Senate: Healthcare Reform Will Have To Wait

Mitch McConnell
Hey now you guys, stop that, stop voting on stuff..." - Mitch McConnell

The Republicans from the Senate are sending off two of the ObamaCare bills to the next year. This measure is taken as the lawmakers are all striving to avoid a complete governmental shutdown.

The Senator from GOP – Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander both went on to the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to try and avoid bringing up these bills in the current week.

“Rather than considering a broad year-end funding agreement as we expected, it has become clear that Congress will only be able to pass another short-term extension to prevent a government shutdown and to continue a few essential programs. For this reason, we have asked Senator McConnell not to offer this week our legislation,” both the Senators said in a joint statement.

Collins and Alexander further said that, ObamaCare legislation can be put on hold until the Senate could consider a complete of lists of necessary bills that need to be passed. This also includes a funding deal for a whole year in January.

“Instead, we will offer it after the first of the year when the Senate will consider the omnibus spending bill, the Children’s Health Insurance Program reauthorization, funding for Community Health Centers, and other legislation that was to have been enacted this week,” they said.

However, Senator John Cornyn said “I support what they’re trying to do but I think the CR is a little up in the air because we don’t know what the House is going to be able to pass.

He further went on to say that if these two bills fail to come under discussion during this week’s substitute bill – which is required to stop the shutdown of the government, they may have a possibility to be attached to a funding of full-year bill that may come up for voting sometime in January.

“One possibility is we would put it on the CR. The other possibility is it would be part of the omnibus on Jan. 19,” he said, while emphasizing that the Senate Republicans are agreeing to Alexander and Collins.

Collins also told the reporters only previous month that she received a promise from McConnell himself to make these two bills a part of one must pass bill this year, which according to her is something that is of utmost importance for the GOP leadership to repeal individual mandate of Obamacare.

He further said, “The vice president and I had a discussion yesterday that reinforced that agreement that the bills will be considered before the end of the year.”

 

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