Rand Paul on Health Care Bill: ‘I Still Sense We’re at Impasse’ — Suggests Dividing Bill in Two

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he and his GOP colleagues in the Senate were still at “impasse” on the legislation being considered to repeal and replace Obamacare.

“I still sense we’re at impasse,” Paul said. “And I said yesterday at lunch with our Republican caucus and everybody kind of laughed because there is still quite a bit of disagreement. There’s basically two factions. There’s conservatives like myself who don’t want new federal programs, we want to repeal Obamacare. And then there’s some of the moderates who kind of want to keep some of Obamacare and they’re not to opposed to new federal government programs.”

Paul said one proposal he offered was to divide the bill into two, one of which would pass with the Republican majority and another on a spending bill, which could earn Democrat votes.

“So what I’ve come up with and I talked to the president yesterday about this is what about dividing the bill in two?” Paul added. “Do the repeal, which no Democrat will vote for. Repeal the taxes, repeal the regulations, and do a fix to Medicaid that helps to pay for everything. No Democrats will vote for anything good like that. But Democrats will always vote for spending. So the big government Republicans that want more spending, take the spending and put it in the bill that Democrats will vote for.”

Paul went on to say President Donald Trump indicated he was interested in his proposal.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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