GOP Leaders Have Yet to Try to Resurrect Obamacare Repeal
Senate GOP leadership acknowledged that the party has done little, if anything at all, to rally support.
Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The seemingly last Republican-authored possibility for repealing and replacing Obamacare appears to be near death. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) will formally introduce their bill on Wednesday to effectively block-grant federal health-care spending to individual states. But the measure already is opposed by a key conservative, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has argued that it doesn’t fully repeal the Affordable Care Act. And its authors have precious little time to get it passed. Arcane procedural rules dictate that Republicans can only pass a health care bill with 51 votes by the end of September, after which they’ll need 60. On Tuesday, a member of Senate GOP leadership acknowledged that the party has done little, if anything at all, to rally support behind the bill even within that crunched time frame. Asked by The Daily Beast if he has started whipping votes for Graham-Cassidy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said he had not. “It hasn't even been released yet to my knowledge, much less scored,” said Cornyn. “That would be required.”
—Andrew Desiderio
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