Kasich: Trump Needs To Work With Democrats On Health Care

CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 3/27/2017, 3:45 p.m.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday that President Donald Trump likely learned a lesson from his failed attempt to pass …
Republican Gov. John Kasich

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday that President Donald Trump likely learned a lesson from his failed attempt to pass the Republican health care bill and called the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington "pathetic."

"You cannot have major changes in major programs affecting things like health care without including Democrats from the very beginning," Kasich, a Republican, said in an interview with Dana Bash on CNN's "State of the Union."

Republicans have pledged to repeal and replace Obamacare since it became law in 2010. But after several weeks of fraught debate and a lack of support from many within the GOP as well as the full Democratic caucus, Republican leaders pulled their bill on Friday.

Kasich said he thinks Trump would learn something from the defeat and possibly move to work with Democrats on compromise legislation.

"Look, he's going to learn from this, but you can't expect the executive to know everything," Kasich said, adding that he believes Trump's "instincts would have been to cut a deal and to bring the Democrats in."

After the bill was pulled on Friday, Trump gave brief remarks from the White House and blamed Democrats for the upset and said Obamacare would "explode." On Sunday morning, Trump took to Twitter say "Democrats are smiling" because conservative groups sunk his preferred legislation.

Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said Sunday he had "no idea" why he couldn't get the conservative House Freedom Caucus to support the bill.

"Is the Republican Party capable of governing?" Mulvaney said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

During negotiations on the bill, conservative lawmakers balked at tax credits in the legislation, which they viewed as a form of entitlement, and ultimately sought to repeal Obamacare's entire insurance regulation infrastructure.

In the face of the bill's failure, the Trump administration is moving on from health care for the time being, even though the President promised to repeal and replace the law, Mulvaney said. He added that the administration would get back to repealing Obamacare "when it breaks," which he insisted was inevitable.

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