President Trump applied more pressure on an already rushed and secretive effort to pass a repeal of the Affordable Care Act before the Fourth of July recess.
During a White House meeting Tuesday with a group of Senate Republicans, the President was asked what his timetable was for signing a new healthcare bill.
“As soon as we can do it,” Trump responded.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already set-up a fast track for a repeal bill. Last week he invoked Rule 14, which would allow the measure to bypass committees of jurisdiction, and be placed directly on the floor of the Senate for a full vote.
One problem with the expedited schedule is that, so far, there is no actual GOP healthcare plan in the Senate. The proposal that passed the House in May was deemed dead on arrival in the Senate.
But the latest reporting out of Capitol Hill suggests that the contours of a Senate plan are beginning to resemble the House bill. That includes repealing the Medicaid expansion proposal and untethering insurance companies from Obamacare regulations that prohibited discrimination against women, older people and those with preexisting conditions.
A completed draft of the legislation was supposed to be finished ahead of Tuesday’s Senate Republican caucus luncheon, but aides admitted to Axios that there are still ongoing discussions about a final product.
In order to pass the legislation before the next recess, which commences at the end of June, a bill would need to be finalized in the next few days, giving the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) a chance to score it—a process that usually takes two weeks.
That leaves very little time for a public review of the bill and open hearings on it.
“I don’t know there’s going to be another hearing,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said earlier this month, when asked if his Finance Committee would hold any hearings on the issue.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the same panel, was flabbergasted by the chairman’s admission.
“We don’t even know. We have no idea what’s being proposed,” she said during a hearing last week. “There’s a group of guys in a backroom somewhere that are making these decisions.“
McCaskill reiterated that point upon news that Senate Republicans were trying to restrict TV journalists’ access to Senators.
Journalists were informed Tuesday morning that they would no longer be able to stake-out lawmakers in the halls of Congress to conduct on-camera interviews. The new guidelines reportedly also required pre-approval with the Senators’ office and the Senate Rules Committee before any interviews could be conducted.
“Huh? Maybe worried you will catch the group of guys writing health care bill in back room somewhere,” McCaskill tweeted.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) had the same thought on social media. “This is Senate GOP trying to hide from their terrible health care bill. America – demand answers,” he tweeted.
After a bit of an uproar by the press and both Democrats and Republicans, the Senate Rules Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) released a statement saying there would be no new restriction after all.
Should Republicans be able to finalize a healthcare repeal plan and get it scored by the CBO in time, Majority Leader McConnell plans to move it through the Senate through reconciliation—a process by which budget-related matters can be approved by a simple majority vote, thus taking a Democratic filibuster off the table.
In 2010, Democrats in the Senate also used reconciliation to pass the Affordable Care Act.
