GOP/HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA)/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Senate Republicans have no plans to revive their party-line attempts to repeal Obamacare this summer, despite President Donald Trump’s increasing frustration over the chamber’s failed attempts last week to gut the law.
‘Until somebody shows us a way to get that elusive 50th vote, I think it’s over,’ said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican. “Maybe lightning will strike and something will come together but I’m not holding my breath.”
Trump over the weekend taunted his own party’s slim majority, saying on Twitter they’d look like ‘fools’ and ‘total quitters’ if they abandon the health care push. But GOP senators appear unmoved.
For one, they’re down one vote in the short term, with Sen. John McCain being treated for cancer in Arizona.
But as the collapse of the repeal effort in the Senate last week showed, even with McCain the GOP majority is so narrow that it may never be possible to pass major, partisan health care reform through the chamber. That increasingly appears to be the case despite White House efforts to promote a bill by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would send federal health care funding to the states in the form of block grants.
Privately, Republican aides said there is essentially no chance McConnell will take another shot at repealing Obamacare soon. On Monday [7-31-17], there was discussion among Senate staffers of a ‘hard pivot to tax reform,’ one Senate aide said.
Publicly, senators were only slightly more charitable to the president’s demand that the GOP put everything on hold until it passes a health care law.”
-Burgess Everett and Jennifer Haberkorn, “Republicans ignore Trump’s Obamacare taunts,” Politico, July 31, 2017 07:13pm