only get worse if congress fails to act. obamacare is dead. paul: president trump wednesday urging congress to act on plans to repeal and replace obamacare as senate republicans continue to hash out their bill behind closed doors. majority leader mitch mcconnell reportedly told the president this week that a vote could come by july 4th, pressure is mounting on the gop as anthem bluecross blueshield announced this week that it will pull out in exchanges in many ohio counties this year growing uncertainty over the loss future. we are back with dan henninger, kim strassel and joe rago. joe, how much progress are the senate republicans making behind the scenes? they are making a lot of progress in the sense that they studied this issue more than any other. everybody says they re working as well together as they ever have. paul: wow.
friday, despite so many falls statements and lies, total and completely vindication and, wow, comey is a leaker. we are back with dan henninger and kim strassel and joe rago. kim, i want to address the question of leaks first and we have comey talking about how he directed a leak of his memos. let s look. the president tweeted on friday after i got fired that i better hope that there s not tapes, i woke up in the middle of the night on monday night because it didn t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation, there might be a tape and my judgment was, i need today get that out into the public square and so i asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with the reporter, didn t do it myself for a variety of reasons but i asked him to because i thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. that s pretty remarkable, that happens all of the time in washington, we should tell our viewers that but the fact that comey said he
captain courageous, i don t know if i had the presence of mind i would have said, sir, that s wrong. paul: florida senator marco rubio questioning why former director james comey didn t immediately report his concerns about president trump s behavior to the white house counsel s office, let s bring in columnist and deputy editor dan henninger and kim strassel and joe rago. i didn t have the self-possession to address the president and tell him that isn t appropriate, does that wash in your mind? i don t think it washes, it doesn t wash in my mind and more importantly it doesn t wash in the american people, everybody who watched that, i would include even democrats. there something about the comey narrative that didn t quite add up and that exchange with senator rubio was a perfect example. virtually everybody listening to what his description of what
they wanted a shutdown, we know that. they were desperate to make this administration to look like we couldn t function, the left-wing base wanted a shutdown, that s why you are seeing them crowing about their success, cover up the fact that they cut a deal with president trump. paul: white house budget director mick mulvaney blasting democrats and claiming victory for the administration following a deal this week to avoid a government shutdown at least for now, $1.1 trillion spending bill through september but the threat of a future stand-off still very real with president trump tweeting tuesday that the country needs a good shutdown to force a confrontation over the budget. we are back with dan henninger, kim strassel and joe rago.
as much as we have came up with a really incredible health care plan, this has brought the republican party together. paul: joining the panel this week deputy editor dan henninger, kim strassel and joe rago. joe, how did they pull this off? it was dead in the water for a while. i think there was a sense of political urgency. this was really a big win for the house to overcome the defeat in march of the original bill and they made some policy compromises. if you look at the people who voted for this bill, moderates to really hardline conservatives they came together on a great bill. paul: well, it s not perfect. we have written critically of some parts of it.