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politics and politicians Title: How a secret Freedom Caucus pact brought down Obamacare repeal The behind-the-scenes story of the staredown between a few dozen conservative true believers and a novice president. Speaker Paul Ryan and House leaders had been toiling behind closed doors for weeks assembling their Obamacare repeal bill as suspicion on the far-right simmered to a boil. So on March 7, just hours after Ryan unveiled a plan that confirmed its worst fears, the House Freedom Caucus rushed to devise a counterstrategy. The few dozen true believers knew that pressure from House leaders and President Donald Trump to fall in line would be immense and they were intent on not getting boxed in. In a conference room in the Rayburn House Office Building, the group met that evening and made a secret pact. No member would commit his vote before consulting with the entire group — not even if Trump himself called to ask for an on-the- spot commitment. The idea, hatched by Freedom Caucus Vice Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), was to bind them together in negotiations and ensure the White House or House leaders could not peel them off one by one. Twenty-eight of the group's roughly three dozen members took the plunge. Three weeks later, Republican leaders, as many as 25 votes short of passage, were forced to pull their bill from the House floor. “This is a defining moment for our nation, but it's also a defining moment for the Freedom Caucus,” said group leader Mark Meadows about a week before the doomed vote was scheduled. “I don't think there's a more critical vote for the Freedom Caucus than this." The unpublicized pledge sowed the seeds of Friday’s collapse of the Republican Party’s seven-year campaign to replace Obamacare with its own vision of health care reform. While Trump and leadership were able to win over some Freedom Caucus members, the parties to the pact refused to budge without a green light from their peers, despite receiving one concession after another. Their resistance — along with the objections of a handful of moderates — stymied Trump and Ryan in the first major legislative gambit between the policy expert and political novice. The Freedom Caucus stared down its own commander in chief and won — delivering a black eye to his early presidency and potentially damaging the rest of his agenda. “Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “They [were] basically saying, ‘We’re going to find all the guys who support it, and we’re all going to hold hands and be a ‘no' on something,’” said a senior Republican source. “It’s ironic because these are the guys who say, ‘I don’t turn my voting card over to leadership. I am the only guy who controls my voting card.' But then they do this stuff, where they say, ‘I can’t because my group is a no.’" This account of the Freedom Caucus’ central role in the health care showdown is based on interviews with more than two dozen Republican legislators, White House officials and congressional aides. Time and again, they described the tortured, toxic political dynamic within the House Republican Conference — old news to those who’ve followed years of internecine battles between the far-right and leadership, but never experienced or appreciated until now by Trump. Freedom Caucus members told the White House they distrusted Ryan because he doesn’t listen to their concerns. They refused to work with him, going around his back to negotiate with the White House. Little Trump did to woo them worked because the group always wanted more, White House officials and GOP leadership insiders said. They were buoyed by outside groups rooting them on, and didn't fear the White House's fury because the law was unpopular — and, increasingly, so was the president. "There was this huge, deep distrust," one senior administration official said. "No matter what you offered them, or what you said, someone was unhappy with you. The level of distrust in the House ranks is far more than has been reported." Their House colleagues are furious with them for, as Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) put it, “deserting the team.” Some top White House officials say they learned their lesson about trying to negotiate with the group. “How can [Freedom Caucus members] go back and face their constituents if they’re the reason we didn’t get the most significant entitlement reform in a generation, if they’re the reason we didn’t keep our promise for repealing Obamacare?” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said shortly before Ryan pulled the bill. “It defies to me to understand where they’re coming from." Their all-for-one strategy bedeviled Ryan’s leadership team and other top White House officials during a frantic whipping operation in the days leading up to the vote. It undermined a key strategy laid out by GOP Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who believed Trump’s personal involvement, including face-to-face negotiations with some lawmakers and groups, would ultimately win over the Freedom Caucus. Trump even subtly threatened their political careers during a closed-door conference meeting three days before the scheduled vote, telling Meadows while winking: “Mark, I’m coming after you.” “They informally said: 'Let’s stick together,'” said one Freedom Caucus source who described the strategy. “Whenever someone had a conversation with a whip or a member of the leadership team, or there was a discussion with White House staff, there was immediate discussion with the group, whether it was via telephone or a ton of group meetings.” The source added: “It made it much harder if you were in leadership to pick these guys off.” Most Freedom Caucus members say the group was merely sticking up for conservative values. In tanking the bill, they believed they’d get a shot at making it more conservative at a later point. During a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Meadows said “Trump will deliver.” “As we look at this today, this is not the end of the debate,” he said. “It’s up to the conservatives and the moderates to come together in the coming days to present something to the president.” HFC members also pushed back hard against any notion that they changed their demands, saying they've wanted the same thing the whole time. Some caucus members struggled with the strategy, wanting to repeal Obamacare but furious that Ryan’s proposal didn’t go far enough. A few felt obligated to vote “yes” to back Trump, but never switched because they didn’t get the go-ahead from the band of ideological purists. During a last-minute Friday afternoon plea from Vice President Mike Pence, members including Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) and even Meadows were visibly upset, sources said. But if some were starting to crack, they never got the chance. Ryan pulled the bill, and many are now pinning the debacle on the Freedom Caucus. "There is no logical explanation for their behavior except they wanted to kill the bill,” said one senior House Republican, furious about the bill’s defeat. "Trump is now looking to work with Democrats to get health care done. … Now, any health care reform will be less ambitious, less conservative." From the start, few liked the Republican plan and no one loved it. Immediately after the bill dropped, high-profile conservative lawmakers and groups panned it as “Obamacare Lite.” Just about every medical and health care group warned it would hurt Americans. And moderates were spooked by a Congressional Budget Office score that showed it would result in 24 million more uninsured Americans in the next decade. So Republicans started logrolling. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
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The FC acted like a bunch of asshole libertarians….if we can’t have it 100% our way, then no one gets anything. Selfish brats....one and all.
Yep, Jim, you and the Freedom Caucus really showed them what a big mistake they made….you sure did!
Jim Jordan and the Freedom Caucus are my heroes. Keep posting these wonderful accounts of their daring as they face down that notorious liberal-appeaser, Paul Ryan.
Who Owns Obamacare Now?
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