House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Monday said he doesn’t have a problem if the Senate wants to write its own healthcare bill.
“There’s a number of senators over there that have different ideas. They are their own legislative body. I have no problems if they write their own bill,” McCarthy said on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.”
“If it took the House passing a bill to get them moving on a bill, I thank them for that.”
McCarthy said House members have been working with senators, and that the Senate needs to act.
“I think this just adds a little added pressure to them that they have to act,” he said.
Senate Republicans are expected to make significant changes to the House legislation as they try to put together a proposal that could pass the upper chamber.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Sunday said the upper chamber is “starting from scratch” on the healthcare plan and will “draft our own bill.”
A small group of Republican senators is now holding regular meetings to try to figure out how a bill could get to 51 votes on the Senate floor.
The Senate is expected to use special budget rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering their legislation.
There are restrictions on the use of those rules, however, and some parts of the House bill may have to be stripped from the legislation.
McCarthy downplayed the idea that the Senate will pass a fundamentally different bill than the House. If that happens, the two sides will have to work out their differences and approve the same legislation before anything can go to President Trump to be signed into law.
“So that’s the way the system is set up. We move legislation. They move legislation. Any difference, we’ll go to conference and then send it to the president,” McCarthy said.
The California Republican said he thinks the “timing is important.”
“That they need to start working, but they have been working. We’ve worked with a number of senators,” he said.