Rubio Flirts with ‘Obamacare Lite’

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suggested Republicans may have little choice but to settle for a partial repeal of Obamacare during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” — a sharp break from the hard-line stance struck by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) last week.

“A big split is emerging within the Republican Party on the question of whether Obamacare should be repealed in its entirety or just partially and then fixed, the rest of it that remains. House Republicans are considering a plan that would repeal portions of Obamacare but leave other elements intact,” CNN host Jake Tapper said. “Two of your former presidential rivals and colleagues in the Senate, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, they’re insisting on a full repeal. Are you with them on this issue?”

“Well, I want to repeal Obamacare, but I also don’t want to go back to the system we had in 2009. That didn’t work either.”

Rubio, who like most GOP lawmakers in Congress campaigned on a pledge to fully repeal the behemoth health care law, first reiterated his preference was to do away with the ACA entirely.

“Well, I want to repeal Obamacare,” the Florida senator said, “but I also don’t want to go back to the system we had in 2009. That didn’t work either.”

GOP leadership in Congress came under fire from some conservative lawmakers last week after refusing to reveal details of their Obamacare plan. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is drafting the new bill, has kept the details a secret, leading several senators to question whether the plan would be “Obamacare Lite.”

Rubio seemed to defend the reasoning behind an approach that did not fully gut President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

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“Understand that when people talk about partial repeal, it’s because the process that’s being used for repeal is reconciliation,” Rubio said. “There are things you can do to a reconciliation and there are things you cannot. And we just don’t have 60 votes in the Senate to do things outside of that reconciliation product. I think that this needs to happen. Obamacare does need to be repealed. We have to put something in place that is better than Obamacare. What I do not support is going back to 2009, because that system had problems as well.”

Rubio’s apparent defense of an “Obamacare Lite” option was a sharp contrast to the rhetoric of some of his conservative colleagues.

“When you spend six years promising, ‘If only we get elected, we’ll repeal Obamacare,’ you can’t renege,” Cruz tweeted Friday.

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“I will not vote for Obamacare Lite nor will many of my colleagues. We will keep our word. I call on House leaders to do the same,” Paul tweeted Thursday.

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“And the point I made that we got elected in 2010, we took over the House because we were for complete repeal. We took over the Senate in 2014 because we ran on complete repeal. We won the White House on a message of complete repeal,” Paul said Feb. 27 on “The Laura Ingraham Show.” “And I think the grassroots conservatives who elected us will not only be disappointed, they’ll be downright unhappy and justifiably so if we do not have complete repeal.”