President Trump tweeted Wednesday his support for including the repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate in the upcoming tax reform bill written by congressional Republicans.
Minutes before Trump's tweet was published, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had voiced his support for the same idea on Fox News. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has also been a vocal proponent of including the individual mandate's repeal in a tax reform bill.
On Tuesday, the day before the president tweeted about repealing the individual mandate, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told reporters that his tax bill would not include such a repeal: "What I don't want to do is to add things that could again kill tax reform, like health care died over there [in the Senate]."
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In July, a Republican health-care bill that would have eliminated ObamaCare's individual mandate failed in the Senate after three GOP senators — John McCain (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Susan Collins (Maine) — voted against the measure. The Republican tax bill's rollout has already been delayed in the House over disagreements over key details that have yet to be finalized. On Wednesday, another prominent Republican, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (Utah), told Politico's Seung Min Kim: "I would prefer to stay out of the health-care process because it's tough enough to do a tax bill."
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