“If Republicans are going to pass great future legislation in the Senate, they must immediately go to a 51 vote majority, not senseless 60,” President Donald Trump tweeted this morning. | Win McNamee/Getty Images After health care failure, Trump calls for change to legislative filibuster

President Donald Trump responded to the failure of the Republican health care bill on Friday by calling for a change to Senate rules so that 51 votes are needed to pass legislation instead of 60 — even though the bill that went down early that morning had, in fact, only needed 51 votes to pass, but didn’t get them.

“If Republicans are going to pass great future legislation in the Senate, they must immediately go to a 51-vote majority, not senseless 60,” Trump tweeted, several hours after three Senate Republicans broke with their caucus to vote against the GOP’s scaled-down attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act.


The bill got 49 votes and needed 50, plus Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie.

A few minutes later, the president followed up, acknowledging that the legislation up for a vote this week had needed just 51 votes under the process Senate leaders were using to pass it, but reiterated that he wants to see the legislative filibuster changed.

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“Even though parts of health care could pass at 51, some really good things need 60,” he said. “So many great future bills & budgets need 60 votes.”

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said repeatedly that he has no interest in doing away with the 60-vote threshold on most legislation. And the GOP has struggled to pass its agenda outside of that. Three separate Obamacare repeal measures failed to garner 50 Republican votes this week.

The final “skinny” measure, which was regarded as the GOP’s best shot at passing something even as many members criticized it and said they did not actually want it to become law, prompted Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to vote no alongside all the Democrats and independents.

McCain, whose deciding vote came as a surprise, has called for Republicans to pursue health care reform in a bipartisan fashion instead of trying to push through a bill on a party-line, simple majority vote.

