The Senate has dealt a devastating setback to Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, defeating a GOP \u201cskinny repeal\u201d bill early Friday morning.<\/p>\n
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Sens. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined with Democrats to oppose the measure, a major blow to President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional agenda.<\/p>\n
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McCain, who had voted for a motion to proceed to the bill Tuesday after returning to Washington following surgery for a brain tumor, held out all day, including in a news conference where he criticized the partisan process that led to the after-midnight vote.<\/p>\n
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His surprise decision came after a prolonged drama on the Senate floor. Multiple Republican colleagues, including Vice President Mike Pence, engaged in animated conversations with the Arizona senator who has long cherished his reputation as a maverick.<\/p>\n
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At one point before the final vote, Trump called Pence, who handed the phone to McCain, a source briefed on the call told CNN. The call, just off the Senate floor, was brief and ultimately unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
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Republican lawmakers have had several fits and starts this year, including a dramatic vote in the Senate earlier this week — but the failure lays bare a hard-to-swallow political reality for Republicans after months of painful negotiations and soul-searching: There is little will left in the GOP to gut a health care law that the party has been railing against for seven years.<\/p>\n
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Speaking after the vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell looked stunned and lamented the vote and the inability of the GOP to fulfill its long-term campaign pledge.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is clearly a disappointing moment,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cOur constituents have suffered through an awful lot under Obamacare. We thought they deserved better. It\u2019s why I and many of my colleagues did as we promised and voted to repeal this failed law. We told our constituents we would vote that way. And when the moment came, when the moment came, most of us did.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s time to move on,\u201d he said, moving the Senate on to the defense authorization bill.<\/p>\n
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Trump in an early morning tweet reacted to the Senate vote, writing \u201c3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!\u201d<\/p>\n
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After the vote, McCain called for a return to the committee process and criticized the partisan manner of the current health care effort — harkening back to his emotional floor speech Tuesday when he returned to Washington.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict-party line basis without a single Republican vote,\u201d McCain said in a statement. \u201cWe must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation\u2019s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people. We must do the hard work our citizens expect of us and deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
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How it failed<\/p>\n
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Shortly before 10 p.m. ET, Republican leaders finally unveiled legislation that had been closely guarded from the public — as well as their own colleagues — for days.<\/p>\n
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The legislation, referred to as a \u201cskinny repeal\u201d bill, would repeal the Affordable Care Act\u2019s individual and employer mandates and temporarily repeal the medical device tax. The bill would also give states more flexibility to allow insurance that doesn\u2019t comply with Obamacare regulations.<\/p>\n
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The bill would mean 15 million more people would be uninsured next year than under Obamacare, with 16 million more in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said in a reportreleased late Thursday night. Premiums would jump 20% next year, compared to current law.<\/p>\n
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But just hours away from a vote, which ultimately ended close to 2 a.m. ET, the Republicans were still in trouble.<\/p>\n
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McCain and several of his colleagues had thrown the Republican negotiations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate has dealt a devastating setback to Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, defeating a GOP “skinny repeal” bill early Friday morning. Sens. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined with Democrats to oppose the measure, a major blow to President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional agenda. McCain, who had voted for a motion to proceed to the bill Tuesday after returning to Washington following surgery for a brain tumor, held out all day, including in a news conference where he criticized the partisan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8742,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740\/revisions\/8742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}