With Republican senators returning to their states for the July 4 recess, many of them were set to face their constituents just as they have over the past several breaks. One of the senators who is reportedly undecided about how he is going to vote for the Senate's health care bill, Bill Cassidy, marked his return to a town hall in Louisiana last Friday where kept the discussion focused on flood relief efforts.
Specifically, Senator Cassidy was encouraging people to fill out the state's flood relief survey so that they could get federal dollars to relieve the pressure.
Those who were hoping he would speak on how he would vote for health care or even answer for his party's determination to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a bill that could create more issues, would be disappointed.
Cassidy controls the message
It was reported that some constituents came to the town hall prepared to ask Senator Cassidy questions about health care but that he kept his responses brief. When pressed, Republicans have said that government should not be providing health care to people because they believe that doing so is government overreach and currently, that a patient-focused system is a solution to keeping health care costs down.
As a confirmation that Republicans would rather control the message over their controversial efforts to want to replace and repeal Obamacare, Sen.
Cassidy showed that he was determined to redirect focus to other matters unless they were under his terms.
Senator using health care as distraction
Sen. Cassidy made an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press last Sunday where he was asked about President Trump's incendiary tweets against Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski. The Louisiana senator expressed frustration with journalist Chuck Todd saying that the media could not talk about anything else.
It was only then that he claimed to be interested in talking about health care rather than the President's tweets.
This appeared to be a complete contrast with going out of his way to avoid questions from his constituents about health care just days before. It should be noted that Sen. Cassidy is also a medical doctor which he mentioned when he made a comparison to being distracted in the ICU to being distracted by the President's tweets.
Cassidy defends Trump
The Louisiana senator did end briefly answering for the President's tweets saying that they were reprehensible. He also said that the President was focused on making health care better but this contradicts the reports of trump's lack of effort to legislate on the bill. It's been reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has asked Trump to not get involved in their legislation for the BCRA. When the President has been asked for details on the bill, he has provided little insight or details to show that he has any knowledge of what the bill is going to cover or that he even understands America's health care system.
Confirmation of this contradiction are with him saying at one point that the House Republican version of the bill was "mean" until he said Thursday of last week that the current ACA law should be repealed without a replacement. This would suggest a blatant contradiction with his view that the bill is mean versus how mean it would be to simply take health care away from millions.