Posted on 03/24/2017 6:43:13 PM PDT by mdittmar
WASHINGTON — After several days of dramatic back and forth between President Trump and Republicans in Congress, House Republicans pulled a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, delivering the president a staggering defeat in his first high-profile legislative effort.
That’s quite a turn of events. Let’s break them down.
Republican leaders shelved the legislation on Friday afternoon — shortly before an expected vote — after House members spent days pushing for concessions on the replacement proposal, called the American Health Care Act. A day before, after the vote was postponed, Mr. Trump demanded that a vote be held on Friday. But the bill was pulled as it looked as though it would fall shy of the 215 votes needed to pass the House.
Who decided to pull the bill? Mr. Trump and the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, both said it was their decision.
“Ryan says that he advised Trump to pull the bill,” Julie Hirschfeld Davis, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote in a live analysis. “Interesting, because Trump told us that he had directed Ryan to yank it. A lot of blame-shifting going on.”
The proposal would have replaced the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, with a system of age-based tax credits to purchase insurance coverage, and its provisions brought a divide between ultraconservative and moderate House Republicans into relief.
This is the gist: The most conservative members of the House didn’t think that the American Health Care Act would go far enough to eradicate Obamacare
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My heart was with the FC but my head tells me it needed to pass. It had some good things in it and it was a start. Looking at the Rats and MSM celebrating is a sickening spectacle. Trump needed a win.
The moderates have voted against Obamacare all these years. Why now would they not stand against it? The Freedom Caucus never moved. We know who was voting for show all these years. Giving the Freedom Caucus 80 percent turned off the moderates? The moderates were still getting 95 to 98 percent of what they have always wanted. I will take Freedom anyday.
It did not fall apart, there was no support for it from the get go. Everyone told them that but no, you cannot listen to the people, EVER. That would be the last thing you would do.
I think Trump wanted this to get to the Senate. I have a hard time believing he wanted this to fail till the writing was on the wall.
I think it was just the conservative commentariat and blogosphere who set the “bill sucks” narrative in motion and helped it snowball until it was untenable. It’s a lot easier to oppose something than to defend it and be labeled a RINO. That’s not to say this bill was great, but it would put us in a better spot, which is really all you can do with a bare Senate majority.
Remember, the only people who get more mileage out of phony Obamacare opposition are some of the GOP entertainment industry. They, along with Obama and media, are celebrating tonight. They get angry callers and ratings out of this. We get to live with this shiv in our spleen for the foreseeable future.
“But 109 FReepers will declare victory when the rest of the world knows it’s over.”
Conservative Treehouse reminds us how bad this loss is...
Moving forward, any tax legislation will now have to keep the $1 to $2 trillion ObamaCare spending in place; ultimately meaning far less room for comprehensive tax reform. Again, the intransigent CONservative caucus just dealt a blow to tax cuts – this is “disappointing” to the Trump economic agenda and will ultimately mean lesser job growth.
I would also add the Wall and the Infrastructure Bill that will be much harder to get through.
I read earlier in the process that this was the reason they went with health care first...so they could realize the savings.
You’ll take Obamacare because that’s all we’re left with now.
They might as well send another full repeal vote over to the Senate since the Dems will kill it. If we’re going to hold meaningless votes, it might as well be ones we can get credit for.
I agree, but the Senate would not be kind to Trump. The bill would be sent back to the House in a form that could not be passed by Republicans alone, and would not get any Dem support.
So it would have failed anyway.
Now I’m just working it out. so I ask:
Do you think after the Senate got through with it that the bill would be acceptable to conservatives or to the Dems, and to Trump?
I can’t see the votes for a Senate bill that would be even more ‘moderate’, yet not ‘moderate’ enough for the Dems.
I’ve heard that too, but Mark Levin assures us it’s all ok.
Just pass it, somehow, without reconciliation and just like that, we’re set. The strategy is to just do it, and the Dems will roll over. We should have the House nominate this 3D chessmaster as the new speaker.
No, in a year, people will remember who passed the law in the first place and they will be on the hot seat, not us.
I bet you were one of those guys who was always saying that Trump had no chance to get elected!
I could live with that. At least then we can say we tried.
Now it looks like we shit the bed because we did. This was basically a conference vote that we couldn’t even pass. There was zero chance the Senate wouldn’t have amended it but the FC didn’t even want to give it a chance. I heard McConnell basically had a whole new bill as an amendment. I’d have at least liked to have seen it.
Tax cuts are not a major issue.
I suspect you are correct here. My congressman was on the radio yesterday morning and he said that he wouldn't vote for it because there was no premium savings for we the people. It just shifted the same excessive costs around but did not lower the price.
I hope so, but it’s survived for 7 years already and returns are diminishing.
I just don’t think it’ll be much of a voting issue against Demos-at least one we can credibly capitalize on anymore. “He did this to you, but I can’t fix it” isn’t much of sales pitch.
Who is your Congressman? He sounds like one of the good guys.
“Tax cuts are not a major issue.”
Excuse me...they are not a major issue??? Try talking to the CEO of every American corporation. They might have a different answer. And saving $1-3,000 a year on taxes for the middle class..nope..that’s not a big issue!!
“Tax cuts are not a major issue.”
Excuse me...they are not a major issue??? Try talking to the CEO of every American corporation. They might have a different answer. And saving $1-3,000 a year on taxes for the middle class..nope..that’s not a big issue!!
We’ll let the real judge decide...let’s see what the markets do next week.
I’d like to have seen Mitch’s bill too, I’d liked to have seen the votes in the House today too.
But since it was certainly going to fail then ‘the sooner the better’ seems reasonable to me. Obamacare will collapse this year, So mDems and RINOs will be pummelled by their voters wanting relief- and Trump can say “I tried to prevent this. Now let’s work together Congress.”
I’m just guessing, but that would be a reasonable plan.
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