Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced on Tuesday that he will cut the chamber’s August recess in half because the GOP needs more time to achieve its goals given the protracted negotiations over health-care legislation as well as continued opposition from Democrats on several legislative fronts.In addition, ideological disagreement over how to revise the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues among Republicans, highlighting the GOP struggle to devise a health-care plan that can satisfy a broad number of lawmakers.
“To provide more time to complete action on important legislative items and process nominees that have been stalled by a lack of cooperation from our friends across the aisle, the Senate will delay the start of the August recess until the third week of August,” McConnell said in a statement.
The fate of the Senate’s health care bill remains uncertain this week. GOP leaders are reportedly still tweaking their health-care plan in order to attract more votes, especially from centrists. McConnell did tell reporters that he plans to unveil a new version of the legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare today and hopes to receive a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the new version next week so that the chamber can vote quickly. McConnell is aiming for a vote next week.
McConnell’s announcement should give Republicans time to move one to other matters, such as raising the federal debt ceiling, following the vote on health care.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pitching a significant change to the ACA that would allow companies to offer minimalist plans on the private insurance market that do not meet current coverage requirements. The Cruz proposal would let insurers offer plans that do not meet market requirements in the ACA, such as coverage for preventive care, mental health care, and substance-abuse treatment. While this would lower premiums for some Americans, health experts say it wuold also siphon off younger, healthier consumers and could destabilize the market for more generous plans.
Vice President Pence has endorsed the Cruz amendment and the idea that lawmakers should repeal the ACA outright if they cannot craft an immediate substitute. Republican leaders are concerned that the Cruz amendment could violate complicated budget rules that allow health-care legislation to pass with 51 votes instead of the 60 necessary for most legislation.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director, said that Cruz amendment would send all the young healthy people who are less expensive to cover into one insurance pool, leaving sicker, older people “in a glorified high-risk pool.” “If the public policy goal is to give people access to affordable insurance options, there is a set of people who would just not have access to that,” Holtz-Eakin said.
