Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell’s efforts to persuade Republican Senators to vote for Trumpcare are foundering, and Donald Trump’s outburst this morning is the latest proof.
The more the American people learn about how painful the Senate Trumpcare bill that Republicans wrote behind closed doors would be if it were passed, the harder it’s becoming for Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump to pressure Senators – from their own party – into supporting it. Yesterday, a Trump Administration official even admitted McConnell was planning “bribes” to lure Republican Senators into voting for the bill.
Several hours ago, Trump said that if Trumpcare could not be forced down the country’s throat, Congress should repeal the Affordable Care Act outright instead. However, in January, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that repeal of the Affordable Care Act without a replacement would leave 32 million Americans without health insurance and cause premiums to double. That’s worse than Trumpcare itself would be.
“Donald Trump’s fit of desperation exposes that Trumpcare would be such a devastating blow to the country that he can’t even negotiate his own party into voting for it as they leave for the July 4th recess,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “With his discussions failing, Trump just admitted that he is willing to hurt the American people even more than the Trumpcare bill would in order to pursue his agenda of cutting taxes for the rich. That’s unacceptable. It’s beyond time for the bipartisan approach to improving the Affordable Care Act that the American people want.”
Right now only 12% of the American public supports Trumpcare, which the Congressional Budget Office calculated would take health insurance from 22 million Americans, gut the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with preexisting conditions like cancer, make costs skyrocket, and end Medicaid as we know it in order to cut taxes for the richest Americans.
As Trumpcare’s approval rating with voters continues to plummet McConnell and Trump are desperately trying to bring the Republican conference to agreement with small tweaks that would not prevent their Affordable Care Act replacement’s most devastating impact’s from hitting American families hard.
For example, Trumpcare’s unprecedented cuts to Medicaid would be a terrible setback in fighting the opioid epidemic. Yesterday, McConnell offered to add an amount of funding to compensate for the damage that was so small Ohio Governor John Kasich said it was like “spitting into the ocean.”
Published: Jun 30, 2017