assault by the group, America First, not only jeopardized the bill’s prospects but also imperiled Heller’s already difficult path to re-election.
McConnell and “several other” Republican senators expressed their irritation about the antiHeller campaign during the White House meeting, according to two people, one of them a senator, who were present. The move against Heller had the blessing of the White House, according to an official with America First.