Trump delivers ultimatum to House GOP: Pass health-care measure on Friday or he’ll move on

WaPo ^ | 03-23-2017 | Mike DeBonis

[NRx]

President Trump delivered an ultimatum to House Republicans on Thursday night: Vote to approve the measure to overhaul the nation’s health-care system on the House floor Friday, or reject it and the president will move on to his other legislative priorities.

The president signaled that the time for negotiations was over with rank-and-file Republicans who were meeting late at night on Capitol Hill to try to find common ground on the embattled package crafted by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

The move was a high-risk gamble for the president and speaker, who have both invested significant political capital in passing legislation that would rewrite the 2010 Affordable Care Act. For Trump, who campaigned as a skilled negotiator capable of forging a good deal on behalf of Americans, it could either vindicate or undercut one of his signature claims. If the measure fails, it would mean that Obamacare — something that congressional Republicans have railed against for seven years — would remain in place.

“Disastrous #Obamacare has led to higher costs & fewer options. It will only continue to get worse! We must #RepealANDReplace. #PassTheBill,” Trump tweeted from his official White House account as the meeting was wrapping up Thursday night.

[TTFX]

"Trump has already stated that the next time he tackles healthcare, he’s reaching out to the Dems"

NY Times Reporter: Trump says he’s now blaming the DEMOCRATS

[KevinB]

“REFUTE” was not my intention...

Well, if I make a post and you call it "Harse-munnahr!" it would be appropriate for you to explain how so. You responded with gobbledygook that had nothing to do with what I posted.

[Owen]

Well, first of all I don’t see a master plan to bring down Ryan. Trump wanted that bill passed. Nothing else had even a chance in the Senate. The bomb throwers don’t want to govern. They particularly don’t want to be in a position where they are charged with governing.

The right wing pays better speaking fees than the left so most of those guys are trying to carve out a niche as a darling of the movement to get paid more at some point.

I think the odds are pretty high the NeverTrump Koch brothers funded that effort. “If the GOP pulls your campaign funding and funds a primary challenge, I have deep pockets for you.”

If you are up to speed on left wing thinking, you will know it’s “oppose Trump in everything.” That’s what they have to do to keep money flowing to the DNC. Cooperate in anything at all, their own firebrand money closes the spigot.

So expect to need 60 votes for tax reform, for infrastructure, for stimulus generically . . . for everything.

In other words, this was a killer. Nothing will pass now.

Additionally, the wackos who never wanted to look at the Senate at all . . . they think they have 52 votes. Susan Collins in Maine has zero interest in red meat conservatism. Heller in Nevada is up in 2018 and from now a pretty solidly blue state. He’s not going to vote for anything conservative. That looks like 50 at that point.

Well, sorry, no. Jeff Flake in Arizona is from a red state but he won his seat with only 46% of the vote. He ain’t voting conservative either. And McCain . . . who knows.

The wackos would not even let the process start in the Senate. They were probably funded not to.

[SecAmndmt]

With “friends” like you, the conservative movement does not need enemies.

Pretending that the Republic is going to collapse because Ryanocare failed sounds a lot like a tried and true Democrat scare tactic (eg. there will be “blood in the streets, if concealed carry is permitted”).

We had how many years to have a open discussion about replacing the ACA, and instead of a real debate we get a crap sandwich that no one wants? Nice work, GOPe.

A neutral observer might could reasonably speculate that this whole process was a sham, intended to fail in order to make conservatives look bad.

[TomasUSMC]

As long as Paul Ryan is in charge of the House, Trump will not accomplish anything unless.....Paul Ryan can look like the hero.

Maybe if Ryan pisses off the Dems also, will there be enough bipartisen hate in Congress to ruin him.

I don’t see Trump making deals with the dems. I hope not. You know....I thought that nuking the filibuster was priority 1 but now I see......Nuking Ryan is priority ONE.

[MHT]

My daughter told me tonight that this version was the Price bill that had been touted for the past few years. DJT went with it out of loyalty to his own cabinet member. But there are apparently three better bills but they never saw the light of day in this WH/Congress scenario. It should have taken longer, involved more people and put more sunshine on what was in it!

[catnipman]

here’s some food for thought: just a few weeks ago President Trump said HIS timeline for obamacare replace and repeal was late 2017 or early 2018.

This was well before there was any hint of the existence of Paul Ryan’s RyanCare bill.

I think Trump was letting Paul Ryan have enough rope to hang himself.

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for your reply to my inquiry.

When I consult wiki I learn that Harry Reid got his modification of the filibuster rule to include judges done with 52 votes. So I am not at all convinced that Mitch McConnell should not be able to get the same result for justices with 50+ one vote.

