June 27, 2017

Washington Post: “Replacing Obamacare has become the party’s albatross, a sprawling objective still in search of a solution. The effort to make good on a seven-year promise has cost the Trump administration precious months of its first year in office, with tax restructuring backed up somewhere in the legislative pipeline, infrastructure idling somewhere no one can see it and budget deadlines looming.”

Politico: “It will be fraught with danger while trying to balance out the demands of senators from Medicaid expansion states and hard-line conservatives looking to gut Obamacare as much as possible. And his decision to delay the bill also carries great political risk because it draws out the Obamacare fight at least a couple more weeks. But he’s decided it’s a risk worth taking.”

“The episode was a stunning twist in the GOP’s long-running saga to roll back Obamacare.”

“This will be great if we get it done, and if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like and that’s OK and I understand that very well.”

— President Trump, quoted by The Hill, on the GOP health care bill stalled in the Senate.

“Senate Republicans have been tasked with reaching a new health care agreement by Friday,” Axios reports.

“A new draft bill can then be sent to the Congressional Budget Office for analysis over next week’s recess, and then the Senate will vote on the bill when it returns.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will delay the vote to take up the health care bill until after the July 4 recess, Politico reports.

Axios: “Majority Whip John Cornyn had said earlier that the vote was going ahead. But ultimately, the decision is McConnell’s — and he was getting too much pushback from Senate Republican holdouts who said they weren’t ready to vote this quickly, without changes to the bill.”

Chris Cillizza: “The longer a bill sits out without a vote, the bigger pinata it becomes to its detractors, who find new and different things to object to it. That’s especially true for a recess week, which Republicans are headed into this weekend. And while the idea of more time allowing wavering members to be convinced sounds like capital “D” democracy, usually the members wavering have mostly made up their minds.”