Senate

Senate GOP hedges on ObamaCare repeal timeline

by Jordain Carney - 03/23/17 3:49 PM ET

Senate Republicans are starting to publicly hedge on when they’ll be able to repeal and replace ObamaCare as their House counterparts struggle to find a deal.

On Thursday afternoon, the House delayed a vote on the bill that was originally scheduled for later that day. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who has been skeptical of the House bill, said after a caucus launch that he was told that senators would have “more time” to consider a repeal and replace bill and that the House might not vote until next week.

“Well, I’m told that the House may not vote until Monday and that now [Majority Leader Mitch McConnell] is talking about a different schedule— [Supreme Court nominee Neil] Gorsuch has to come up—so it seems like there might be a little bit more time than was previously thought,” Cassidy said, asked about finishing the Senate’s work by next week.

Cassidy said he asked during the lunch about voting next week and was told that there would be “more time to consider [it].” Pressed on whether he that meant the Senate wouldn’t take a final vote next week he added: “That is my impression.”

{mosads}The hedging comes as the House Republican conference appears to be in chaos as leadership struggles to come up with 216 votes needed to pass its repeal and replace bill.

A slew of moderate GOP lawmakers are publicly coming out against the bill, while Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, also said they still don’t have a deal with the White House.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) acknowledged after the caucus lunch that the House divisions added a roadblock to Senate leadership’s plan to finish its work on ObamaCare repeal and replace next week.

“Well, it complicates our ability to get it done before the recess because the last week we’ll take up the Gorsuch nomination… but we’re still holding out hope and keeping our fingers crossed,” the Senate’s No. 2 Republican told reporters.

The potential backslide comes roughly two days after McConnell vowed that the Senate would wrap up its work next week despite appearing to not have enough support in his caucus to pass the bill.

“We will reach a conclusion on healthcare next week because we’re going to Judge Gorsuch the week after that,” McConnell said on Tuesday, asked if he thought the current timeline is realistic. “We’ll try to move it across the floor next week.”

But—in a potential sign of trouble with the healthcare bill in the House—the Kentucky Republican filed cloture on a treaty allowing Montenegro to join NATO.

The move sets up a procedural vote on 5:30 p.m. on Monday, with debate over the treaty potentially eating up the Senate’s schedule into early Wednesday.

Senators have two weeks left before they leave town for an Easter recess. They had planned to dedicate next week to ObamaCare repeal and the second to confirming President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Cornyn signaled that Republicans view Gorsuch as a higher priority, pledging that they would take up his nomination “no matter what.”

But when pressed on if the House delays mean the Senate’s work on repeal and replace could get pushed until after the Easter recess, he demurred, telling reporters, “I’ll let you speculate.”

The House bill faced an already uphill battle in the Senate, where six senators have said they can’t support it in its current form and more than a dozen additional GOP senators have publicly voiced concerns.

McConnell has only a 52-seat majority and needs at least 50 senators to support a bill if he wants to clear it through the Senate by allowing Vice President Pence to break a tie.

Though Senate Republicans are expected to offer a slew of changes when the House bill gets sent over, they also aren’t working on a back-up plan if the House can’t pass a bill.

“I’m not aware of any backup plan,” Cornyn told The Hill. “I think our Plan B is the same as our Plan A.”

In addition to needing to pass Gorsuch’s nomination lawmakers will return from the April recess and be immediately faced with a deadline to fund the government by April 28 and avoid a shutdown.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that if the Senate isn’t able to move repeal and replace next week, they will return to healthcare eventually but the timing will be up to the House.

“I think we would probably return back to healthcare,” he said. “[But] they’re going to have to lead.”

Tags John Cornyn John Thune Mitch McConnell