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Washington • After Sen. Mike Lee and three fellow GOP senators rebuffed Republican leaders' plan to vote on a health care bill, President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared it was time to let "Obamacare fail" and force Democrats to the table to work out a solution.

Meanwhile, Republican Senate leaders appeared unable to whip enough votes within their caucus to pass their "plan B": repealing Obamacare but delaying its effective date for two years, until after the 2018 midterm elections. That bill, which had passed the Senate in a previous session, has no replacement for patient protections offered under Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

Lee and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said they would back the delayed repeal, though opposition by Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska left the GOP one vote shy of getting to a tie vote that Vice President Mike Pence could break in favor of passage. Republicans hold 52 of the Senate's 100 seats.

"As I have said before, I did not come to Washington to hurt people," Capito said in a statement.

Hatch, who has advocated for a two-step approach to a new health care law — repealing Obamacare and putting something in its place later — said his fellow Republicans, and Democrats, need to step up to the plate. He called the plan to repeal now and replace later "the smartest thing we can do."

"Sooner or later, it'd have to be replaced," he said. "They've got to get real."

Lee's office said he would vote for a procedural motion to get to final passage of gutting Obamacare but declined a request to interview the senator.

Lee did not speak to reporters at the Capitol.

Appearing on Fox News, Lee said he opposed the current Senate GOP health care bill because it "doesn't do enough to comply with the promise Republicans have been making for the last seven years" to jettison Obamacare, which was passed without a single GOP vote.

"If I'm given an opportunity to repeal Obamacare, I will do that," Lee told Fox News, adding that it would be a "sad reflection on our party" if it couldn't get enough votes to do so.

Jason Pye, vice president of the tea party umbrella group FreedomWorks, praised Lee on Tuesday, saying his "principled decision to oppose the motion to proceed last night resulted in a chain of events that give our conservative activists hope that Republicans might actually keep the fundamental promise to repeal Obamacare they have been making for the better part of a decade."

At the White House, Trump said Tuesday that "it would be a lot easier" to let the Democrats' law fall under its own weight given the votes aren't there to replace it now.

"I think we're probably in that position where we'll just let Obamacare fail," the president said. "We're not going to own it. I'm not going to own it. I can tell you, the Republicans are not going to own it. We'll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us, and they're going to say, 'How do we fix it? How do we fix it? Or how do we come up with a new plan?' "

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer responded to Trump by saying that his "administration intends to make it fail."

"That is not acceptable," Hoyer said. "No matter what the president suggests, he does 'own it' — and if the system is undermined on Republicans' watch, they alone will be held to account."

Hoyer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are ready to work together with Republicans to fix problems with the current health care law but that the GOP hasn't been willing to negotiate.

Though Republicans were unable to muster the 50 votes needed to even bring their bill to a tie vote, Trump tweeted that the Senate needed to kill its rule that it takes 60 votes to get to final passage on legislation.

Hatch balked at the idea of changing the rule, noting that it protects the minority and Republicans wouldn't want to lose that if they wind up out of power.

"We're not about to do that," Hatch said.