As GOP Struggles To Find Votes On Trumpcare, Trump Threatens Holdouts

As GOP Struggles To Find Votes On Trumpcare, Trump Threatens Holdouts

Obamacare

It’s a weak bill. It doesn’t fully repeal Obamacare, it still has a penalty, and it doesn’t provide the path towards lower cost health insurance and care that was promised

(The Hill) House Republican leaders on Tuesday struggled to pick up votes for their ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill, even after President Trump visited Capitol Hill to sell the plan.

With only a day before a scheduled vote on the House floor, the White House and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are facing an uphill fight to get the majority — 216 votes — needed to clear the lower chamber.

In a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Trump warned that failure to pass the legislation might trigger a backlash for the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans, the president said, could lose their seats next year, give Democrats the majority and derail Trump’s ambitious 2017 agenda if they fail to fulfill their campaign promise of repealing ­ObamaCare, said sources in the room.

The reality is that if the GOP votes to enact this poor bill, they will lose. Many Trumpcare supporters are saying that it would be bad for Trump to lose on his very first big bill. Well, Paul Ryan should have put up a better bill, and Trump shouldn’t have backed it. Furthermore, if this is just stage one, then the GOP leadership should have shown us the following steps, the follow on legislation. With only a vague notion that they are going to Do Something, that’s not enough.

Leadership has “maintained the general framework of ­ObamaCare. They haven’t fixed the real problems with ­ObamaCare, and then they expect us to vote for it?” asked Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), a Freedom Caucus co-founder.

“It’s unreasonable and unrealistic.”

In the Senate, it appears as if it is already dead. There are enough Republican senators who will be “nay” votes right from the get go, and, unless there are substantial changes before a supposed Thursday House vote, you can’t count on having 50 plus VP Pence to pass it on reconciliation.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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