Sen. Lindsey Graham: "It's OK to vote. It's OK to fall short." | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Graham and Cassidy vow in debate to continue Obamacare repeal effort

With their Obamacare repeal bill on the brink of failure, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy squared off with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar in a nationally televised debate Monday night and vowed to keep up their effort.

“We’re going to press on,” Graham said of his and Cassidy’s repeal bill, which appears all but dead amid firm opposition from three Republican senators. “It’s OK to vote. It’s OK to fall short.”


Graham (R-S.C.) and Cassidy (R-La.) sought to turn the health care debate into a referendum on the proposal by Sanders (I-Vt.) to create a single-payer system — an idea that two-thirds of Senate Democrats, including Klobuchar, of Minnesota, have not endorsed. Sanders’s presence on the debate stage had rattled Democrats who feared that he might spend more time touting his Medicare for All plan than defending the Affordable Care Act, but Sanders appeared determined to do both on Monday night.

“What the American people want is to build on and improve the ACA, not repeal it,” Sanders said during the debate, broadcast by CNN, while also calling for a “longer-term” transition toward a guarantee of “health care as a right.”

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Cassidy immediately countered that “going to a single-payer system is not building on and improving” Obamacare, illustrating the GOP’s eagerness to portray the debate as a clash between ACA repeal and Sanders’s proposal. Michael Reed, research director at the Republican National Committee, argued in a Monday memo that the debate would pit “the Republican approach of more state flexibility and options for care vs. the Bernie Sanders approach of one-size-fits-all federal government control.”

Sanders defended single-payer as not “an extreme idea,” but he acknowledged that it “is not going to pass so long as my Republican colleagues control the Senate and House.” His legislation creating a single public health insurer has attracted support from five fellow potential contenders for the Democratic nomination to take on President Donald Trump in 2020, yet the party’s leadership has withheld its support and vowed to keep their focus on shoring up Obamacare.

Sanders spokesman Josh Miller-Lewis said by email Friday that the Vermont senator’s “top priority in this debate is to expose Graham-Cassidy for what it is — the most destructive piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.”

Jennifer Palmieri, who served as communications director for Hillary Clinton during her primary battle with Sanders, also defended his and Klobuchar’s ability to keep the debate focused on Obamacare.

“While a single televised debate is far from a suitable substitute, it will provide an opportunity for Americans to hear about the devastating impacts this bill will have on millions,” said Palmieri, now with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

“The vote on the floor isn’t Graham-Cassidy vs. Sanders,” she said. “It’s Graham-Cassidy vs. Affordable Care Act. No amount of Republican spin will change that underlying fact.”

Indeed, Sanders and Klobuchar took turns attacking the repeal bill, which counts three firm GOP opponents — Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona — as well as several others on the fence. Even as Trump tweeted Monday night to accuse McCain of flip-flopping on Obamacare, Graham reaffirmed that his friendship with McCain would not suffer over the potential failure of Republicans’ seemingly final attempt at repeal before its window to sidestep a filibuster closes.

“If we fall short, we’ll try to have a better process,” Graham told McCain from the debate stage. “No one respects you more than I do.”