House Speaker Paul Ryan told donors Monday that Republicans are “not giving up” when it comes to passing a healthcare bill despite the GOP’s failure to lock up enough votes to pass a bill in the House last week.
“We’re not going to just all of a sudden abandon healthcare and move on to the rest,” Ryan said in a call to donors to his political organization, according to the Washington Post. “We are going to move on with rest of our agenda, keep that on track, while we work the healthcare problem. . . . It’s just that valuable, that important.”
Ryan told the donors he planned to “lay out the path forward on healthcare and all the rest of the agenda” during an upcoming retreat in Florida.
“I will explain how it all still works, and how we’re still moving forward on healthcare with other ideas and plans,” Ryan said. “So please make sure that if you can come, you come — it will be good to look at what can feasibly get done and where things currently stand. But know this: We are not giving up.”
The Post said it obtained a recording of the 10-minute call.
During the call, Ryan took an apparent swipe at the House Freedom Caucus, a block of conservative lawmakers who opposed to bill, arguing it wasn’t conservative enough.
“Basically . . . 90 percent of our members of the conference were there and ready to go and be a governing party and were happy with where we were, and around 10 percent were still in what I would call ‘opposition party mode,'” Ryan said. “About 10 percent of our people, a particular bloc, just weren’t there yet, even with the president’s involvement.”
