GOP blame-a-thon over health bill crash, but no clear path
WASHINGTON — The resounding Senate crash of the seven-year Republican drive to scrap the Obama health care law incited GOP finger-pointing Friday but left the party with wounded leaders and no evident pathway forward on an issue that won’t go away.
In an astonishing cliff-hanger, the GOP-run Senate voted 51-49 to reject Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s last ditch attempt to sustain their drive to dismantle President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul with a starkly trimmed-down bill. The vote, which concluded shortly before 2 a.m. EDT, was a blistering defeat for President Donald Trump and McConnell, R-Ky., who’ve made uprooting the statute a top priority.
“They should have approved health care last night,” Trump said Friday during a speech in Brentwood, New York. “But you can’t have everything,” he added, seemingly shrugging off one of his biggest legislative setbacks.
Trump reiterated his threat to “let Obamacare implode,” an outcome he could hasten by steps like halting federal payments to help insurers reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-earning consumers.