Negotiating a health care compromise that would deliver 50 Senate Republican votes is damn near impossible.
That’s why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after insisting that the vote had to happen before the July 4 recess, postponed the vote earlier this week. The votes weren’t there — or even close to there.
McConnell has spent the 72 hours since announcing the unscheduled delay trying to craft a series of tweaks that would simultaneously win support from conservatives who think the bill doesn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare and centrists who worry the bill leaves too many people uninsured. This is delicate and painstaking work, trying to find the exact right balance to lose only two Republican senators and pass the bill while dealing with the very real possibility that no such “right balance” exists.”
Into that legislative china shop comes President Donald Trump. “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!,” Trump tweeted at 6:37 am Friday morning.
BOOM goes the dynamite!
Trump, who repeatedly insisted earlier this year that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the passage of a new Republican health care bill would be close to simultaneous, appears, according to CNN’s Phil Mattingly, to have gotten the idea of repeal then replace from Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. Sasse immediately tweeted his praise for the idea: “Glad you agree, Mr Pres. If no agreement next wk, 2 steps: 1. Repeal 1st; then 2. Spend August full-time on replace.”
Here’s how to think about what Trump’s tweet does to McConnell and his ongoing negotiations: You and a big group of friends (9 or so) are going out to dinner. They are picky people. You’ve finally narrowed down your restaurant choices to two. Then, just as you are on the verge of deciding, some other dude you only sort of know comes in and says “Have you guys thought of this other place we could eat?”
It would be a giant pain in the butt right? (I have been in this situation before. It’s the worst.) Well, that’s what Trump just did.
Now, even as McConnell tries to button-hole his Republican colleagues to make hard political choices, there’s an escape hatch offered by the president. And, when you have options you really don’t like, anything else sounds great.
It’s at this point I’ll note that repeal without immediate replacement is not at all popular. In a March CNN/ORC poll, just 17% thought Republicans should “repeal parts of the law as opportunities arise, regardless of whether a replacement is ready.” Almost 6 in 10 (59%) of people thought Congressional Republicans should “repeal parts of the law only if replacements can be enacted at the same time.”
Of course, the current Senate health care bill is even less popular than that, with just 12% of people in a recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll approving of the law.
In short: It’s not a good situation for Mitch McConnell. But Donald Trump just made it even tougher.