Republican Senate leaders will not vote this week on a last-ditch effort to repeal ObamaCare, marking the second defeat of the health care plan in the GOP-controlled chamber since President Trump won the White House.
We dont have the votes, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who sponsored the legislation with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Tuesday. We made the decision since we dont have the votes that well postpone that vote.
But Graham said the fight to overhaul President Barack Obamas 2010 Affordable Care Act will continue.
Were going to get there, Graham said. Were going to fulfill our promise.
Their plan struggled to gather enough votes to ensure passage in the Senate.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced Monday that she couldnt support it, despite Senate GOP leaders lobbying her throughout the weekend and sweetening the bill to benefit her home state.
Sweeping reforms to our health care system and to Medicaid cant be done well in a compressed time frame, especially when the actual bill is a moving target, Collins said.
She became the third Republican senator to oppose the bill, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
McCain cast the deciding vote in July against an earlier version of legislation that would have repealed ObamaCare, returning to the Senate floor just 11 days after he had surgery to remove a brain tumor.
The GOP needed at least 50 votes, with Vice President Mike Pence poised to cast the tie-breaking vote because no Democrats are supporting the bill. We basically ran out of time, said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a co-sponsor of the bill.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump said he was disappointed in certain so-called Republicans who did not support Graham-Cassidy.
While he wouldnt say whether he wanted senators to call a vote on the legislation, the president vowed that at some point there will be a repeal and replace.
But well see whether that point is now or whether it will be shortly thereafter, he said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday, said Democrats would work with their Republican colleagues to fix the health care law.
Once this repeal effort is gone, this repeal and replace, were willing eager to sit down and come up with bipartisan improvements and do it in the regular order, the New York Democrat said.
By pushing the vote past this week, Republicans lose the ability to pass it with a simple majority.
Because of a Senate budget regulation that expires at the end of this month, any effort to pass it would require 60 votes.
With Post wires
Poster Comment:
The GOP's latest version of Romney-GruberCare has failed.
I decided to drop over here to see if you were online. And you just happened to post this thread. You probably saw he pulled his Hip Hip Hooray thread (what, was he born in the 1890s?).
So how long does Stone have you in his doghouse, a week?
I wouldn't say I was missing you exactly but I did think of you once or twice, hence I checked here for you.
Republicans continue to live up to their billing: they can't govern when in a majority.
With the exception of Whites, the rule among the peoples of the world, whether residing in their homelands or settled in Western democracies, is ethnocentrism and moral particularism: they stick together and good means what is good for their ethnic group." -Alex Kurtagic