McCain, in Arizona to recover from the operation, issued a statement saying the GOP shouldn’t repeat Democrats’ strategy of passing Obamacare without any votes from the other party.
Congress must "hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors" to pass a health-care plan, McCain said.
House conservatives Monday immediately renewed calls for both chambers to enact a straight repeal of Obamacare, and leave the replacement debate for later.
‘Full Repeal Bill’
“Expect growing calls from conservatives for Congress to take up full repeal bill that passed under Obama,” Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter.
Lee’s and Moran’s statements came shortly after Trump met privately to discuss strategy with a small group of Republican senators, including other members of McConnell’s leadership team. Trump said in a July 12 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson that if the measure didn’t pass the Senate, “It would be very bad. I will be very angry about it and a lot of people will be very upset.”
McConnell spoke of the potential of moving to a scaled-back, bipartisan version of health legislation last month when an earlier version of his GOP-only bill collapsed because it lacked enough support.
He told a Rotary Club in Glasgow, Kentucky, that if Republicans can’t “agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.