Senate Republicans are just starting to put together their plan to replace Obamacare, but face a daunting calendar if they are to stick to their plan of trying to hold a vote by the fall.
Senate committee and leadership staff will start putting together a draft bill over the week-long recess. The draft is essentially a starting point for continuing talks, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters last week.
The task of drafting early legislative text follows weeks of talks among conservative and centrist Republicans.
“We have had these discussions, and it is time to draft a bill, and we will move forward when we get back,” Johnson said.
No specifics on the draft have been revealed. But the idea is not so much to get one bill together, and senators instead want to keep working through ideas, a source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi told Politico that enough consensus has been made to start writing a bill. However, he added that major fault lines remain, including how to handle phasing out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and how to control premiums but address coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
Staff connected with leadership and the Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees are writing the text. Enzi said he hopes to get a draft together by the time lawmakers return from the Memorial Day recess.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said last week that talks were starting to wind down and hinted that at some point the Senate is going to have to take a vote.
But when that vote could be is the big question, and major rifts are festering on Medicaid spending and how to lower premiums. Another sticking point is what to do about Obamacare’s individual mandate and what to do about the law’s insurer mandates.
The bill is expected to be far different from the House bill, which is called the American Health Care Act and narrowly passed this month. That bill was marred by a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that found 23 million would go without insurance over the next decade.
The estimate also examined a last-minute amendment that lets states waive some of Obamacare’s insurance requirements. CBO found that sick people who live in states that got a waiver could face much higher premiums over time.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told the Washington Examiner last week that his best guess is that the Senate could hold a vote by the August recess, which means lawmakers have only seven weeks to write text and vote.
The Senate has several pressing matters before it, including making a deal to raise the debt limit.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asked Congress for a clean debt ceiling increase before lawmakers leave for the August recess.
The debt limit isn’t the only hurdle for the Senate. Republicans have planned to use the arcane pathway called reconciliation, which lets bills be approved in the Senate with only 51 votes instead of the 60 needed to stop a filibuster.
But reconciliation has several requirements. For starters, under the budget resolution to fund the government, Congress has until Sept. 30 to use the tool to repeal Obamacare.
After that, Congress would have to pass another budget resolution, further complicating the time frame.
Sen. John McCain told NBC News about the harsh reality facing the Senate.
“Here’s the reality: We’ve got 11 weeks between now and the end of September,” McCain told NBC. “We’ve got the repeal of Obamacare, we’re talking about tax reform, we’re talking about a defense bill, we’re talking about … there’s about three other things — a looming debt limit. How do you pack all that in? And so far, I’ve seen no strategy for doing so. I’m seeing no plan for doing so.”
