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Peter King to Senate: Slow Your Roll on Health Care Bill

‘It’s wrong to pass something for the sake of passing it,’ GOP congressman says

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said it would be better to pass piecemeal legislation to “repeal what we can” of the 2010 health care law. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said it would be better to pass piecemeal legislation to “repeal what we can” of the 2010 health care law. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Republican Rep. Peter King criticized GOP senators’ proposed health care bill for cuts to Medicaid and said there was no rush to get legislation passed.

The New York congressman criticized the “severe cuts” to the health care program that aids low-income people and people with disabilities in an interview with CNN Wednesday night.

“We can argue whether or not the benefits of the Medicaid program,” he said. “The fact is, they’re in place and to be uprooting them as much as they are and really as quickly as the bill proposes is going to cause real impact to hospitals in New York and to lower-income people in New York.”

King said it would better to pass piecemeal legislation.

“What we should try to do is repeal what we can,” he said, adding, “It’s wrong to pass something for the sake of passing it.”

“I want to do it in a way that we’re not hurting anyone,” King said. “And if it takes it two, three, four, five years to do it, fine. If we don’t repeal all of it, hey, that’s democracy.”

King said that there would still be three years left in President Donald Trump’s administration to do more on health care.

After a repeal and replace bill passed last month in the House, Republican senators had hoped to get a vote on their bill before Congress left for its Fourth of July recess, but several Republican senators indicated they couldn’t support the bill as written, so Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to pull the bill Tuesday before a scheduled vote to proceed.

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