02 August, 2017
Meanwhile, at the White House, officials weren't giving up on the Senate just yet. "They need to stay, they need to work, they need to pass something".
"In fact, it would be kind of miraculous if we could get it down to 25 percent or less", Hatch said in an interview with Reuters published Monday.
Republicans can push something through the Senate with 50 votes because Vice President Mike Pence can cast a tie-breaking vote.
President Donald Trump took aim at insurers on Monday in an escalating threat to cut the healthcare subsidy payments that make Obamacare plans affordable, after repeatedly urging Republican senators to keep working to undo his Democratic predecessor's health care law.
Separately, Schumer, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., met on Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill. John McCain, has since returned to Arizona for treatment for brain cancer. His absence for the next two weeks, before the Senate begins it recess, probably denies leaders their best chance of turning that vote around.
Conway said Trump was deciding whether to act on his threat to end cost-sharing reduction payments, which are aimed at trimming out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people.
The Democrats also demanded that Republicans abandon their strategy of passing tax legislation in the Senate with a simple majority under a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation.
"In the White House's view, they can't move on in the Senate", Mulvaney said, referring to health legislation. Graham said in a statement that Trump had been "optimistic" about the trio's plan.
Most of the activity on figuring out a way forward was coming from the House, where several dozen lawmakers from both parties were already talking about ways to cut a middle-of-the-road deal to come up with bipartisan ways to improve the health care situation. You have Susan Collins on one end and Rand Paul on the other end and they're not finding the middle.that being said I am going back to the grass roots, giving up is never an option.
"If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn't it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what public pays?", Trump wrote.
"I talked to the president at length about that exact issue yesterday", Mulvaney said during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union. She tells "Fox News Sunday" that Trump will make a decision soon on whether to end the insurance payments.
"The subsidies, totaling about $7 billion a year, help reduce deductibles and copayments for consumers with modest incomes", the AP reports.
In Tuesday floor remarks, Schumer said that tax reform should focus on increasing "wages for working families, improving middle class job growth, promoting domestic investment while modernizing our outdated business and global tax system".
"I certainly hope the administration does not do anything in the meantime to hasten that collapse", she added.
Trump has only guaranteed required payments to insurance companies through July. He has indicated a desire to halt the subsidies but so far has allowed them to continue on a month-to-month basis.
