House Pulls Vote on Healthcare
Republicans on Friday afternoon abruptly pulled the bill intended to replace the Affordable Care Act, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to lawmakers: Bring the bill up for a vote or I move on to other issues.
The bill, known as the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, didn't have enough support to pass, with Democrats unified against it as well as many Republicans. Speaker Paul Ryan said he called the president Friday ahead of the vote to say he was pulling it.
Trump tried to cast blame for the defeat on Democrats. Shortly after the bill's collapse, the president told reporters assembled at the Oval Office that health-care reform fell short because it lacked Democratic support. Republicans control both the House and the Senate.
He also predicted that Obamacare would soon implode, forcing Democrats to join the Republicans at the negotiating table. "I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because now they own Obamacare," he said.
In his own press conference Friday, Ryan expressed disappointment in the bill's failure while also accepting a measure of responsibility for its defeat.
"Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains," Ryan said. "And, well, we're feeling those growing pains today. We came really close today. But we came up short."
"I will not sugar coat this," he added. "This is a disappointing day for us."
It's unclear what will happen next with the bill but Ryan said the nation will be "living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." And the White House made it clear to Republican lawmakers that the president was moving on from health care, according to CNN. Trump said Friday he'll likely take on tax reform next.
Since the passage of Obamacare seven years ago, Republicans have loudly criticized the bill and pledged to kill it. Indeed, many Republican lawmakers were swept into office in 2010 as a result of Obama's signature healthcare law. But Republican leaders, who now have control of the House, Senate and White House, were unable to whip up support for the AHCA among members of their own party.
It's a major defeat for Speaker Ryan and President Trump - who campaigned on a pledge to repeal Obamacare - that calls into question his future legislative plans. And the bill's failure underscores the difficulty of governing. Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders, which didn't require Congressional approval. But the reality TV businessman who presided over his own family-run business ran into stiff opposition on Capitol Hill from not only Democrats but also dozens of members of his own party. His brash style of negotiation did little, it seems, to woo them to his side.
In the hours leading up to Friday's vote, the White House made clear it was no longer confident that the House vote on health care would be successful. Instead, spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump was confident that the White House had done "every single thing possible" to corral the 216 votes needed to pass legislation to repeal the Obama-era health-care law.
Spicer said multiple times that the president had "left everything on the field."
If the House had voted in favor of the AHCA, its next stop would have been the Senate, where it was unclear whether Republicans - who hold only a slim majority - had the support to pass the law.
But the AHCA engendered little support from the public, with one recent poll saying just 17 percent of Americans supported the bill. The AHCA would lead to 24 million fewer Americans with health insurance over the next decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The law would also raise premiums in the near term while decreasing the federal deficit by about $150 billion over 10 years.
With reporting from the Associated Press.
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