here and take arizona. is that is going to go for martha mcsally, look how close we are, 52/48, but republicans still maintain control. a lot of reasons to watch tomorrow night. mark preston, thanks. a new cnnple shows the top issues for voters are immigration and health care. are democrats worried that the president s hard-line stance on immigration will drown out their own message? vo: you re feeling the squeeze.
a bill on the floor of the united states senate that would effectively kill obamacare. mccain s health issues came at a critical juncture. a senate vote on legislation to begin dismantling the affordable care act, also known as obamacare. the 52/48 republican majority in the senate left little margin for error. less than two weeks after surgery to remove a blood clot over his eye hey, how you doing, guys? mccain made a dramatic return to the senate. the senior senator from arizona is recognized. i thank you, mr. president. mccain delivers this roughly 15 to 20-minute speech that is sort of the encapsulation of everything he wants the senate to be and everything he feels like the senate should be. let s trust each other. let s return to regular order. we ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues
the washington post is reporting that mccabe will leave his position, retire as early as march of this year. once he gets a full pension. he has been the target of intense republican criticism for the past year on a number of different issues. this week he was being groped for two days on capitol hill. steve harrigan, many thanks. a busy agenda limits republicans at the start of the new year. after losing ascendancy to democrats, they say they will be looking to 2018. it is not much you can do on a partisan basis in the senate at 52/48. 451/49. which would be the number for us next year. i do not think most of the democratic colleagues want to do nothing. there are areas i think where
2018. she is up for reelection next year and looking to expand the majority they have in the senate right now and looking at states where he won in 2016 as ways to go do that. as we ve seen so far this year the 52/48 majority allows them to get some things done but not as much as they want. jon: the republicans haven t had any huge legislative achievements. tax reform is their one probably last big chance in this calendar year. are they going to do it? do they have the votes? they are definitely getting closer. announcement from senator mccain this morning makes a big difference. he was one of the hold-outs. his concerns are process and substance. it wasn t really clear at all where he was going to come down on this. so that narrows the number of senators who are waivering or uncommitted here. there are no firm no votes at this point. they are in pretty good shape. they have work to do in finalizing some of the details and getting the last few members on board. jon: what about th
subset of the relationship. it was not where it needed to be to get obamacare done. the question is can they get there. the president will be in this room. he s fighting with bob corker. fighting in recent days. it goes back a while. history with senator john mccain. moderate susan collins, lisa murkowski. disagreed with the president and how he went about the debate. ben sass, senator from nebraska tweeting that the president miss behaves too often, doesn t speak in a way that he finds to be civic minded. it only takes two republicans to take the train off the tracks because they have a 52/48 majority. is there any expectation that the president tries to make things better or does the senators, the most i talk to say the president is not going to change, therefore, how do we navigate this? they have tried to dlachange. the senators are trying to change. he s probably going from the first floor to the second floor as we speak to go into the mansfield room right off the