Obamacare, which Republicans spent months trying but failing to overturn, will play a starring role again in Congress this summer, this time helping determine the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Democrats said Tuesday they plan to make the confirmation of Kavanaugh a fight over the future of Obamacare, which is under a lower court challenge that is winding its way toward possible consideration by the Supreme Court.
“We Democrats believe the number one issue in America is healthcare and the ability for people to get good healthcare at prices they can afford,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. “The nomination of Mr. Kavanaugh would put a dagger through the heart of that cherished belief that most Americans have.”
Democrats hope their argument will resonate loudly enough to influence key Republican moderates who could sink the nomination. With Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in his home state recovering from cancer treatments, the GOP has a mere 50-49 majority in the Senate.
[More: Democrats’ focus on Obamacare suggests they have nothing on Brett Kavanaugh]
Democrats also hope to hold their own party in line and prevent three red-state Democrats who crossed party lines to vote for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch last year from voting again for a Trump administration nominee.
Among those who voted for Gorsuch was Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is up for re-election in a state that backed Trump by a 42-point margin in 2016. Manchin said Kavanaugh’s views on upholding Obamacare will be critically important to his decision.
“Pre-existing conditions are a very high concern for me, very high,” Manchin told reporters as he walked out of the Capitol Tuesday.
Manchin said 40 percent of residents in West Virginia have pre-existing conditions and would be hurt if the law is thrown out.
He now plans to do research on Kavanaugh’s views on Obamacare before he meets with him in the coming weeks.
“We are going to find out what he has said, what he has ruled on, what he has written about and opinionated on,” Manchin said.
Democrats hope the Obamacare argument will resonate with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. She and Manchin helped block the effort one year ago to repeal the Affordable Care Act, in part because they back the law’s requirement that insurers cover pre-existing conditions.
That mandate is now under court challenge in Texas, and Democrats argue it could end up before the Supreme Court, where they believe the newly established conservative majority would rule in favor of plaintiffs seeking to overturn the law.
The Department of Justice, under the leadership of attorney general and Obamacare foe Jeff Sessions, said they will not defend the law or the requirement that insurers cover pre-existing conditions.
“I feel very strongly about the consumer protections in the ACA,” Collins told reporters Tuesday after a closed-door GOP meeting with Vice President Mike Pence, who gave a presentation on Kavanaugh.
Collins has not revealed how she will vote on Kavanaugh but praised his qualifications. She also criticized Democrats for trying to compare the Supreme Court nomination process to the effort to repeal Obamacare.
“This is the Supreme Court,” Collins said. “It’s not a legislative body. There is no parallel.”
But she sent a letter to Sessions protesting the decision not to defend the law.
“A couple of weeks ago I wrote to the Attorney General in protest that they were not defending the law on pre-existing conditions,” Collins said. “It’s highly unusual for the Justice Department not to be defending provisions of the law.”
Murkowski told reporters Tuesday she isn’t ready to decide how she’ll vote on Kavanaugh but told the Anchorage Daily News recently she is “disturbed” the Justice Department is not defending Obamacare’s pre-existing coverage mandate.
“It was the one thing everybody agreed on,” Murkowski said.
Democrats hope to make the case that Kavanaugh would be the deciding vote to kill Obamacare, which has already been partly gutted thanks to a provision in the recent tax bill that eliminates the fine for people who don’t purchase insurance.
“At the top of the list is healthcare,” Schumer said, when asked what aspect of Kavanaugh’s nomination Democrats plan to attack. “This nominee will make the ability of Americans to afford decent healthcare so much the worse.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Democrats “are going to make the case to the American people” that Kavanaugh will play a role in deciding the fate of the law.
Even if the public isn’t paying much attention to the Supreme Court confirmation process, she argued, “they do care about their right to healthcare.”
Robert King contributed to this story.
