for them, especially since the cbo score has now announced quite clearly the devastating impact which it is going to have upon 22 million americans. it s also, it reported, going to increase premiums and reduce coverage. so that package of problems is something which is going to perplex the republican leadership for the rest of this week. very difficult problem to solve. senator, i think i might have said delaware earlier. i meant massachusetts. i was thinking about chris collins, who spoke earlier this morning on morning joe about how damaging it s going to be to his state. for you, you ve been in congress for a long time. you know mitch mcconnell. while we talk about this being an intramural battle between republicans, you know how skilled he is. can mitch mcconnell push this thing through? well, again, i don t know the answer to that question. but i do know that it s the job
be in than to have obamacare eviscerated, which is what the republicans are trying to do right now. that would send us back to square one. right now, it s not perfect, but it s a lot better than the day before obamacare was on the books. we have tens of millions of additional people who have coverage, and that coverage is guaranteed. and so i would prefer to be trying to solve this the problem. from that perspective than after having $772 billion in medicaid funding taken out of the system which then makes it almost impossible to solve the problem at all. i appreciate that. someone mentioned it earlier. it s easy to remember who gave us health care but we ll never forget no who took it away. you re a member of the foreign relations committee. what was your reaction to president trump s statement on syria last night? it feels like it came out of nowhere. again, the president continues to engage in his very
some governors. i want to share a piece of research. harvard research did a study published by the center for american progress, and, yes, i know center for american progress has an agenda but harvard doesn t. if 23 million people lose their health care coverage, 217,000 additional deaths, those are deaths, will take place over the next decade. that being a number that they have to swallow, how does mitch mcconnell, who s extraordinarily skilled at this, get this thing over the line? well, that s the political pendulum swinging back in the other direction. republicans opposing obamacare and forcing democrats to own everything bad in the health care system as a result of it passing. i think it was senator manchin of west virginia, the democrat, who made the point a lot of his constituents, a lot of americans don t know what it was or who it was that helped them gain the coverage that they ve gotten over the last few years but he said they surely will know who took it away from them.