Sen. Tom Cotton is very clear that he won’t support the present House bill on Obamacare replacement
President Donald Trump is learning quickly that sometimes in Washington that friends can be harsh. As healthcare legislation being pushed by the White House and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) in hopes of getting a bill on the president’s desk by the Easter recess, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wants to slow the process down.
Sen. Cotton has been a staunch supporter of President Trump, but he leads a group of at least six members of the GOP in the upper chamber that think the House is moving way too fast on the Repeal and Replacement of Obamacare.
During a meeting with the press late Thursday afternoon Sen. Cotton made it clear he is in no rush. “No normal American cares whether a health care bill passes before the Easter recess or the Memorial Day recess or any other recess,” the Arkansas Republican told reporters. “They don’t care that we get health care done fast. They care that we get it done right.”
Sen. Cotton, generally seen as a Trump ally, blasted the House Thursday morning, accusing them of ramming health care through the same way that Democrats did eight years ago.
“House health-care bill can’t pass Senate w/o major changes. To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don’t get it fast,” Cotton tweeted Thursday morning.
Cotton added one more point: “What matters in long run is better, more affordable health care for Americans, NOT House leaders’ arbitrary legislative calendar.”
Part of the problem for many strongly Conservatives in the Senate is no one yet knows how much the plan will cost. A large number of Republican Senators have said they simply don’t want to weigh in without seeing the impact the Congressional Budget Office determines in its “score” of the proposal.
“It’s kind of crazy they’re voting without a score,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said Thursday.
Even Conservative news outlets like Brietbart and The Daily Caller, who strongly support President Trump are not overly supportive of the plan Speaker Ryan is selling.
Brietbart is concerned that the Obamacare 2.0 or RyanCare as they call it could hurt Trump in the very swing states he won by close margins.
The Brietbart story cites analysis conducted by the Washington Post that shows, voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will see their tax credits decrease under Obamacare 2.0. “If you’re a 40-year-old making $75,000 a year, you’re going to get a 75 percent or higher increase to your tax credits—a beneficial situation for you,” the Post explains. “If, however, you’re a 60-year-old making $30,000 a year, you’re going to see a reduction in those tax credits (unless you live in Upstate New York or Massachusetts or parts of central Texas).”
In other words, senior citizens—who vote regularly in mid-term elections—will see their healthcare costs increase under the Republicans’ bill. The possibility of the Republican’s losing the Senate and dropping a number of seats in the House was clearly pointed out by Brietbart.
Meanwhile, in an exclusive story by The Daily Caller, on Friday penned by Peter Hassen. He quoted inside White House sources saying that President Trump was willing to listen to the Conservatives but he will not be “receptive” to a “wholesale replacement” of Republicans’ current proposed healthcare bill,
Earlier in the day on Thursday, Speaker Ryan made a bold statement that called to the urgency of passing his plan. Saying the AHCA is “the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
But at least for the moment not enough Republicans see the urgency that Speaker Ryan does. At the White House President Trump supports the bill, but he is wisely always ready to change his plan if Ryan’s falls apart along the way.
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