With the fate of Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill hanging in the balance, Vice President Mike Pence is swooping in to see if he can work out a deal to secure the 50 votes needed to pass it through the Senate.
Pence will host a group of conservative GOP senators including Utah’s Mike Lee for dinner on Tuesday to discuss their concerns with the legislation. Invitations have also been extended to Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. Sen. Ben Sasse was also invited to the dinner, although it is unclear whether he will attend; a Sasse aide said the Nebraska Republican is “engaging frequently with the vice president and his team.”
After House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to pull an initial version of the repeal bill from the House floor, the vice president played an integral role in restarting negotiations in the lower chamber. Those talks led to a revised plan that quelled the concerns of the House’s most conservative members, and the legislation ultimately passed the House in early May.
Senate GOP leaders are now focusing much of their attention on the conference’s most conservative members, several of whom have expressed deep reservations about the bill unveiled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week.
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Scoop w/ @elianayjohnson — PENCE inviting undecided conservative senators for dinner to talk over health care bill https://t.co/zpqbM1ZAd8
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) June 26, 2017
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