June 28, 2017
We usually finish our copy for This Week on Monday night or Tuesday morning (Washington, D.C. time), and then begin to lay out the themes for the next edition on Tuesday afternoon. But we always are ready when a surprise event sends us in a different direction.
The theme for today’s edition of This Week is health care. We prepared last week for the release of the draft bill, the report from the Congressional Budget Office, and deliberations building up to a vote in the Senate prior to July 2nd. We visited last week with a number of folks on the Hill, and their view was that passing the bill was going to be hard – the odds were a little less than 50-50 – but that if anyone could get it over the line, Senate Majority Leader McConnell would be the man to get it done.
The bill was released late last week and early deliberations quickly exposed concerns from Republican Senators who represent all sides of the health care issue. It was clear by Monday night that Senators McConnell and Cornyn needed more time to work with members of their caucus—and perhaps just as clear that Republican Senators needed to get the perspective of Republican Governors.
Tuesday afternoon Senator McConnell said he would continue working with his caucus, but moved the vote to after the July 4th recess.
The theme for this week is still health care. We have elected to stay away from the details of the draft legislation for the time being because they will continue to change as the Majority Leader works to get fifty Senators on board. Steve Gordon in Heard on the Hill gives us his notes from a meeting last week with a member of the Republican Senate leadership on a number of legislative issues. He also shares what he has heard on tax reform, the budget, immigration, and describes how politics impacts policy.
Steve also reports on the Arizona Association of Health Care’s meetings last week in Washington, D.C. supporting Arizona’s Medicaid program, and Glenn Hamer’s follow-up letter. Jake Ostenso reports on two congressional hearings held last week on the topic of NAFTA/trade. Dana Marston takes a closer look at the Senate’s health care proposal, at states’ experiments in health care reform, budget shortfalls at the state level, and Republicans’ narrow wins in recent special elections.