As the Republican debate in the House over Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement bill continued to melt down this week, President Trump stepped in to bring finality to the brouhaha.
Issuing an ultimatum to House members, he demanded a vote today on the bill or else Obamacare stays as-is.
The ultimatum marks a line in the sand that Paul Ryan and his colleagues may not be able to respond to, which could deliver to Democrats the political victory they’ve been hoping for: complete failure by the GOP to deliver on campaign promises to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare.
Epic fail.
Here’s more from Newsmax…
House Republican leaders expect to vote Friday on their embattled health-care bill, moving on the legislation under pressure by Trump administration officials who voiced urgency during a closed-door meeting on the Capitol with conservative holdouts.
“We’re going to vote and we’ll see,” Steve Bannon, senior White House strategist, told reporters after the meeting with lawmakers and other key administration officials, which came after GOP leaders delayed a scheduled vote Thursday. “Let’s vote.”
Trump himself slammed “disastrous” Obamacare barely an hour after saying he was prepared to leave the health care plan in place if the House fails to pass the GOP replacement bill.
“Disastrous #Obamacare has led to higher costs & fewer options. It will only continue to get worse! We must #RepealANDReplace. #PassTheBill,” the president tweeted from the official @POTUS account.
The chamber plans to vote on a revised version of the health-care bill that includes a provision that conservatives negotiated with senior White House officials to remove Obamacare’s requirements that certain essential benefits be covered by insurance, according to several lawmakers and aides.
Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said that despite Bannon’s call for a vote, he doesn’t believe the negotiations with the White House are over.
“Anytime you don’t have 216 votes, negotiations are not totally over,” Meadows told reporters. He added that he heard Trump aides say in the meeting they’re ready to move on and leave Obamacare in place if the bill isn’t passed soon.
Conservatives are weighing a deal proposed by the Trump administration aimed at winning their support. But the delay of the vote has injected new doubts about the ability of Republicans and President Donald Trump to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
The delay is a sign that Republicans are having significant trouble bridging their party’s deep-rooted differences. The bill has struggled to win over moderates concerned about projections that millions will lose coverage, as well as conservatives who have demanded a more complete repeal of Obamacare.
