the one and only cadillac escalade. ( ) welcome back top congress is handled s opioid crisis or how congress is handling criticism how it s handling the opioid crisis. we mentioned this story a few moments ago. by now you ve probably heard about the 60 minutes washington post story alleges congress pass add law making it tougher for the dea to stop digb companies from blircherring rou quantities of opioids. senator orrin hatch of utah helped usher it through congress. today hatch used his time to question sessions by pushing back on criticism of the bill, of its chief sponsor congressman
think graham/cassidy does. do you think it is easier for you to get your bill a hearing your bill an opportunity to pass if this alexander murray compromise goes through? is that making your job easier or harder to get your larger overhaul bill to be considered and passed? i haven t thought that through, chuck. i do think, if there s flexibility given stakes to lower premiums and if the cost-sharing reduction payments aren t a free windfall for the insurance companies, but can lower costs, that would be better for some of the folks, those struggling families and i am all about those families. my bill will take care of itself because the problems of obamacare will only worsen s if we can do something for the working families i m all about that. let me ask you this. you guys have a lot of stuff piling up by the end of the year. and there are some things that seem as if they re must-passes. but some things are must pass that may not pass. let me ask you. when you prioritize, we have
announced today, and i would recommend you talk to both of them. reporter: not committing one way or the other. again, the deal had just been reached. but it kind of underscores a key point, wolf. leadership right now is waiting for signs from the white house, but also trying to get a sense of where their members are. if the conservative pushback continues as it currently stands, that could mean problems for the bill not just in the senate, but almost certainly in the house. a chamber, i would note, wolf, when these negotiations were ongoing, house republicans made clear, this wasn t something they were willing to put on the house floor. it doesn t at least sound at this point like it s changed. the big question now, is where does the president come down, wolf. he just tweeted this, phil. let me put it up on the screen. any increase in obamacare premiums is the fault of the democrats for giving us a product in quotes that never had a chance of working. people are going to be studyi
russian potential collusion with the trump campaign? i would say, clearly, it s not involved with potential collusion, because to my knowledge, sean spicer wasn t involved in the trump campaign. so it may be, i m not going to speculate on why they were talking to him. i just know that he was still working for the republican national committee. and he had close relations with the campaign, especially after the convention. well, they may have been pursuing that aspect or they may have been pursuing what he knows about meetings that took place in the white house. that s not what we re looking at. so you re looking at the collusion part of all of this? right. all right, let s get to the other breaking news. the president, his decision, apparently, apparently, could change, to support this bipartisan compromise. keeping obamacare, the affordable care act, in tact, at least for the next two years. i assume you support this compromise? i do, but i wouldn t state it as keep oba
obstructionists, blocking his nominees, even touted his tax plan. and the only thing he mentioned about his idea for a health care plan was these block grants. so at the end, the reporter kind of interjected and said, okay, so the graham/cassidy bill, which famously was not supported by multiple republicans, and the president said, yes. so it s not even clear that the white house knows what they want in a health care bill. he wants these block grants to go to the states. go ahead, marc. the bipartisan progress that we ve seen over the last 24 to 48 hours, i think conservatives are very concerned about that, because let s assume that this was agreed to and there was a two-year extension. that s going tyake a little bit of dpas out of the tank right now to go for an absolute repeal and replace and i think that s why we need to push back in part from the likes of the republican study group, the hard-score conservatives in the house. just a few minutes ago, the president tweeted th