White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that it’s official White House policy that nothing else gets a vote in Congress before healthcare.
“Yes,” it’s official policy that the Senate stay focused on ObamaCare reform before voting on anything else, Mulvaney told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union.
President Trump’s calls for Republican senators to prioritize passing a bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare are “simply reflecting the mood of the people,” he said.
“So in the White House’s view they can’t move on in the Senate; in the people’s view they shouldn’t move on in the Senate,” Mulvaney said.
Republican Senate leadership indicated following the collapse of the latest effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare that it is time to move on from healthcare efforts to other legislative priorities. But Trump urged them this weekend not to give up.
“They should stay and work and figure out a way to solve this problem,” Mulvaney said.
He added that GOP senators had to stay on to work on the issue because they have promised to repeal ObamaCare ever since it was instated seven years ago. The Senate is remaining in session another two weeks.
“You do have ObamaCare, it is failing, it is hurting people, so not to change it allows that go forward,” Mulvaney said. “At the same time, you have the political consideration that you promised folks you’d do this for seven years, you cannot go back on that.
“So yes, they need to stay, they need to work, they need to pass something,” Mulvaney continued. “And I think that’s not only official White House policy on this, right now it’s sort of the national attitude towards it.”
Mulvaney’s comments come after Trump called for Republicans to pass an ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill over the weekend, saying they were “quitters” if they didn’t do so.