Senate Republicans will begin working on a draft of health care language over next week’s Memorial Day recess as the next step in their effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. It’s unclear what sort of proposals will be drafted, who exactly will be working on the text, and how the legislation will differ from the House GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill.
“Over the break, initial legislation will be drafted and…we’ll have actually have a basis to discuss some of these things,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told reporters Thursday after a health care working group meeting. “We’ve had some very fulsome discussions, very genuine input, and that input is now going to be collated by committee staff and leadership staff and they will produce a product — we’ll have a draft bill — that we can have further input on.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the majority whip, confirmed that some “base language” was going to be worked up for GOP senators to look at when they return from recess.
Cornyn and other Republicans coming out of Tuesday’s working group expressed optimism that GOP senators were getting closer to bridging gaps among the conference in order to get the 50 votes necessary to pass a repeal bill.
“There is no final agreement yet, this is a process,” Cornyn said.
The next step in the negotiations was to get some proposals in writing to be passed around internally, Republicans said.
“A number of individuals are putting various ideas to paper,” Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) said.
But Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) cautioned that even with some text being drafted, Senate Republicans still had a lot of work to do.
“What we have been advised is that at some stage of the game, you’ve got to have people start to begin the boiler plate that makes up a bill, but it’s a long ways from having all the concepts incorporated,” Rounds said.
