Rand: Graham-Cassidy Is ‘Barely Obamacare-Lite’ – Graham ‘Known to be Wrong and Not Very Conservative’

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted the Graham-Cassidy Bill as “barely Obamacare-lite.”

Rand said Graham-Cassidy “actually keeps the Obamacare spending and just redistributes it among the states. It’s a $1.2 trillion federal grant program, and that’s just not repeal. I didn’t promise people to keep a trillion-dollar spending program and re-shuffle the money among the states. This is not repeal. It’s not even — It’s barely Obamacare-lite. It keeps Obamacare. It’s not what we promised.”

He added, “When this bill comes up next week, I will, once again, offer a real repeal. So, there will be a choice. There’ll be real repeal. But I’m also working another tact. I’m working with president trump on healthcare associations, which can be done with no money, no federal money, no federal taxes, no Obamacare taxes. And what happens is that people can buy insurance across state lines, and people can join a group. So they get group insurance, which protects them against pre-existing conditions, but gets them a great price. … It’s just not a conservative notion to vote for a trillion-dollar federal grant program.”

Rand also argued that Graham-Cassidy isn’t “the last chance. We will have many more opportunities.”

Rand concluded that Senator Graham has “been known to be wrong and not very conservative on a number of issues. So, you can ask him how federalism is having a trillion-dollar tax program at the federal level and passing it out. That’s not federalism.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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