Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after meeting with President Trump on Tuesday that he now expects the Senate to vote on healthcare legislation in “a couple weeks.”
“We’ll not be turning to the bill on the floor of the Senate until a couple weeks after this week,” McConnell told reporters at the White House.
Earlier Tuesday, Republican leaders delayed plans to vote on legislation to partially repeal and replace Obamacare by the end of this week because they didn’t have the votes from members of their own party.
Trump invited the entire Republican caucus to the White House for a discussion on healthcare Tuesday afternoon. McConnell said they are “continuing to work on reaching an agreement” and they “made good progress.”
McConnell said some members expressed concerns to the president about market reforms and Medicaid expansion.
“I think everybody around the table is interested in getting to yes,” McConnell said. “Interested in getting an outcome. Because we know the status quo is simply unacceptable, unsustainable and no action is just not an option.”
With all Democratic senators opposed to the legislation, McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes if he wants it to pass under budget reconciliation. But on Tuesday, a number of Republicans opposed the legislation, with some conservatives arguing it didn’t go far enough to repeal President Obama’s signature healthcare law.
“I had hoped as you know that we could have gotten to the floor this week, but we’re not quite there,” McConnell said. “But I think we got really good chance of getting there and it’ll just take a little bit longer.”
McConnell predicted that Obamacare will be “dealt with in one of two ways.” He said either Republicans will come together on a bill or the markets “will continue to collapse and we’ll have to sit down” with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“And my suspicion is that any negotiation with the Democrats would include none of the reforms that we would like to make both market side and the Medicaid side,” he said. “So for all of those reasons, we need to come up with a solution. The American people elected us to do that. And we’re working hard to get there.”
