Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a top Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told Reuters on Monday that the Senate GOP should ignore President Donald Trump’s push to keep working on an Obamacare repeal measure and instead move on to tackling the tax code.
“There’s just too much animosity and we’re too divided on health care,” Hatch told Reuters.
“I think we ought to acknowledge that we can come back to healthcare afterwards but we need to move ahead on tax reform,” he added.
Hatch said that he would rather not work with Democrats to up cost-sharing subsidies, but he told Reuters that Republicans will likely have to do that.
The senator’s comments follow an intense push from Trump and his administration to convince Senate Republicans not to give up on repealing Obamacare just yet. Trump sent several tweets over the weekend urging senators to keep working, and Office of Budget and Management Director Mick Mulvaney said that the Senate should not hold any other votes until they pass a bill to repeal Obamacare.
