The White House is insisting that the US Senate resume efforts to repeal and replace the nation’s health care law, signaling that US President Donald Trump stands ready to end required payments to insurers this week to let “Obamacare implode” and force congressional action.
“The president will not accept those who said it’s, quote ‘Time to move on,’” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said.
Those were the words used by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after the stunning early Friday morning defeat of the Republican bill to repeal former US president Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
McConnell is already moving to other business, having scheduled Senate consideration on a judicial nomination to start yesterday.
Conway said Trump was deciding whether to act on his threat to end cost-sharing reduction payments, which are aimed at trimming out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people.
“He’s going to make that decision this week, and that’s a decision that only he can make,” Conway said.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, when asked on Sunday if no other legislative business should be taken up until the Senate acts again on health care, responded “yes.”
While the House of Representatives has begun a five-week recess, the Senate is scheduled to work two more weeks before a summer break.
McConnell has said the unfinished business includes addressing a backlog of executive and judicial nominations, coming ahead of a busy agenda next month that involves passing a defense spending bill and raising the government’s borrowing limit.
“In the White House’s view, they can’t move on in the Senate,” Mulvaney said, referring to health legislation. “They need to stay, they need to work, they need to pass something.”
Trump warned over the weekend that he would end federal subsidies for health care insurance for Congress and the rest of the country if the Senate did not act soon.
The subsidies, totaling about US$7 billion a year, help reduce deductibles and copayments for consumers with modest incomes.
Senator Susan Collins, one of the three Republican senators who voted on Friday against the Republican health bill, said she is troubled by Trump’s claims that the insurance payments are a “bailout.”
She said Trump’s threat to cut off payments would not change her opposition to the Republican health bill and stressed the cost-sharing reduction payments were critical to make insurance more affordable for low-income people.
Conway spoke on Fox News Sunday, Mulvaney was on CNN’s State of the Union and Collins was on CNN and NBC’s Meet the Press.
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