WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump says it’s probably time to “just let Obamacare fail” after the latest humiliating heath bill collapse in the Senate. Still, he’s making a last-ditch effort to find some way to revive his party’s seemingly failed efforts on the bill.
Trump stayed largely on the sidelines as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struggled unsuccessfully to round up support to make good on the GOP’s years of promises to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law. But with McConnell’s third and final effort – on a repeal-only bill – looking like it, too, had collapsed, Trump urged McConnell to delay a make-or-break vote until early next week.
And the president invited all GOP senators to the White House for lunch Wednesday to discuss a path forward.
Trump pulled a similar move in June after McConnell fell short on his first health care effort, and it yielded no apparent results. Indeed Trump seated himself between two GOP senators – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who announced Tuesday they would oppose McConnell’s efforts to move forward with the latest bill.
Along with opposition from a third GOP senator, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, that was enough to kill the legislation. McConnell can lose only two votes and still move forward in the closely divided Senate.