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politics and politicians Title: The Republicans Fold on Health Care The House abandoned its legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, handing President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan a major defeat. To a man and woman, nearly every one of the 237 Republicans elected to the House last November made the same promise to voters: Give us control of Congress and the White House, and we will repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. On Friday, those lawmakers abandoned that effort, conceding that the Republican Party’s core campaign pledge of the last seven years will go unfulfilled. “I will not sugarcoat this: This is a disappointing day for us,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a press conference after he informed Republicans that he was ditching the American Health Care Act. “We did not have quite the votes to replace this law,” Ryan said. “And, so yeah, we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” Earlier in the afternoon, Ryan informed President Trump at the White House that the bill could not pass the House, as blocs of conservatives and moderates resisted a week of frenzied lobbying from the administration and were determined to vote no. The legislation had faced an avalanche of opposition from the outset. Democrats rejected any rollback of the Obama-era law, while conservative activists rebelled against a proposal that fell short of a full repeal. And as opposition mounted, Republicans representing swing districts and Democratic states began to pull their support, worried about cuts to Medicaid, a broader projected loss of insurance coverage, and a potential backlash from voters in the midterm elections next year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the proposal would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 24 million people over a decade, and a Quinnipiac University poll showed that just 17 percent of potential voters supported the plan, with 56 percent opposed. Trump had initially insisted that Republicans hold a vote on the bill regardless of the outcome, wanting to see which members would defy him. He dispatched his top lieutenants to Capitol Hill on Thursday night to urge rank-and-file lawmakers to fall in line, ending negotiations with the party’s right and left flank on further changes to the bill. But few members were persuaded, and by Friday, party leaders in the House wanted to spare their members from having to cast a vote in favor of an unpopular bill that would not become law. At a hastily arranged meeting in the Capitol basement, Ryan told Republicans he had called off the vote and said Trump was on board with the decision. Minutes later, stone-faced lawmakers left the meeting and prepared to head back to their districts for the weekend. One Republican staffer was in tears as she exited the room. While conservative members of the Freedom Caucus withheld their support despite winning a last-minute amendment to broaden the repeal, it was the defection of more moderate and electorally vulnerable members that sealed its fate. Republicans could afford to lose no more than 22 votes to achieve a majority, and in a statement at the White House Friday, Trump estimated that they were 10 to 15 votes short. In perhaps the most ominous sign for the GOP leadership, the chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, announced he would oppose the bill on Friday morning. In previous generations, it would be unheard of for a top committee chairman to oppose party leaders on such a major vote. Representatives Barbara Comstock of Virginia and David Joyce of Ohio followed suit about an hour later, sapping momentum from the effort less than a day after Trump delivered his ultimatum to Republicans to pass his bill or see Obamacare live on. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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