The GOP’s seven-year promise to repeal the ACA appeared to end Tuesday, at least for the time being, with Obamacare intact and Republicans in disarray.
WASHINGTON — Never mind.
The GOP’s seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act appeared to end Tuesday, at least for the time being, with Obamacare intact and Republicans in disarray.
For four successive congressional campaigns, Republicans have exploited frustrations about the Affordable Care Act with considerable electoral success, and the GOP won the White House last November with a gauzy promise by candidate Donald Trump to replace it with something “beautiful.”
But six months later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pulled the repeal-and-replace bill from consideration late Monday in the face of certain defeat. On Tuesday, his backup plan to repeal the law now and work out a replacement down the road — a proposal that congressional Republicans approved two years ago — also seemed doomed as a trio of GOP senators quickly announced they would oppose it.
McConnell said he plans to bring it to a vote next week anyway, but other Republicans —even Trump — seemed ready to give up. “I think we’re in that position where we’ll let Obamacare fail, ” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, acknowledging that he was “very disappointed” by the bill’s demise.
For years, opposition to President Obama’s signature initiative, enacted without a single Republican vote, has united GOP ranks even as trade and immigration and other issues divided them. Now the stunning stalemate in their efforts to reverse the law raises questions about the effectiveness of the party’s leadership in Congress and the White House.
It was one more rude lesson in the realities of governing for Trump, who has yet to score a single major legislative victory during his bumpy tenure.
Many of the middle-class and working-class Americans who were crucial in the president’s upset victory have dismissed the cloud of controversy over Russian meddling in the election, and what role his associates may have played in that. But strategists in both parties assume that’s because those voters are more concerned that he deliver on promises closer to home: to bring manufacturing jobs back to the heartland, for instance, and to make health care more affordable for their families.
The GOP-controlled Congress voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act when Obama was in the White House and it was guaranteed to be vetoed. Just before his inauguration in January, President-elect Trump bragged that the Republican replacement was “very much formulated, down to the final strokes.”
But when the votes mattered, passage was undercut by concern among some conservatives that the new version didn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare, and among some moderates that cutbacks in the Medicaid expansion that was part of the law would hurt their constituents, from Maine to Alaska.
In the end, even a skilled legislative tactician like McConnell was unable to negotiate a compromise that would stitch together that coalition. That leaves complicated questions about what, exactly, can and should be done now to address strains in the Obamacare exchanges that have increased premium costs and limited insurance choices for millions of Americans who rely on them.
Trump’s conclusion appears to be to simply let the system implode. “We’re not going to own it, ” he said. “I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”
For voters, that may be a hard sell at a time Republicans control not only the White House but also both houses of Congress.
Democrats could teach them about the cold realities of controlling all the levers of government: Blowback from passing the Affordable Care Act help cost Democrats control of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Now some Republicans fear that blowback from failing to repeal it could help cost them control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.
Let the blame games begin.
McConnell told reporters he still planned to bring up the repeal-only measure, even though Maine Sen. Susan Collins, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski already have declared they would oppose it. With a 52-seat majority, Republicans can only afford to lose two votes, which would set up Vice President Pence to break a tie.
“I think the majority leader is trying to keep all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, ” Murkowski said.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, another member of the GOP leadership, sounded more resigned to the frogs going their own way, at least on health care.
“We need to find out where the votes are, but there are other things we need to do, too, ” Blunt said, saying it would soon be time for the Senate to “move forward.” He mentioned the need to revive manufacturing jobs, invest in transportation infrastructure and overhaul the tax system.
A big tax bill? That should be easy.
Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen
