WASHINGTON — The Senate will remain in session during the hot and sticky days of August to give Republicans more time to pass a health care bill and make progress on other legislative priorities.
The upper chamber will wait until the third week of August to get out of town for its annual six-week vacation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday.
He quickly drew praise from conservatives who had urged the GOP leader to delay the break until Republicans fulfill their promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
“Leader McConnell is right — Washington needs to take promises more seriously,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who advised his colleagues earlier this month not to “walk away” from health care reforms.
The Senate should “be willing to work 6 days a week, 18 hours a day until” a deal is struck, he added.
McConnell’s decision to delay the recess came hours after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made a stunning announcement about a parallel push by some Republicans to introduce a separate ObamaCare replacement bill with bipartisan appeal.
“I’m working with some senators to come up with a new approach to deal with how to replace ObamaCare. I think it will potentially attract some Democrats,” Graham told reporters.
The South Carolina Republican said his plan is “fundamentally different” from the approach Senate GOP leaders have taken, and could solve the impasse on health care reform.
Details of the plan are likely to be released in the next “24 to 48 hours,” Graham said, around the same time McConnell is set to unveil his own bill.
That bill is likely to preserve two taxes on high-income earners that were killed in the original draft, a move that Democrats had seized on in their attempts to characterize the bill as a tax cut for the wealthy.
Sources familiar with the revised bill said it will retain a 3.8 percent tax on net income investment for individuals earning more than $200,000 annually and couples earning more than $250,000, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The bill would also preserve a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on wages and self-employment income.
Keeping both taxes would generate about $231 billion over the next 10 years, money that could be used to cover the cost of expanding Medicaid to millions more Americans during that same period.
Less than a month ago, the Senate’s third-highest-ranking Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, said, “I think most of [ObamaCare’s] taxes are going to go away.”