wall street journal yesterday, the president seemed optimistic telling the paper, quote, i think we re doing pretty well on health care, we ll see. but just six hours after passing the motion to proceed, political reality sunk in once more. around 9:30 last night the senate rejected the better care reconciliation act. it needed 60 votes to pass because of two amendments one from senator ted cruz and one from senator rob portman that had not been scored by the office. nine went against the legislation, senator john mccain voted for it after he said he wouldn t. and after that ended with a motion to proceed, the senior statesman took his colleagues to tank for constructing the bill and saying he would only support legislation that includes changes urged by his state s governor. we republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. we haven t found it yet.
perspective, according to him. with the exception of the late great abraham lincoln, i can be more presidential than any president that s ever held this office. that i can tell you. that s a wow. all right. we begin today with the senate gaggling in 30 minutes from now but that s pretty much the only sure thing on the schedule today. republicans think they have a plan to get rid of obamacare, but as always, the devil is in the details. you re in luck, we ve got a great team here to break all of it down, starting with msnbc s garrett haake live on the hill. garrett, nobody knows honestly. nobody knew how complicated it was. nobody knows how this thing is going to ends. where exactly do we stand right now? it s going to get more complicated before it gets less complicated. there was a big vote that happened last night on the better care reconciliation act. this was the repeal and replace combo plan that we ve been talking about for weeks.
legislating in the senate? the way our rules and customs encourage us to act. if this process ends in failure which seems likely, then let s return to regular order. i hope we can, again, rely on humani humility on our need to cooperate, on our against on each other. to learn how to trusted each other again. and by so doing better search the people who elected us. stop listening to the loud bombastic loud mouths on the television and internet. to hell with them. coming up next on morning joe we re going to get a reaction from chris coons, chris murphy and angus king. and despite an attack from the outsider president whose sessions who hoped give his first dose of credibility when he was just a candidate. the president brutal tweets all
the senate shot down the better care reconciliation act with nine republicans voting against it. lawmakers, they are expected today to take up a version of the obamacare care repeal bill that passed the senate and the house in 2015 but it was vetoed by president obama. sanctions bill targeting russia over meddling in last year s election was center to the senate after lawmakers in the house overwhelmingly approved the bill. lawmakers in that chamber passed the legislation which also imposes penalties on iran and north korea yesterday. the president s authority to waive the sanctions without first getting congressional approval. and amounts g jeff sessions is warning that they stand to lose millions of dollars in funding. sessions made the statement while discussing new rules on the promised crackdown. those rules include giving immigration authorities access to local deengs facilities. all right. so the future of the attorney general is unclear after the
care reconciliation act which is the senate republican version of the house health care bill that already passed. and they could debate all sorts of additional amendments for changes that people are going to want to make to these proposals that may never happen. because they re doing this through reconciliation which means the democrats or anybody cannot filibuster this with a 60-vote threshold, you have a vo vote-a-rama. you could have 200, 250, 300 amendments brought to the table. a lot could be tabled, so not an official vote. keep it alive my head hurts. you see what i m saying? keep it alive. this is why i cover the senate. so you don t have to. this might be the most consequential vote these senators ever take, and they have no idea what it is they re voting on. let s talk about john mccain.