Moderate Senate Democrats threatened Republicans that they would own any “avoidable chaos” by repealing Obamacare without a replacement, stressing instead to work with them on fixes to the controversial law.
The letter from 13 senators was released Thursday, a day after Democrats unanimously opposed a procedural vote on a budget resolution that sets Obamacare repeal in motion.
The senators said Republicans will have to face any consequences from repealing the law without a replacement.
“By moving forward with no plan in place for the future of our health care system, those who support repeal assume the responsibility of mitigating unnecessary and avoidable chaos this will create,” according to the letter led by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Republicans plan to use a procedural move called reconciliation that lets them repeal the healthcare law via a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than getting the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
The budget resolution directs House and Senate committees to draft repeal legislation by Jan. 27.
Republicans are going to repeal the law without an immediate replacement, likely giving themselves a few years to craft and approve a replacement.
Democrats in the letter said that the American people deserve a “constructive bipartisan conversation about improvements we know need to be made to our health care system, and that will require time for the two sides to work together.”
The letter included some senators who are up for re-election in 2018 and reside in states that President-elect Trump carried, such as Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
Notably absent from the letter is moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is also up for re-election and is a member of Senate Democratic leadership. Manchin also skipped a meeting Wednesday with President Obama and congressional Democrats on defending Obamacare.
The other lawmakers who signed were Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Tom Carper, D-Del., Chris Coons, D-Del., Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Mark Warner, D-Va., Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Angus King, I-Maine.
The letter was released after some Republicans expressed wariness about repealing Obamacare without a replacement. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against the budget resolution on Wednesday because repeal without a replacement will add too much money to the federal deficit.
Other moderate Republicans have hinted at wanting to slow down on repeal.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Tuesday that he wants a slower approach, telling reporters that he is “always worried about something that took a long time in the making and we’ve got to concentrate our efforts to making sure that we do it right so that nobody’s left out,” according to a CNN report.
Democrats have been slamming Republicans for aiming to repeal the law without a replacement, pointing out that insurers may flee the individual market that includes Obamacare’s marketplaces due to uncertainty.
Republicans, in turn, have pushed back that marketplaces are already failing and collapsing and that any repeal will include a stable transition to a GOP replacement.
