The two “hero” Republicans who helped 32 million Americans from losing their health coverage were scolded on Wednesday by President Donald Trump. While Kansan Sen. Jerry Moran – one of the two senators who tweeted on Monday night that they cannot support the GOP-backed health care act – managed to flee reporters by darting from them over the subway tracks in the Senate, but he did not escape the president’s sharp tongue.
At a lunch with Republicans in another bid to push for the repeal of Obamacare and craft a replacement legislation, Trump said he was surprised that some senators, whom he considered friends, may no longer be on his friend list anymore.
“I have to get ‘em back,” he vowed, The New York Daily News reported.
I will be having lunch at the White House today with Republican Senators concerning healthcare. They MUST keep their promise to America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017
Veiled threats
Another legislator, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller – who also opposed the bill earlier than the four – was made to sit on the “hot seat,” literally beside Trump who hinted the senator might lose in the 2018 reelection. “He wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?” the real estate billionaire asked.
The veiled threats were not just for the three other senators – Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins – but all the Republican senators whom the president urged not to leave Capitol Hill for the August break unless “we can give our people great health care.” The new pressure is a U-turn from Trump’s Tuesday stand when in the specter of the defeat of the GOP bill, he said that the administration would just let Obamacare die without a replacement.
He said it after three female Republican senators tweeted on Tuesday that they will not support legislation that would repeal the Affordable Care Act but replace it with another Health Care Bill within two years.
CBO report
He told the GOP senators at the White House lunch, in a renewed bid to kill President Barack Obama’s legacy, that he intends to keep his campaign promise, and the rest of the Republican legislators in the Senate must keep theirs too, The New York Post reported.
Beyond political rhetoric, a new analysis released on Wednesday by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office would explain why some GOP lawmakers are willing to gamble on a different strategy to win another term.
The CBO report estimated that compared with Obamacare, the Better Care Reconciliation Act – which Trump is again pushing – will cause 17 million American to lose health coverage in 2018 which would further rise to 27 million in 2020, and 32 million in 2026. At the same time, premiums would go up significantly, Fortune reported.
