The Republican Obamacare “repeal and replace” effort led the discussion on the Sunday morning talks shows, with House Speaker Paul Ryan indicating he is optimistic about prospects for the legislation, which he intends to put on the House floor Thursday.
“I feel very good about it actually,” Ryan told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “The reason I feel so good about this is because the president has become a great closer. He’s the one who has helped negotiate changes to this bill with members from all over our caucus.”
Ryan said discussions were continuing to line up support. But in a sign of some of the problems Republicans will have getting moderates on board, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, listed three areas of difficulty she has with the bill, including the prospect of millions of Americans losing their insurance, adverse effects on older Americans, and changes to Medicaid she disagrees with. Collins appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
HHS Secretary Price ruled out a clean repeal of Obamacare, which is probably what voters thought they were voting for when they turned Congress red and kept it that way, but which no one now expects. “That is not something that the president is willing to do. It’s not something that he said he would do,” Price said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi showcased some of the rhetoric that Democrats will hurl at any attempt of any kind to repeal Obamacare, saying Trump “either doesn’t know or doesn’t care” what kind of impact his healthcare bill will have on Americans. “He really doesn’t know what he is talking about. It’s most unfortunate,” she said.
Sen. Ted Cruz warned Republicans that, with premiums already on the rise, they need to steer clear of making the insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act even less affordable. “I’ve got to tell you, if Republicans hold a big press conference and pat ourselves on the back that we’ve repealed Obamacare and everyone’s premiums keep going up, people will be ready to tar and feather us in the streets, and quite rightly,” Cruz told CBS’ John Dickerson.
Trump’s budget for next year, a limited version of which was released last week, was also on the talk show menu. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said on “Meet the Press” that the White House was “trying” to bring the government’s spending into balance with its revenues within ten years, a seemingly unambitious goal for a president who was elected criticizing the debt racked up by Barack Obama. Ryan suggested at least one specific spending reduction proposal was on its way directly to the shredder, noting that spending to fund the National Institutes of Health is very popular in Congress.
The ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee, which will hold a public hearing Monday on its probe of Russia’s tampering with the 2016 election, appeared on separate shows. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said new information provided to the panel by the FBI still did not indicate the Obama administration physically tapped Trump Tower, as the current president has claimed, though the White House nwo says Trump didn’t mean it “literally.” Nunes emphasized, though, that a crime was committed when surveillance of former national security adviser Mike Flynn was leaked to the press.
The ranking member of the committee, Adam Schiff, D-Calif., asserted that Nunes must be willing to subpoena reluctant witnesses in order to ensure the credibility of the investigation. Among those could be Flynn and others close to Trump.
