Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, outlined the GOP position ahead of the meeting with the president later in the day, telling reporters that “the whole purpose of lunch today is to keep all the team together to make sure that we don’t have any weak links.”
When asked at what point the president needs to get directly involved in the shutdown, Marshall said “if I’ve learned one thing from President Trump, it’s timing, and he’s going to know when the moment’s right.”
“And it’s not yet,” Marshall added.
The Kansas Republican said “whenever the Democrats want to fund the government, then we’re happy to sit down and fix the ACA.”
Democrats have demanded an extension of health insurance tax credits in order to reopen the government. Marshall, a physician, said that Democrats have to be willing to address “at least three major issues” when it comes to health care, pointing to fraud, the cost of the premiums and high deductibles.
“So it’s a very broken system, it’s going to take weeks to figure out how to fix that,” he added.
Marshall called the funding lapse “a political shutdown.” He said, “I’m not sure who’s winning the political war right now out there, the messaging, but certainly we feel pretty good about where we are right now.”
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