Sen. Ron Johnson, GOP colleagues say they'll vote for 'skinny repeal' as long as House doesn't pass it, too

WASHINGTON - Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin joined several GOP colleagues Thursday in demanding a guarantee from the House that it won’t pass the same scaled-back repeal of Obamacare that the Senate Republicans are now trying to pass.

“We’ll vote yes as long as we get that guarantee,” Johnson said at a news conference with Arizona’s John McCain, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy.

Graham said the GOP health care bill now before the Senate, dubbed the “skinny repeal,” was a policy “disaster,” and a “fraud” as a replacement for Obamacare.

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Johnson said the bill “has been sold to us as the vehicle to get to conference” to negotiate a far more comprehensive package with the House — not as a good policy in itself. A House-Senate conference results when the two chambers pass different versions of a bill and need to reconcile them.

Johnson and his three colleagues said their fear is that if the Senate passes the bill to get to conference, the House could simply pass the Senate bill and send it to the White House for President Trump’s signature.

In a subsequent statement, House Speaker Paul Ryan said the House is "willing" to go to a conference if that's what it takes to move forward, but offered no ironclad promise not to pass the bill comes out of the Senate.  

"The reality, however, is that repealing and replacing Obamacare still ultimately requires the Senate to produce 51 votes for an actual plan," said Ryan. "The House remains committed to finding a solution and working with our Senate colleagues, but the burden remains on the Senate to demonstrate that it is capable of passing something that keeps our promise, as the House has already done." 

Ryan's statement and personal conversations he had late Thursday appeared to satisfy a least some Senate Republicans wary of the bill. 

Thursday's developments underscored the ongoing volatility and division among GOP lawmakers over health care. 

Amid repeated failures and much confusion, Senate Republicans are making a final push to pass a stripped-down version of repeal, because more ambitious attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare have failed to win enough votes. The text was only released late Thursday night. 

The scaled-back repeal legislation revolves around scrapping the mandates for individuals to buy insurance and for large companies to offer it to employees; it also scraps a tax in medical devices, and expands waivers states can use to avoid some of the insurance regulations under Obamacare.  

But it fails to fulfill the biggest priorities of many Republicans, including Johnson.

One of Johnson’s chief goals is to roll back the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. The “skinny repeal” leaves that expansion intact.

Johnson says one of his biggest concerns is skyrocketing premiums for people buying their own insurance; the “skinny repeal” would drive up such premiums for many Americans, according to insurers, and result in millions more uninsured.

Johnson said he applauds scrapping the individual mandate.

“That’s a good thing. You take what you can get and hopefully keep the process moving forward,” he said.

But Johnson said at the news conference that the skinny repeal “doesn’t even come close to honoring our promise of repealing Obamacare.”

Senate Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin ripped the measure for very different reasons on Twitter Thursday evening, saying skinny repeal is "Washington talk for more uninsured, rising premiums, and higher out of pocket costs. I'm voting no for Wisconsin."

In the interview, Johnson also said he is insisting on a vote on an amendment of his that would effectively force members of Congress to buy their insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. Johnson says that would force lawmakers to live under the law.

The Wisconsin Republican also said he wants to serve on a House-Senate conference committee if there is one to resolve differences between health care bills passed by the two chambers.

“Nobody has more passion than me” on the issue, he said.