A collection of conservative outside groups is coming to the House Freedom Caucus’ defense after attacks from House colleagues and President Trump over the failure of the Republican leadership’s Obamacare repeal plan.
A Friday conference call featured groups that opposed the Obamacare repeal bill, including Heritage Action, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. The House leadership pulled the legislation last Friday because of insufficient support. Since the bill’s demise, lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus who opposed the bill have faced attacks from Trump, who tweeted that the group needs to get on board.
But the outside conservative groups, who also opposed the bill, defended the Freedom Caucus.
“The House Freedom Caucus has been the grown-ups in the room,” said Mike Needham, CEO of Heritage Action, the political advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation. “I don’t think anybody could honestly call this bill good. The Republican Party has campaigned on bringing down premiums for seven years, yet this bill would keep them going up.”
Needham said the caucus had a reasonable demand to dismantle most of Obamacare’s insurance regulations. While House leadership agreed to get rid of the law’s requirements for insurers to cover 10 essential health benefits, but the caucus wanted to include more regulations.
House leadership and the White House held firm, worried that including more regulations would imperil the bill’s chances to win approval in the Senate.
Conservative groups want congressional Republicans to take up Obamacare repeal again.
“It is suicide for Republicans to follow the course they are embarking on right now,” said Brent Bozell, chairman of the group ForAmerica and founder of the Media Research Center. “The Republican Party will own healthcare.”
Plans for talks between the moderate Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus broke down this week. Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., told reporters that moderates shouldn’t talk with the caucus.
The conservative groups blamed opposition from moderates who didn’t want to repeal Obamacare and the Republican establishment for putting the bill forward.
“The question isn’t why the Freedom Caucus is being so hard-nosed, they are the ones actually keeping their promise,” said Andy Ross, vice president of the Club for Growth. “The people breaking their campaign pledges to the American people are the moderates who are holding this up.”
The groups also trained their fire on Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a Republican who blasted the caucus in an op-ed in the New York Times on Friday.
“A vast majority of us were ready to vote yes, but one faction of the party made it impossible: the House Freedom Caucus,” Kinzinger wrote. He added that Trump gave the caucus reductions in essential health benefits but said the concessions weren’t enough for the caucus to get “on board, as usual.”
Ross called Kinzinger’s op-ed dishonest, and Needham said Kinzinger is going back on a campaign promise.
“Kinzinger was clear on the campaign trail that he wants markets to dictate [healthcare] and not bureaucrats,” Needham said. “There is no excuse for not wanting what the Freedom Caucus wants to do.”
But the collection of six groups largely held back against the White House, which played a major role in pushing the bill. Trump criticized the Freedom Caucus in several tweets this past week, saying the conservative group is undermining the Republican agenda.
The groups largely blamed House Speaker Paul Ryan for the bill’s failure and said the president’s attacks on the caucus are short-sighted.
“The Freedom Caucus is Trump’s number one ally in draining the swamp,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks.
