**Double Facepalm**
If you started "Art of the Deal"? And put it down after, like, page 4? Pick it up and finish it...
The President put his full, enthusiastic support behind Ryan and this terrible bill. He shares in this disaster because of that.
**Double Facepalm**
If you started "Art of the Deal"? And put it down after, like, page 4? Pick it up and finish it...
That's just wishful thinking from Trump-bashers who jump at any opportunity to cast aspersions in the President's direction.
The only person this is a disaster for is Paul Ryan. The President doesn't write legislation. That's the job of the Congress. The President and his voters made very clear what the parameters of repealing and replacing Obamacare were.
The fact that the President wanted a bill to get passed, and then "fixed", does not mean he gave it his "full, enthusiastic support". That claim is a convenient mischaracterization of the process. The President said that the bill was "incomplete", and proved his willingness to listen to the HFC, the voters, and anyone else who was concerned with the bill as is.
But, due to the awful starting point, which was completely Ryan's fault, the votes weren't there—not even to put lipstick on this pig of a bill.
It's good that the entirely inadequate bill introduced by Paul Ryan, and authored once again by the insurance industry, will not be the bill which replaces Obamacare.
Better to take some short term flak for Obamacare lite not passing, than to have it pass and then get the blame when it doesn't solve any of the problems of Obamacare.
Politics is the art of the possible, and when the President realized that fixing this bill wasn't possible, he demanded a resolution, and expressed his willingness to move on. Sounds about right to me.
Under these conditions, waiting for the Legislature to "get it right" is clearly a better option, whatever the political considerations might be.
The President has to work with elements of the Establishment, plain and simple. I agree with others who have said that this bad legislation was intended to sabotage the President had it been passed, and therefore letting it die was a better option than swallowing a poison pill...