[Cuomo:] All right. So here's the latest information on the health care battle. Senate Republicans are not done with this. They're trying to get it to a vote next week. They believe they have a measure to repeal and replace. They're meeting for a lunch today. The question is: Can they get these ten remaining Republican senators who are against the current plan on board? Let's bring back the panel: David Gregory, Errol Louis, and let's bring in CNN political analyst David Drucker. David Drucker, good to have you with us. David Gregory, the urgency. How do you see this, in terms of balancing that urgency of getting something done with getting the right thing done?
[Gregory:] The political imperative is so big here, which is from, you know, conservative Republicans, grassroots Republicans who are reminding members of Congress and their senators, "Look, this is why we sent you to Washington, to get rid of Obamacare. And even what you've been talking about in the Senate is more of Obamacare Lite." And not even having that supported means they're in the position of trying to hang the repeal sign on anything they do. David Drucker and I were talking before we came on this morning. You know, in this kind of quiet period, you never want to count anything out from from being accomplished. But it seems a very difficult road. And I think that what is particularly additionally difficult, I should say, is if their fallback position is that they work with some Democrats to get something done, I don't think Democrats are going to participate, as long as it's under the guise of any kind of repeal, as opposed to just fixing. And I think that's the there are so many different interested parties here within the Republican camp. I don't see how they how they get them together in this amount of time.
[Camerota:] Errol, here are the ten Republican senators currently voting "no" on the current incarnation of the health-care bill. You see all their faces and names up there. How are they going to vote on this this week? I mean, that was you know, Reince Priebus says that the president wants them to resolve this, to have health care in place before the August recess. There's also some reporting that they're going to vote on it this week. How is that going to go?
[Louis:] Well, I think what we've seen from Mitch McConnell is that, if they don't have the votes, they're not going to hold the vote. We saw them go from needing two to needing six, now needing ten. They wait any longer, the number could conceivably even change from there. The reality is, what the White House needs, what the Senate leadership needs, what individual senators need are all sort of in different places. And the many it would be interesting to test the faces you just showed, with who's up for re-election next year? Not all of them really need this as badly as the White House seems to want it. And again, you sort of have to put the big overlay on all of this. Yes, there's the promise that they all made to their constituents when they said that they were going to repeal and replace. But there's also this lurking, really big question about how to pay for the tax reform, the tax cuts that they want. The other big piece of legislation that was going to be funded by getting rid of a lot of the Obamacare subsidies. This is going to be a compounded problem. And we're going to see this roll forward.
[Cuomo:] And some of it is also some of it is specific. So you would think they would take care of that by giving something to that particular senator. But some of it is more comprehensive, just in terms of what the basic philosophy is of who's being helped and who isn't in this. For example, Susan Collins, from Maine, the senator there, she has a bigger holistic issue with this. Listen to what she says.
[Sen. Susan Collins , Maine:] I do need a complete overhaul in order to get to "yes." My hope is that we can avoid the mistake that President Obama made when he passed a major health care reform bill, the Affordable Care Act, without a single Republican vote. I don't want us to see us make the same mistake and pass an overhaul of the of the law without a single Democratic vote.
[Cuomo:] David Drucker, is that somewhat of a clarion call to Mitch McConnell to rethink the strategy here? Because if there are more Susan Collins out there, he's got a problem.
[Drucker:] Well, yes, and I think there are some Republicans that would like this to be bipartisan, because it gives them political cover. They remember keenly what happened to Democrats after the Obamacare law was passed. Democrats had to own it. They paid for it in two different midterm elections. I think Republicans are looking over their shoulder and thinking, "I don't want that to happen to me." I think, though, Chris, the real sticking point here from a policy perspective, the thing that is really grinding the gears, is the Medicaid expansion. You know, when the Affordable Care Act was under development, under a Democratic House and Democratic Senate, among the things Republicans wholly agreed on, not just that they were opposed to the mandate to purchase insurance. They were opposed almost unanimously. In fact, they were unanimous in opposition to expanding Medicaid. For years, it's been a Republican policy that Medicaid needed to be reformed, whether it was block granted or or pared back in some fashion to account for the growth in spending and all the other entitlement programs. Now, there's a split among Senate Republicans and, in fact, among House Republicans generally, with many wanting to keep the Medicaid expansion. In some cases, it's because of the opioid abuse issue. But having said that, this is causing a real problem for them as they move forward and try to do something about this. And then on the other hand, you have the political pressure which we've been talking about from the right, the fact that. if they don't repeal Obamacare, even if it's Obamacare light and it's a partial repeal, if there's one thing that Republican strategists who monitor the base tell me could get Republicans in trouble in 2018, even in a Senate election where the map is very favorable to the GOP, it's the idea that they weren't able to use their majorities to actually get done a major priority and campaign promise on such a high level. And so that is competing with the policy concerns of how health care could blow back at them if they don't get it right.
[Camerota:] David Gregory, here's what President Trump tweeted yesterday about this, about his dream for this: "I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new health care bill fully approved and ready to go." What has President Trump's role been in trying to wrangle this together?
[Cuomo:] Seems to be just driving the bus.
[Camerota:] Is it? Or is he hands off the bus?
[Cuomo:] You're saying, like, "You're going to get thrown underneath it. Here comes the bus."
[Gregory:] And the president's behind the wheel. The image that he's got this beautiful health care bill, and it's crystal, and he's shining it up in the Oval Office. And it should just be passed. That's the image in my head. I actually think he's not that involved. I think he's he's just he's trying to urge them to do something. But from the beginning, he's never really driven this in a particular direction. And in some ways, he's upset conservatives, because he's taken a more pragmatic line about keeping enough of Obamacare. And that's what has alienated a lot of conservatives.
[Cuomo:] Yes, a Republican lawmaker said to me, "We need less "me'and more 'we" out of the White House." And that tweet is evidence of that. He's putting it all on them. And that's fair. They are the lawmakers. But he needs to be with his team.
[Camerota:] I've heard Chris Cuomo use that term. You sure that wasn't...
[Cuomo:] Surrender the "me" to the "we"?
[Camerota:] ... Chris Cuomo?
[Cuomo:] Not yet.
[Camerota:] Thank you, panel, very much. So Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting last summer with a Russian lawyer is getting a lot of attention from, now, congressional investigators. How significant is this development? We take a closer look next.