WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump summoned GOP senators to the White House on Wednesday and told them that they must not leave town for their August recess without sending him an Affordable Care Act repeal bill to sign. Senators responded by vowing to revive legislative efforts that were scuttled twice already this week.
Success was far from assured, but Trump declared, "I'm ready to act. I have my pen in hand. I'm sitting in that office. I have pen in hand. You've never had that before."
During last year's presidential campaign, he had declared repeatedly it would be "so easy" to get rid of President Barack Obama's 2010 law.
The developments Wednesday came just a day after the GOP's Better Care Reconciliation Act collapsed in the Senate, leading Trump to say it was time to simply let the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act fail. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had indicated he was prepared to stick a fork in the Republican bill and move on to other issues, including overhauling the tax code.
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But in an apparent change of heart, Trump pressured McConnell to delay the key vote until next week, and he invited Republican senators to the White House for lunch.
There, with the cameras rolling in the State Dining Room, Trump spoke at length as he cajoled, scolded and issued veiled threats to the 49 Republicans, all aimed at wringing a health care bill out of a divided caucus that's been unable to produce one so far.
"For seven years you promised the American people that you would repeal Obamacare. People are hurting. Inaction is not an option, and, frankly, I don't think we should leave town unless we have a health insurance plan," he said.
Seated next to Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, who is vulnerable in next year's midterm elections, Trump remarked: "He wants to remain a senator, doesn't he? OK, and I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they're going to appreciate what you hopefully will do."
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After he returned to the Capitol, Heller characterized the interaction: "That's just President Trump being President Trump."
Tensions between the two have been evident for a while. After Heller came out against an earlier version of the Senate bill, a conservative organization aligned with Trump vowed to unleash an expensive advertising campaign against him, surprising many mainstream GOP allies of the senator. Later the group backed off.
Now senators aren't sure what they will be voting on in the coming days -- pure repeal, or repeal and replace.
"See, that hasn't been decided. That's part of the discussion. So that's why I don't take a position at this point," Heller said.
Sen. John Cornyn , R-Texas, McConnell's top deputy, said Wednesday, "I know it seems like we've got a bit of whiplash, but I think we're making progress."
But even he wasn't sure about the next step. "We're still discussing," he said.
Separately Wednesday, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus started the process of bringing a repeal-only bill to the House floor.
The House passed its own revision to the Affordable Care Act earlier this year. Wednesday's gambit would not only allow conservatives to vote for a straight-repeal bill but force moderates to do the same.
"The American people do not know why we did not have something on President Trump's desk on Jan. 20," said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the group's chairman. "Here we are at July 20 with nothing to show for it, and they're tired of waiting."
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has expressed opposition at various times during the monthslong health care drive, said he understood Trump's push in the dining room for repeal and replace as a call to return to the broader bill McConnell pulled back earlier this week.
"I think the president showed some real leadership here," Johnson said.
It was not clear that the lunch would change the calculus in the Senate, where McConnell has repeatedly been unable to come up with a bill that can satisfy both conservatives and moderates in his Republican conference. Two different versions of repeal-and-replace legislation fell short of votes before coming to the floor, pushing him to announce Monday night that he would retreat to a repeal-only bill that had passed Congress when Obama was in office.
But that bill, too, died a premature death as three GOP senators announced their opposition Tuesday, one more than McConnell can lose in the closely divided Senate. Further complicating that approach, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis Wednesday reaffirming its earlier findings that the repeal-only bill would mean 32 million additional uninsured people over a decade and average premiums doubling.
At the White House lunch, the discussion was not simply about repealing the health law but also how to replace it, as Republicans said that after seven years of promises, they could not let their efforts die without one last fight.
"This is more than just a health care debate," Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas said as he left the meeting. "It really means, can we come together as a conference, can we come together as a Republican Party, can we come together on a signature piece of legislation we've talked about for seven years?
"If we don't, I think it's pretty clear the political consequences are staring us right in the face," he added.
McConnell announced that the Senate would vote next week to open debate, and "I have every expectation that we will be able to get on the bill."
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Alan Fram, Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Stephen Ohlemacher, Richard Lardner, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; by Eileen Sullivan and Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times; and by Sean Sullivan, Kelsey Snell and David Nakamura of The Washington Post.
A Section on 07/20/2017