How a secret Freedom Caucus pact brought down Obamacare repeal (Conspiracy Theory)

Politico ^ | 26 March 2016 7:03AM/9:39 update | Rachael Bade, Josh Dawsey and Jennifer Haberkorn

[blueplum]

The behind-the-scenes story of the staredown between a few dozen conservative true believers and a novice president.

....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 ....

[MaxistheBest]

Last time I looked, the number one carries the same weight, whether he was a marginal member or not!!

[wiseprince]

Bye...Any speaker will have to compromise. Why doesn’t Jim Jordan or Meadows become speaker? Oh , they might have to attach their names to something... Definition of coward. Again, why won’t any of them challenge Ryan’s speakership? It should be obvious to anyone capable of critical thinking

[MaxistheBest]

“I’m can see you’d rather gum flap and type than have a wall built, etc.”

I agree...in the 6 or so years this group has been together, they have never had a legislative success!! Lots of yelling though!!

[wiseprince]

Everything you said Trump is for. No one trusts him to push hard for that stuff though (I did)

[Jim Robinson]

I did finally go to the VA when I needed surgery on my legs about 8 or 9 years ago. I was negotiating with a private surgeon to do the job and told him I could take out a second on my house to pay for it. He said that would cover his bill and he’d even donate some or all of his services, but there’s no way it would cover the hospital. He suggested I could try negotiating with the hospital, but he doubted it’d work out. Then because I was wearing a navy baseball cap, he suggested if I was a vet, I should go to the VA. I did, but my disability is not service connected so I just get partial coverage and I pay the balance. Fine, 3 hospital stays and two legs amputated later and probably less than $10,000 out of pocket, but at least they took me and I’m still alive and didn’t have to sell my house or go bankrupt.

[so_real]

When Pelosi was speaker ... exactly how much compromising with conservatives did you see taking place? I didn't see *any*. Now we've given them the Senate, the House, and the Executive Office. And we are taking baby steps toward improving the Supreme Court. I expect the same consideration for us from our Speaker as Nancy Pelosi received from the kooks on her side of the isle. Elections have consequences; what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I'm fine with throwing out any Speaker, like Ryan, who compromises only to cater to the liberals.

[so_real]

There is no reason Trump could not have pushed hard for those reforms *first* to keep that trust. There is no reason he could not push hard for them now. If we see it, we'll fall in line. Working with "Lyin' Ryan" to promote RyanCare/RinoCare/TrumpCare does not nurture any sense of trust. And I say that as proud Trump supporter.

[hinckley buzzard]

Lots of self-appointed "conservatives" love to rant about Planned parenthood and abortion, Obamacare, and single payer insurance. But when it comes time actually to begin taking action, they turn out to be A-f*ing-WOL.

Seven years to come up with an acceptable plan, six weeks to cobble together a half-baked start. And even then they cannot get their sh*t together. Pathetic all the way around.

[blueplum]

**Typical bait and switch. Start the campaign season with a pledge to repeal, then when voters buy in, add the term replace**

You are wrong. Google is your friend:

President Trump started with repeal and replace, and he ended with repeal and replace. To wit:

Wednesday, 22 Jun 2016 01:06 PM
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Trump-100-Days-Speech-Plan/2016/06/22/id/735094/

“Repeal and replace job-killing Obamacare.”

Yahoo FinanceJune 17, 2016
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-healthcare-plans-obamacare-affordable-care-act-individual-mandate-125918043.html

Donald Trump: Repeal and replace Obamacare
Trump has said he wants to replace Obamacare with “something terrific.”

May 11, 2016 10:45 PM
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/donald-trump-in-woodbury-if-i-win-in-ny-the-election-is-over-1.11787365

He also pledged to immediately repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act

Mar 28, 2016 8:52 AM
https://townhall.com/columnists/justinhaskins/2016/03/28/trumpcare-unfairly-blasted-by-critics-n2139806

A new study by the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) claims Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare

[hinckley buzzard]

Just so. You could also add, that the "free market" approach to health care will no longer work because the supply is fixed, the demand is optional only at the margins, so costs are inelastic; healthcare in the main does not respond to the usual rules of supply and demand. A treatment that costs 15,000 a year will not come down to 5000 just because people want it to, or because they stop buying it. With their life at stake, they will buy it somehow.

