Cotton: House ‘moved a bit too fast’ on healthcare

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday raised concerns about the speed with which the House attempted to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

“I believe that both conservatives and moderates in the House made a lot of concessions already,” Cotton said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”

“I think the House moved a bit too fast, 18 days is simply not enough time for such a major landmark legislation.”

Cotton said he doesn’t think it was feasible to release a bill “written in secret” and expect to pass it in 18 days.

The comments come after Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Friday pulled the GOP ObamaCare replacement bill amid dwindling support from Republicans.

{mosads}The move marked the first legislative defeat for President Trump, who blamed Democrats for not supporting the bill and signaled he would move on to other legislative priorities.

Cotton said on Sunday the bill’s failure can’t be attributed to one group of people.

“Ultimately I don’t think you can lay the defeat of this bill last week on any single faction in the House of Representatives,” he said.

“Some conservatives opposed it, some moderates opposed it.”

Cotton also said when the Democrats were looking to pass healthcare reform, they went through public hearings and testimony and former President Barack Obama traveled around the country and held town halls.

“I’m not saying that we needed 14 months to do this,” he said, “but I think that a more careful and deliberate approach which we now have time to do, because we’re going to have to revisit healthcare anyway, would have gotten us further down the path toward a solution.”