WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s labeling of a House-passed health care bill as “mean” is aggravating some of the conservatives he pressed to back it, even as Senate attempts to reshape the measure increasingly threaten to spill into July.
“In terms of strategery, I hope he’s just trying to motivate the Senate,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., said Wednesday, employing a mangled word used by former President George W. Bush. “Because he put all sorts of pressure on us to move the bill we passed.”
Congressional sources said Trump described the House bill as mean at a closed-door White House lunch Tuesday with 15 Republican senators. It was an extraordinary slap at a bill Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., guided through the House and that Trump himself had championed and praised. At a Rose Garden ceremony minutes after the bill’s 217-213 House passage on May 4, Trump called it “a great plan.”
“To call a bill that he pushed ‘mean’ leaves us scratching our heads,” Brat said.
The president’s criticism also came as Senate Republican leaders’ attempts to write their own health care package have been slowed by disagreements between their party’s conservatives and moderates. Trump said he wants the Senate version to be “more generous,” the sources said.
Full story: WOOD TV