[blueplum]

**Except for the fact that it wasn’t a repeal bill.**

Actually, it was, as much as could be accomplished at the moment under reconciliation rules without a majority. I’m glad I’m not paying this year’s penalty!

“GOP bill would repeal Obamacare taxes and penalties”

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/03/06/npr-gop-bill-would-repeal-obamacare-taxes-and-penalties-keep-some-subsidies

[Steelfish]

Stages II and III are where most of EHBs become included (that the HFC opposes) and this would pass with 60 votes or more with Democratic support. What the HFC did was to inflict what many seem to think is a crippling blow to the Trump presidency that is now wounded, on the ground, and limping. Is this what we wanted? A self-inflicted mortal blow?

[blueplum]

You’re concerned about a billion, but you’re not upset that the schoolyard games Cruz, Lee and Rand pulled using the FC (yes, used them like 2 dollar flipflops) just cost us working joes

One

Trillion

Dollars

by not allowing medic-aid caps and medic-aid funding caps to go forward? And who knows how much in personal savings from eliminating Zerecare penalties and payroll taxes before tax day??

[Alberta's Child]

That’s all true, but keep in mind that many of those treatments only exist because someone other than the patient is paying for them. In that sense, an expensive medical treatment is like an aircraft carrier. I don’t know anyone who is in the market for one personally, but someone produces them and makes a lot of money selling them.

[Alberta's Child]

1. If the GOP passed a Stage I "fix" for ObamaCare in March/April of 2017 and then 2018 insurance renewals with massive hikes in premiums went out in October/November 2017 (which is exactly what would have happened), then this would have been a "crippling blow" to: (A) the Trump presidency, (B) the Republican House, and (C) the Republican Senate. This is why it was crucial to get something in Stage I that would immediately reduce premiums for people.

2. The only "crippling blow" I see right now is to a GOP House leadership that made President Trump look bad. They never should have drafted the bill and brought Trump into the conversation without having sufficient GOP votes on board. Paul Ryan came out of this looking like a rank amateur as Speaker of the House.

3. If the House bill was constrained in any way by the realities of the 52-48 margin in the Senate, then a Senate bill should have been drafted first and used as the foundation of the House bill.

[Alberta's Child]

The "billion" in my previous post was a metaphor for a large pile of money that American taxpayers don't have the cushion to lose, not a real number.

The trillion dollars in "savings" you reference didn't exist. And I know it didn't exist because those Medicaid funding caps were the reason all those moderate "Tuesday Group" Republicans were opposed to the bill. What this means is that the GOP would have been forced to drop that trillion dollars in savings in order to get the moderates in their own party on board -- and that's even before the Democrats in the U.S. Senate got involved in the conversation.

[PGR88]

The purists now have nothing, zilch, zero, nada. They own Obamacare now.

I'm not a "I'd rather eat half a crap-sandwich, instead of a whole crap-sandwich" kind of guy.

[blueplum]

the Tuesday Group doesn’t seem to have much of a problem continuing caps on Puerto Rico and neither do the Dems. So they can’t really hit very hard on that.

The Dems will fight over killing medic-aid expansion, but the road rash reality is we have 73 million medic-aid recipients and 90 million working people. We’re in the days we used to worry about. And we can also make states accountable for how their work-to-welfare grants are spent instead of throwing money down a hole; how many in, how many out, success rate. Get the unemployed on medic-aid employed and get medic-aid back to what it’s supposed to be - a bootstrap program, not a career. I’m not sure how much 25M people off the medic-aid budget translates to? but it’s probably about a third :)

[entropy12]

Then you would be against Ronald Reagan’s operating philosophy as well. He ate lots of crap sandwiches delivered by Tip O’Neill, in order to get some of his own agenda through, such as strengthening military and prodigious tax cuts. But then he was POTUS for 8 years and Dave Brat will never be.

Reagan said half a sandwich is better than none. The freedom caucus has ZERO sandwich. Now we will all suffer full bore effects of Obamacare for God knows how long. Reagan was very popular with voters based on his record breaking electoral vote victories in both elections.

[entropy12]

When Pelosi was speaker ... exactly how much compromising with conservatives did you see taking place?

You just explained why her party was crushed in 2010, 2014, 2016. So yes, she was a purist for the left wing causes. That is why she is no longer THE SPEAKER of the house. Tip O'Neill on the other hand compromised a lot with Reagan, and may be that is why his party retained congress for many years during his time.