Republicans don’t have a backup plan or another alternative if the American Health Care Act fails to make it out of the House on Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday.
“There is no Plan B,” Spicer said. “This is the vote, this is the time to act,” Spicer declared. “We’re going to get this done.”
The White House projected confidence on the AHCA’s prospects Wednesday even as the leader of an influential conservative voting bloc claimed that his members had enough opposition to sink the bill. Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said earlier Wednesday that more than 25 members planned to vote against AHCA — three more than the 22 votes Republicans can afford to lose before the AHCA is killed on the House floor.
“Member by member, we’re seeing tremendous support flow in our direction,” Spicer said, noting that the White House is “optimistic in the sense of what we’re seeing and the trajectory of where this is going.”
President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and other senior administration officials have conducted a series of meetings with skeptical Republican lawmakers ahead of the contentious vote on healthcare legislation.
Spicer dismissed questions about what the administration would do if the AHCA died in the House on Thursday, arguing that the healthcare bill was the only option available to lawmakers who had promised voters that they would repeal and replace Obamacare.
