WASHINGTON -- Frustrated by Republican inaction on health care, President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that he had reached out to the Senate Democratic leader in hopes of brokering a deal for a "great HealthCare Bill."
Trump said he had called Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York on Friday to ask whether Democrats would work with him on health care -- and Trump indicated that he had not been entirely rebuffed.
In a Saturday morning tweet, Trump wrote, "I called Chuck Schumer yesterday to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill. ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!"
The president's message reflected his continued frustration with his own party's failures to keep its 7-year-old promise to repeal President Barack Obama's signature 2010 health care law. He has flirted with a deal with Democrats before, only to return to Republicans' position that the law has to be scrapped.
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That's a nonstarter with Democrats, who say the law needs improvements but is working.
Schumer responded, saying he was willing to work with Trump to "improve the existing health care system," but not to "repeal and replace" the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act.
"The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that's off the table," Schumer said in a statement Saturday. "If he wants to work together to improve the existing health care system, we Democrats are open to his suggestions. A good place to start might be the Alexander-Murray negotiations that would stabilize the system and lower costs."
Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., have held on-again, off-again talks about a bipartisan plan to stabilize the insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, which have been roiled, in part, by the persistent uncertainty over the fate of the law.
Their negotiations were revived after the latest Republican repeal-and-replace bill, sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, collapsed because of a lack of votes.
In remarks Saturday evening on the South Lawn before a trip to North Carolina, Trump said he was willing to consider "a temporary deal." What that might involve was not clear, but Trump referred to a popular GOP proposal that would have the federal government turn over money for health care directly to states in the form of block grants.
"If we could do a one-year deal or a two-year deal as a temporary measure, you'll have block granting ultimately to the states, which is what the Republicans want. That really is a repeal and replace," he said.
In an interview Saturday night on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the president assured host Mike Huckabee that "we'll have health care before the election."
On Friday, Democratic lawmakers condemned new rules issued by the Trump administration that widen the range of employers and insurers that, because of religious or moral beliefs, can avoid the Affordable Care Act requirement that birth-control pills and other contraceptives be covered by insurance as part of preventive care.
The move was one more attempt to roll back Obama's health overhaul, prompting Democrats to question whether Trump is committed to avoiding sabotages of the law.
"Particularly after the birth-control decision yesterday, the administration has to stop sabotaging the law before anything real can happen," a Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Saturday.
Trump's outreach to Schumer comes after the president angered fellow Republicans by negotiating a deal last month with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government.
Republicans also were baffled when Schumer and Pelosi announced last month that Trump, who campaigned on getting tough about immigration, struck a deal with them to permanently safeguard from deportation almost 1 million people living illegally in the U.S. after being brought here as children.
Trump's dealings with the Democrats were seen by some congressional Republicans as an act of betrayal but have earned the president plaudits and framed him as the bipartisan deal-maker he said he would be.
Republicans control the House and Senate but have repeatedly failed to pass their health care bill through the upper chamber. Their efforts to "repeal and replace Obamacare," which for years has been the GOP's campaign mantra, so far have garnered no Democratic support.
But Schumer and other Democrats have said they would be open to discussions with Trump and other Republicans to consider selective changes to the Affordable Care Act. This summer, Schumer publicly offered to negotiate with Trump if Republicans were willing to drop what he called a "fundamentally flawed approach."
"Let's start over," the Democratic leader said in June, challenging the president to invite Senate Democrats for a meeting. "You think we're not serious? Try us. Democrats are ready to turn the page on health care."
They have prodded Trump to put aside the Republican credo of "repeal and replace" in favor of more modest tweaks to the existing law. They have urged him to preserve subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions, paid to insurers under the health law to help low-income consumers pay for out-of-pocket expenses like co-payments and deductibles.
But Schumer's quick rebuff of Trump on Friday shows the limits of the partnership.
Trump's latest move comes at a sensitive moment. The White House is working with Republicans on an ambitious plan to rewrite the tax code as the legislative year winds down.
The president is also widely expected to decline to recertify the Iran nuclear agreement, a decision that would kick the matter to Congress, which would have to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran and potentially end the deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Rucker of The Washington Post; by Joseph Tanfani of Tribune News Service; by Derek Wallbank and Andrew Harris of Bloomberg News; by Ken Thomas of The Associated Press; and by Mark Landler of The New York Times.
A Section on 10/08/2017