Trump Teases Senate Obamacare Replace Bill with ‘Heart’

As Senate Republican leaders prepare to release text of the upper chamber’s version of an Obamacare repeal, President Donald Trump called on Wednesday for a health plan with “heart.”

Trump told a campaign-style rally in Iowa that action is needed urgently because insurance companies are fleeing collapsing markets all across the country.

“I hope that we’re going to surprise you with a really good plan,” he said at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids. “You know, I’ve been talking about a plan with heart. I said, ‘Add some money to it. A plan with heart.’ But Obamacare is dead.”

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Trump said getting the bill past the finish line will be difficult because Republicans cannot expect a single crossover vote from Democrats.

“They’re obstructionists,” he said. “We wouldn’t get one Democrat.”

Trump insinuated that even a few Democrats joining the effort would be able the push the bill in a much more Democrat-friendly direction. He said obstructionism on health care did not help them in a special election to fill a vacant congressional seat in Georgia on Tuesday.

“A few votes from the Democrats, it could be so easy and so beautiful and you’d have cooperation,” he said. “And their plan isn’t working. Because they thought they were going to win last night in Atlanta.”

It was the second of back-to-back appearances in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday. He spoke to a large crowd and was in full-on campaign mode, touching on a number of themes from the 2016 campaign and recounting his accomplishments so far in office.

Trump said he has signed 39 bills passed by Congress. He bragged about killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, pulling out of the Paris climate accord and reversing the “completely one-sided deal” that former President Barack Obama negotiated with the Communist regime in Cuba.

Trump reiterated his willingness to renegotiate better terms for the United States in the North America Free Trade Agreement.

The president restated his best-known campaign promise — to build a wall along the Mexican border — and endorsed a concept floated by a Las Vegas company to include solar panels on the barrier.

“We’re thinking about building the wall as a solar wall, so it creates energy and pays for itself,” he said. “And this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money, and that’s good. Is that good?”

At the earlier event at Kirkwood Community College, Trump pledged to include rural America in his $1 trillion program to rebuild the country and reiterated his support for farmers.

“With that conviction deep in your hearts, you showed up on Election Day, November 8th, and voted to put America first. It’s about time.”

Trump said Iowans wanted a break for failed policies of the past and a new commitment to put citizens first.

“With that conviction deep in your hearts, you showed up on Election Day, November 8th, and voted to put America first,” he said at Kirkwood. “It’s about time. It’s about time.”

Trump has talked about infrastructure from his earliest days on the campaign trail. He told the Kirkwood crowd that he is about to roll out a specific plan.

“You’ll be seeing it very shortly,” he said.

That plan, the president said, will include money to provide broadband access to connect people in rural areas to the information superhighway that powers the modern economy.

“We know that Wall Street wants it very badly, but you know what? The farmers also want it,” he said. “And you’re gonna get it.”

He added: “We will rebuild rural America. American farmers pour their hearts into their crops and their love into their communities. That’s why they call this the heartland.”

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Trump introduced his incoming ambassador to China, former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. He also talked up other Cabinet members and offered congratulations to Karen Handel and Ralph Norman, a pair of Republicans who won special elections to Congress Tuesday night.

He also talked about his efforts to solve vexing foreign-policy challenges on the world stage that he inherited, including North Korean aggression and the Middle East morass.

“This was a tough hand,” he said. “But you put me there for a reason, and I think you’re going to be very happy with the end result, believe me.”

America has wasted $6 trillion on the Middle East since the Iraq War, Trump said.

“We have nothing,” he said. “We’re back further than we were 16 years ago when this whole thing started.”