NEW YORK: President Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize U.S. Senate rules requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, after a devastating setback to the GOP effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Claiming that Senate rules are killing the Republican party and allows eight Democrats to control the country.
Trump tweeted, “Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!.”
Trump tweeted on Saturday that the Republicans in the Senate "look like fools" and should do away with the filibuster, even though scrapping a 60-vote requirement would still not have saved the doomed bill.
Trump tweeted,"The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R's in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT'S TIME!"
Trump received a major blow when Senators John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined Democrats to oppose a "skinny repeal" of Obamacare.
"Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW," Trump tweeted. "They look like fools and are just wasting time."
"Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead!" he wrote. "Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!
This isn't the first time Trump has taken to Twitter to exhort the Senate to change its rules. In May, Trump called for the election of "more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%."
According to Senate rules that 60 senators ie.three-fifths of the 100-member Senate must agree in order to end debate and move forward to a vote on a legislation -- a process known as invoking cloture.