WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell explored options for salvaging the battered Republican health care bill Wednesday but confronted an expanding chorus of GOP detractors, deepening the uncertainty over whether the party can resuscitate its bedrock promise to repeal President Barack Obama’s overhaul.
A day after McConnell, short of votes, abandoned plans to whisk the measure through his chamber this week, fresh GOP critics popped forward. Some senators emerged from a party lunch saying potential amendments were beyond cosmetic, with changes to Medicaid and Obama’s consumer-friendly insurance coverage requirements among the items in play.
“There’s a whole raft of things that people are talking about, and some of it’s trimming around the edges and some of it’s more fundamental,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. “Right now, they’re still kind of, ‘Can we do it?’ and I can’t answer that.”
Yet while this week’s retreat on a measure McConnell wrote behind closed doors dented his reputation as a consummate legislative seer, no one was counting him out.
“Once in Glacier National Park I saw two porcupines making love,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. “I’m assuming they produced smaller porcupines. They produced something. It has to be done carefully. That’s what we’re doing now.”
Having seen the House approve its health care package in May six weeks after an earlier version collapsed, Democrats were far from a victory dance.
“I expect to see buyouts and bailouts, backroom deals and kickbacks to individual senators to try and buy their vote,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “What I don’t expect to see, yet, is a dramatic rethink of the core” of the bill.
A day after McConnell prodded Republicans by saying a GOP failure would force him to negotiate with Schumer, he set a price for such talks — no Medicaid cuts or tax reductions for the wealthy. No negotiations seem imminent.
Facing a daunting equation — the bill loses if three of the 52 GOP senators oppose it — the list of Republicans who’ve publicly complained about the legislation reached double digits, though many were expected to eventually relent.
At the White House, President Donald Trump continued his peculiar pattern of interspersing encouragement to GOP senators trying to tear down Obama’s 2010 statute with more elusive remarks.
Trump told reporters that Republicans have “a great health care package” but said there would be “a great, great surprise,” a comment that went without explanation.
