Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Sunday that Democrats are ready to work with President Trump to fix Obamacare if Republicans abandon their drive to repeal the law.
The New York Democrat made the offer in the wake of Friday’s decision by Mr. Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan to pull the GOP bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act or ACA.
The bill lacked enough Republican support to pass, including many defectors among conservatives. Democrats formed a united front against the effort.
“We Democrats, provided our Republican colleagues drop [repeal and replace] and stop undermining the ACA, are willing to work with our Republican friends — as long as they say no more repeal,” Mr. Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly said that, if Obamacare were left in place, Democrats would come to him seeking repairs to the flawed health care law, under which costs have increased and choices decreased for many Americans.
Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump has a responsibility as president to attend to Obamacare.
“We have ideas, they have ideas to try to improve ObamaCare,” he said. “We never said it was perfect, we always said we’d work with them to improve it, we just said repeal was off the table.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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