Senate GOP ‘very pessimistic’ on Obamacare repeal

Tensions are rising between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team and his party’s ideological factions, with a renewed sense of pessimism creeping into the Senate GOP’s efforts to repeal Obamacare.

An amendment written by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) is fracturing the conference, with the measure taking center stage at the party’s first caucus lunch in nearly two weeks on Tuesday. Though the proposal to allow the sale of cheap, deregulated insurance plans is championed by the right, disagreements over the drafting of the amendment could delay or torpedo altogether the GOP’s healthcare bill.

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“We should not be surprised if people are irritated with the Republican majority when we have been promising, and we do not deliver,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said on Fox News Tuesday. “I am very pessimistic.”

Privately, senators and aides offered even more dour assessments. Several said McConnell remains well short of the 50 votes needed to start debate on the bill.

Also short of support is Cruz and Lee’s amendment, which has had its future complicated by a game of telephone between GOP leaders and the two conservative senators.

After much back and forth among McConnell, the two conservative senators and the Congressional Budget Office, the amendment was rewritten again on Monday, two sources said. While the rest of the latest draft is expected to receive a CBO score by next week, it may not include an analysis of Cruz and Lee’s amendment, which could take many days more for the CBO to analyze due to its complexity.

McConnell has told senators this week that the Senate will vote on the repeal next week and urged senators to use the bill’s open amendment process to alter the bill to suit their concerns, according to senators and aides.

Republican senators and aides are also expected to meet with the Senate parliamentarian on Tuesday about what health care reforms the Senate rules allow.

Meanwhile Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was convening a group of senators to write a new bill to replace Obamacare. It’s not clear how Graham’s plan would align with McConnell’s work.

Weary over the bill’s beleaguered status, a bloc of more junior GOP senators renewed calls this week for McConnell to cancel all or some of the August recess without progress on health care, taxes, spending and the debt limit. McConnell announced the Senate would work through the first two weeks of August during a party lunch Tuesday.

“We have got to work longer and harder,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana at a press conference alongside other Republicans. “We need to work all or a portion of the August recess and show some results to the American people.”

Cruz and Lee could vote against even advancing the health bill if their amendment is not included in McConnell’s latest draft, which is expected to be finalized on Thursday.

But their proposal doesn’t have 50 Republican votes at the moment to survive.

“They have an amendment that I have no objection to,” said one Republican senator, before adding, “I don’t think they have the votes to keep it.”

Cruz and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) met for a private breakfast on Tuesday. The two started the Senate’s working group on health care several months ago and disagree on the effectiveness of Cruz and Lee’s amendments.

Critics say that bifurcating the insurance exchanges will result in healthy people buying deregulated insurance and sick people buying insurance under Obamacare regulations, creating a large and costly risk pool of people with pre-existing conditions.

“There’s been a good deal of discussion” about the amendment and potential changes to it, Alexander said. “We’re still discussing it.”

More moderate GOP senators are hoping the measure can be altered to win support of the conference rather than divide it. Some Republicans want to see the risk pools for healthy and sicker people linked in some way so that it prevents sick people from seeing their premiums spike.

The hope is that the amendment “still lowers premiums here but doesn’t create this kind of death spiral over there,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who said he has spoken to Cruz about his idea. “It’s more actuarially sound.”

GOP senators from Medicaid expansion states are expected to gather on Tuesday afternoon to discuss their own concerns with the bill, namely major future spending reductions to the Medicaid program and the winding down of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. A bloc of a dozen centrist Republicans are worried about the Senate bill’s initial treatment of the Medicaid program and have balked at legislation that calls for such deep cuts.

Austin Wright and Jake Lahut contributed to this report.