It is time for Republicans to temporarily give up their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare and turn their attention to tax reform, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. said on Tuesday, the Washington Examiner reported.
"I think we need to move on, probably pretty quickly," Johnson said. "We've been at this. It did not, unfortunately, end in success.... Now we've got to move on to tax reform so we have a competitive tax system."
Johnson made the statement following a chaotic day in which Republican opposition doomed the Senate GOP healthcare proposal and then three Republican senators said they would also not vote for a motion to proceed on a clean bill to repeal Obamacare and then work on a replacement plan, which effectively killed the backup plan called for by both President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The Wisconsin senator made the comments just a day after he had criticized McConnell for his “breach of trust” in handling the GOP healthcare bill, Politico reported.
"The reported comments from Leader McConnell before last Thursday about 'don't worry about these Medicaid changes, they won't take effect,' that's troubling to me," Johnson said.
"From my standpoint, it's a pretty serious breach of trust, those comments,” which he characterized as misleading and wrong.
Johnson said the GOP should have most concentrated on tax reform before trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Examiner reported.
"This was the toughest step to crack, and in hindsight, I think we — again, we started with regulatory reform. That's a good thing," Johnson said. "The next step probably should have been tax reform."
He added that "We're going to have to fix this mess," referring to healthcare. "It isn't over. It's just an unfortunate state of affairs right now."
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