Senate Republicans shouldn’t expect sympathy from President Trump if they fail to pass a healthcare bill before leaving Washington for the truncated August recess.
The president continues to signal that he’ll cast blame on Senate Republicans, rather than Democratic obstructionism, if the Better Care Reconciliation Act doesn’t land on his desk in coming weeks.
“I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me,” Trump told Pat Robertson in an interview for the Christian Broadcast Network on Wednesday. “For years, they’ve been talking about repeal, replace, repeal, replace. I think they passed it 61 times.”
“I hope that they do it,” he said, “They’ve been promising it for years.”
That argument is an extension of one Trump made on Twitter last week, writing, “I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new HealthCare bill fully approved and ready to go!”
Trump’s can accuse reluctant senators of voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act when it amounted to nothing more than a meaningful gesture during the Obama years, then failing to follow through when the vote counted. But it marks something of an escalation in his rhetoric on the legislation. The president told Robertson he “will be very angry about it” if the bill fails.
“They have to get together and get it done,” Trump insisted.
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence pointed instead to Democrats’ obstructionism during a speech in Kentucky on Wednesday, contending, “Democrats in Congress would rather let Obamacare implode than admit their mistake and help Republican majorities rescue the American people.”
As we noted last week, if the bill fails and Trump shrugs the blame onto centrist and conservative senators such as Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, it could damage the White House’s working relationship with members whose votes will be key on future legislation.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
