Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and other GOP Senators were busy eating “American beef” with the President Monday evening and discussing “next steps” for the Senate Obamacare repeal bill, when Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) announced their opposition to the plan on Twitter.
Appearing on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning, Lankford said the group dining with President Donald Trump had no idea their colleagues were going to come out against the motion to proceed that evening and said they were talking with Trump about “what we have to do to finish this and tweak out things in this bill,” he said.
Despite the blow to the Better Care Reconciliation Act, Lankford said he remains “optimistic,” but said passing a repeal bill is “something that has to be done.”
“Just in my state in Oklahoma insurance rates went up last year 76 percent. Seventy-six percent in one year. We have thousands of people that used to have insurance that can no longer afford health care insurance anymore,” he said. “I’m still optimistic that we can because we must. This is a kind of a no-fail moment that you have to be able to resolve all these issues.”
He said he’s been trying for weeks to get everyone who is in disagreement in his party in “one room” and “let’s hammer this out in one moment.”
“For whatever reasons, we have not been allowed to do that to get all the different factions into one room at one time. We have all be negotiation one at a time,” he said. “If we can get everybody together at one time and finish this, I think we can get it done. … My hope is we have to repeal as much as possible.”
Lee and Moran delivered their blow to the GOP bill just as it was headed to a motion to proceed vote that would have opened it up for debate on the Senate floor. Lee said he was opposed to the repeal bill because it kept some of the Obamacare taxes and regulations and that a conservative amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) didn’t go far enough.
Moran was frustrated by the bill being negotiated behind closed doors and said he didn’t want to “put our stamp of approval on bad policy.”
