President Donald Trump is increasingly invested in Senate passage of a bill to repeal Obamacare, realizing that a successful vote in the upper chamber will provide a major boost to his domestic agenda, say Republicans who have spent time with him recently.

At a meeting with congressional leaders on Tuesday, Trump urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to follow through on an aggressive timetable for repealing the law in order to quickly turn to tax reform and help avoid a calamitous autumn full of key fiscal deadlines, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting.


While McConnell is already racing to vote on repealing the healthcare law by the end of June, the president made it clear to GOP leaders that he knows his entire agenda is stalled until the party can finish healthcare.

“That was one of the purposes of the meeting yesterday,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) in an interview. “Talking about the importance of getting that accomplished, he struck me as all in.”

Trump even wondered if Congress could delay a vote to raise the debt ceiling until the fall to keep Congress and the public focused on healthcare, according to people familiar with the meeting, though the Treasury Department’s tax receipts may not allow such a maneuver.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that it is his preference to raise the debt ceiling before the August recess, leaving GOP leaders unclear whether they could execute healthcare and the debt ceiling on Trump’s timetable, those people said. A Republican aide said the party currently believes it cannot risk putting off the debt ceiling until September.

The president has also been stung by some of the news coverage of the House-passed health bill and detractors who decry it is as overly stingy, a White House official said. Trump urged Senate GOP leaders to make their bill more generous than the House, a tacit acknowledgment that the more centrist Senate won’t be pursuing the same sort of red meat plan that the House Freedom Caucus was clamoring for earlier this spring, Republicans said.

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And though Trump is champing at the bit for the Senate to conclude its healthcare work and reconcile its differences with the House, the president is taking a remarkably soft touch after directly working rank-and-file House members for several weeks earlier this year. Trump is impressing on party leaders the importance of success, yet is not directly engaged in the details of the bill and is not yet calling up wavering senators.

“He’s definitely leaving it to Mitch to lead. But he very much wants it to happen. Absolutely, no question. No question,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who golfed with Trump on Sunday. “I know he wants a results.”

Trump has not spoken about the nitty gritty details of the emerging healthcare proposal with either Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) or HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in recent days, the two chairmen said, placing confidence in McConnell to conjure up a proposal. Alexander spoke to the president in passing on Tuesday, and Trump underscored the need to pass a bill.

And at dinner with four GOP senators and two congressmen on Tuesday evening, healthcare barely came up in a discussion devoted to national security “other than a desire to get something done,” recounted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“He knows it needs to get done,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who also dined with Trump. “He understands that the Affordable Care Act just is not working. He understands that it’s collapsing.”

Trump may need to stay in the background over the next week or so. The Senate is racing to submit a blueprint to the Congressional Budget Office with senators feeling more optimistic about successful repeal this week than they have in a month. But it’s a delicate balance: Senators say the White House needs to hang tight for a few more days while the GOP attempts to navigate major divisions over Medicaid, health regulations and how to pay for their more robust healthcare bill. As Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) put it: “Once we have a bill … I think he’ll try to get out and start working people.”

“We’re certainly not at a juncture where him being involved is the right thing to do,” Corker said. “We’re not at that point.”

A White House official said there was no room over the past month to jump into the talks, but said Trump will become “more engaged” as the Senate GOP approaches an actual vote, a moment where a president’s powers of persuasion can be most useful. The plan, Senate leaders said, is to use Trump as part of the whip team as the vote draws near.

Some senators are likely to balk at serving as the deciding vote on a bill that will still likely result in millions fewer insured.

“We’ve talked to the administration and said: ‘Give us the space to work this out within the Senate. And once we come up with a product then we may need your help to get us across the finish line,” Cornyn said.

Republicans’ tentative plans to use the bully pulpit to drive home repeal of Obamacare is a stark contrast to Trump’s musings — echoed occasionally by some senators — that perhaps it would be easier to stand on the sidelines and watch Obamacare collapse before fixing it. In March he said “that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode,” an outcome Republicans believe could drive Democrats back to the table if the Obamacare repeal gambit had failed.

But since then, the House passed a repeal bill. And without quick and successful action in the Senate, Trump risks going into the August recess with no significant legislative accomplishment and only the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to brag about despite having total GOP control of Capitol Hill. Rewriting the tax code remains far off.

So with the party the closest it’s been in seven years to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature law, Trump is now pushing for action — and a win that could finally put the GOP’s agenda back on track.

“He’s very invested. He’s very concerned,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a close Trump ally. “The pressure that I’ve seen him put on the people of Congress, the House and the Senate, is: ‘We cannot do nothing.’”

Jennifer Haberkorn and Rachael Bade contributed to this report.