Republican senators walked away from a narrow defeat of their effort to repeal Obamacare trying to figure out their next steps after a years-long effort collapsed early Friday morning.
The Senate voted 51-49 against a “skinny” repeal bill that gutted parts of Obamacare. The bill was expected to be a vehicle to start talks with the House on a final repeal bill, but now Republicans are going back to the drawing board with some talking of kick starting bipartisan talks.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was one of three GOP senators to vote against the repeal bill; it was also opposed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. The decision by McCain to oppose the measure caught some senators by surprise and left them disappointed.
“Sen. McCain knows how to improve the drama,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. “I had been told he might be a yes and so I was a little surprised at that.”
McCain was among several Republicans who were concerned that the House wouldn’t agree to a conference after a skinny repeal was passed. However, all of the other holdouts switched to yes after receiving assurances from House Speaker Paul Ryan that he would pursue a conference.
McCain said in a statement that the Senate needs to avoid making the same mistakes of the past that led to the “collapse” of Obamacare, which was passed with only Democratic support. He called for going back to committees and regular order and hold hearings to find a bipartisan solution.
Cassidy said that the next step could be bipartisan work. “Maybe this had to happen to actually begin a conversation,” he said retrospectively.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said after leaving the Senate floor that the result was sad and that “we’ll keep moving forward.”
He added that he was going to hold hearings on the matter.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who has been worried about cuts to Medicaid in a Senate replacement bill voted down earlier this week, was a “yes” on the skinny repeal bill.
She said that the failure to pass the bill “does not change the need to fix our broken healthcare system. As we go forward, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on bipartisan solutions that result in affordable coverage and expanded options for West Virginians.”
But not all senators shared such optimism about working with Democrats on a bipartisan healthcare package.
“I don’t believe Democrats have any interest in doing anything productive,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who orchestrated a government shutdown in 2013 to try and defund Obamacare. “For seven years they have said to the millions of people living under Obamacare we do not hear you and we are unwilling to do anything.”
Cruz added that he still believes “Obamacare will be repealed. For seven years Republicans have campaigned on one central message: that we would repeal the train wreck that is Obamacare.”
“The democratic process sometimes takes time,” he added.
The vote on Friday morning was on a bill to only repeal certain parts of Obamacare, namely the individual mandate and temporarily terminate the employer mandate. It also defunded Planned Parenthood.
The bill didn’t have a lot of fans in the Republican-controlled Senate but leadership pushed for a vote on it because it could serve as a vehicle to start talks with the House on a potential Obamacare repeal bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it is “time to move on.”
The Senate starts work on the National Defense Authorization Act on Monday.
