A Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare could come to a vote as early as Saturday, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told the Fox Business Network.
The catalyst for the optimism, Mulvaney said, are new ideas from Rep. Fred Upton, who earlier in the week dealt a major blow to the current GOP healthcare bill when he said he would vote against it over concerns about pre-existing conditions.
"We welcome his input and if he's got some ideas that would be acceptable to everybody else and how to fix that in his mind, that may be the lynchpin that we get to get the moderates to support the bill as well," Mulvaney said.
The GOP health care plan has gone through a number of versions after the bill was pulled from the floor earlier this year when it was clear there wasn't enough support for it to pass, the Washington Examiner reported.
Mulvaney also dismissed claims by Democrats and some Republicans that the budget deal reached this week to avert a government shutdown did not include much of President Donald Trump's agenda.
The budget director told "Fox & Friends" that the Trump administration is "very excited about the money that we did get for the president's priorities . . . Keep in mind, $21 billion for the military. Additional money for border security. More money for school choice," insisting that those have been the administration's priorities all along.
Mulvaney said the Democrats going into the talks were hoping for a shutdown, as "They were desperate to show . . . that we couldn't govern. They were desperate to show we were unreasonable, that people had made a bad choice in President Trump, and what we're hearing today is everybody recognizes that he cut a really good deal."
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