WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is bemoaning what he calls “the level of hostility” that he says has stymied bipartisanship in Washington.
While discussing the Republican health bill during an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump said it would be great if lawmakers from both parties could “come up something that everybody’s happy with.”
Then he criticizes two prominent Democratic senators.
Trump says the Democrats’ “theme is resist” and that “if it was the greatest bill ever proposed in mankind, we wouldn’t get a vote” from them.
Trump said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer criticized the GOP bill before knowing what was in it. And the president called Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren “somebody that’s just got a lot of hatred.”
Warren is a leading liberal and defender of the current health law.
One of the Republican senators who’s opposing his party’s health care bill as written says the Senate shouldn’t vote on the plan this week.
The lengthy proposal only came out last week, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to begin voting this week.
That’s not sitting well with GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
“I would like to delay the thing. There’s no way we should be voting on this next week. No way,” he said.
Johnson told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he has “a hard time” believing that his constituents or even he “will have enough time to properly evaluate” the measure.
Johnson says he’s made his views clear to the party leadership and the White House.
Schumer said Senate passage of the Republican health care bill is too close to call.
He told ABC’s “This Week” the GOP has “at best, a 50-50 chance.”
In the narrowly divided Senate, defections from just three of the 52 Republican senators would doom the legislation.
Schumer said Democrats have made clear they would be willing to work with Republicans to pass a Senate bill if they agree to drop a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and instead work to improve it.
Schumer described the GOP proposal as “devastating” to the middle class and “that’s what’s making it so hard for them to pass it.”
