This week: GOP works to corral votes on healthcare plan

House GOP leaders will be working furiously this week to win over Republicans skeptical of their plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

After two House panels – Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means – approved the legislation last week, it’s set to make the next stop on Wednesday at the Budget Committee.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his leadership team maintain that the legislation will get enough votes to pass. That’s a minimum of 216 votes, since there are currently five vacancies in the House.

{mosads}

But the proposal is facing serious headwinds from conservatives who think it doesn’t go far enough to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act and centrists wary of repealing the law’s Medicaid expansion.

Asked if the measure had enough votes to pass, Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), a Freedom Caucus member, replied, “Oh, they’re way short of 216.”

Members of the Freedom Caucus, which consists of somewhere between 30 and 40 lawmakers, have been invited to the White House bowling alley on Tuesday night for pizza dinner and some cajoling.

Yet conservatives remain firm that they won’t accept the legislation in its current form without major changes. 

“We need to start over,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said.

GOP leaders are hoping to bring the legislation to the House floor as soon as next week. They unveiled the proposal last Monday and sent it to committees for consideration two days later.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to issue an estimate of the legislation’s cost and how many people stand to lose or gain health insurance sometime early this week. Republicans have been preemptively trying to downplay its importance, but Democrats are sure to seize upon the analysis if it predicts insurance losses.

In addition to the Freedom Caucus bowling night, President Trump is working behind the scenes to convince skeptical lawmakers to get on board with the plan. 

“The aura of the presidency is a very powerful and very persuasive thing to have to persuade members that have doubts,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who attended a meeting at the White House last week with Trump and the GOP whip team. 

One major change conservatives are clamoring for would roll back ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion in 2018 instead of 2020. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that would be “very difficult” to add that to the legislation.

Amending the proposal so it’s more palatable to House conservatives could also potentially alienate centrists and make it even harder to pass in the Senate.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is already wary of the current 2020 deadline for Medicaid expansion. 

“We promised states that if they expanded Medicaid that they would receive 90 percent [from] the federal government, and yet in 2020 that would be reversed to the regular match,” she told Yahoo news. “I’m not crazy about [the bill].”

Four moderate GOP senators also threatened to vote against an initial draft of the legislation because of their concerns over what happened to the federal Medicaid money in their states. 

Trump also plans to hold a campaign-style rally in Nashville, Tenn., on the same day as the Budget Committee markup.

His administration’s budget is also expected to be released on Thursday. Various reports have indicated that Trump will propose major cuts to the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Housing and Urban Development, among other agencies.

Nominations

The Senate will continue workings its way through Trump’s nominations, though the White House has yet to announce names for hundreds of executive agency jobs. 

Senators will take a final vote Monday evening on Seema Verma’s nomination to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Lawmakers moved forward with Verma’s nomination before leaving town late last week, largely along party lines. Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), as well as Independent Sen. Angus King (Maine), were the only senators to break rank and vote with Republicans. 

If confirmed, as expected, Verma will be airdropped into a GOP fight over repealing and replacing ObamaCare, including what happens to Medicaid expansion considered key to winning over crucial moderate Senate Republicans. 

Democrats are largely expected to oppose Verma’s nomination during Monday’s final vote over concerns about what she will do to Medicare and Medicaid. 

Trump pledged during his campaign that he wouldn’t cut entitlement programs, but Democratic senators are openly skeptical of whether or not he’ll stick to that pledge. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has repeatedly called on Trump to publicly say that he would veto any legislation that negatively impacted the programs or Social Security. 

The Senate could also schedule a vote on former Sen. Dan Coats’s (R-Ind.) nomination to be Director of National Intelligence or set up a vote on allowing H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, to keep his three-star rank. 

Both nominations are on the Senate’s calendar, but neither vote has been formally scheduled. Senators are also facing a compressed week, with the upper chamber tentatively scheduled to be out of session on Thursday and Friday. 

VA reform

The House will consider a series of bills aimed at enacting reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). 

They include a measure to ensure the VA can’t consider beneficiaries as “mentally defective” without a judge ruling that the person is a danger to themselves or others. Under the current system, a veteran considered mentally incompetent by the VA is automatically added to the FBI’s background check system for gun purchases. 

The change proposed by the legislation would help prevent veterans from potentially facing restrictions on buying or owning guns. 

Two other bills slated for votes this week would give the VA secretary more authority to remove or suspend agency employees for poor performance and enhance the VA’s hiring and recruiting process. 

“These bills are a step in the right direction towards creating greater accountability at the VA and keeping our promise to America’s veterans who have sacrificed so much for us,” McCarthy said while announcing the floor schedule.