As to the reconciliation process, I see nothing that prevents the solution offered by Ted Cruz to the president in their conference of the White House or by Senator Lee publicly to the effect that the Senate parliamentarian is friendlier to a broader bill than we have been led to believe by the Rinos and I see nothing to prevent the matter being entirely solved by the vice president. Although much of this has now been mooted by the withdrawal of the bill, the solution nevertheless is presumably still available to a Republican coalition determined to undo this disaster.

That, I think, is the root of the problem. Yes, Paul Ryan deserves heaps of blame and he is getting all he deserves, but the problem is structural not personal. The Republicans simply do not want to be seen taking away an entitlement. They fear the votes of those who did not vote for them in the elections since 2010 more than they fear losing the votes of those who did vote for them.

Donald Trump is not entirely blameless in this affair either, one can make a very good argument that the Ryan plan is necessarily distorted in order to accommodate the campaign trail promises and instructions of Donald Trump to retain the parts of Obama care which doomed it to failure in the first place.

I have argued since the nomination that the Republicans should not have gone near this tar baby because the problem was insoluble so long as Republicans found cutting benefits to be radioactive unless they utterly plundered the treasury to pass the costs of the retained features of Obama care onto the next generation. Now we see Donald Trump making overtures to the Democrats which raises a specter which I have warned against for some time, that the president might well make a deal with the Democrats just to get the matter behind him. His fidelity to our conservative principles concerning fiscal sanity and health care liberty might give way to his impulse to cut deals. All this remains to be seen, of course. The fact the Trump did not initially sign on with conservatives but with Ryan, that Trump threatened the conservative faction with primary opposition, that Trump has shown no enthusiasm or even acknowledged the reconciliation solution of Cruz/Lee, leads one to suspect that he will not be steadfast in support of conservative coalition values in cutting such a deal.

Applying these motives to a tax cut should play out in favor of cooperation all around because the Republicans who are loathe to be seen cutting goodies have shown themselves to be quite willing to bankrupt the next generation to award goodies. Likewise infrastructure spending-an examination of much of that which has been proposed looks like pork.

In sum, we are in the same lockbox with a Republican President (whether a Bush or Trump) with a Republican Congress as we are with a Democrat President and a Republican Congress, a government willing to spend OPM but unwilling to tax or otherwise pay up. That is because most Republicans and President Trump have calculated that it is political suicide to cut entitlements.

As to Trump's state of mind, if I am correct he has calculated that the country is rushing headlong toward a fiscal and/or an economic disaster which cannot be halted politically by breaking rice bowls or cutting entitlements but which must be averted by energizing the economy so that income approaches spending in time to restore confidence in world markets. I see this as a foot race between his plans to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, regulatory reform, trade reform and capital repatriation, and the looming reckoning. The failure to get the costs of Obama care under control, including its drag-weight on hiring and the economy overall, means that we are running the foot race carrying a heavy burden, one which Trump probably expected to offload and which makes winning the race less likely.

I am interested in your thoughts.

[GailA]

Study: Senate Can Repeal Obamacare’s Regulations through Reconciliation, with Only 51 Votes
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/study-senate-can-repeal-obamacares-regulations-through-reconciliation-only

[enumerated]

“I don’t really know. It doesn’t look that way now, but this guy seems to always have the ace up his sleeve”

I agree. It would be entirely stupid for Trump and the Republicans to “own” the problems of healthcare by passing this bill, and Trump is far from stupid.

He’s been saying it all along (paraphrasing): “the smart thing, politically, would be to do nothing - stand back and let Obamacare die on its own - let the Democrats rightfully take the blame for their own failed program”.

Notice Trump always follows those statements with an obligatory comment like “..but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do”.

It’s obvious he wants RyanCare to fail and he doesn’t want to be saddled with any federal program that can be called TrumpCare. He needs to appear supportive of Ryan’s efforts though, or he will be blamed for it NOT passing.

What is happening is exactly what I would want to be happening, if I were Trump.

To those who think it was essential this bill be passed in order for Trump to make good on his other promises in a deficit neutral manner, I say hogwash.

The “stupid party” got its name in part by constantly letting democrats trick them into raising (or not cutting) taxes because it would raise deficits, and trick them into not cutting spending because it would throw granny over the cliff.

Hopefully, we finally have a president who is not stupid and will avoid being an easy mark for every con the democrats want to pull.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the note of agreement.

I agree with your thoughts too.

[enumerated]

Trump doesn’t need to be a master of 4d chess - it’s common sense to avoid being saddled with Trumpcare. It’s common sense to want the Ryan plan to fail. It’s common sense to want to appear supportive so as to avoid being blamed for the failure.

I think we’re so used to republicans lacking common sense, we have to imagine Trump is a genius - I think he has common sense and it’s sbout time we had a republican president with some.

[WaterWeWaitinFor]

Drugs getting bad everywhere.

Ryan is well liked and hated both. I’d like him replaced and like to see justice for the treason too.