President Trump escalated his offensive against congressional conservatives who oppose the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare on Thursday as party leaders signal they want to take another shot at healthcare reform.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, the congressional conservative group that has been the target of most of Trump’s barbs, pushed back by emphasizing how ready they were to compromise to get a healthcare bill that lowers insurance premiums and fulfills the party’s campaign promises. Some believe they are taking the blame for other Republicans’ reluctance to repeal Obamacare.
Two leaders of the Freedom Caucus told the Washington Examiner that repealing two Obamacare mandates, Essential Health Benefits and community rating, “would bring the vast majority” of their members “to a yes” on a healthcare bill.
“We’re asking for a little over 15 percent of the Obamacare mandates to be repealed,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. “We can’t get to yes with that?” He pointed out that Republicans had campaigned on repealing all 12 of these mandates.
“All we’re trying to do is fix the legislation,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Trump began and ended the day with a series of tweets criticizing the House Freedom Caucus for failing to get on board with the American Health Care Act, saying they must be fought like the Democrats during the 2018 midterm elections. He also dispatched budget director Mick Mulvaney to threaten Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., with a primary challenge, according to the lawmaker.
The moves indicate that Trump hasn’t given up on healthcare legislation yet and raise questions about how far the party is willing to go to punish dissenters. So far Trump’s tactics don’t seem to be having much of an impact, but Republicans on both sides of the Obamacare debate say that lawmakers may gain a better idea of what their constituents want when they go home for Easter recess.
“They can’t go home in 2018 and have this be all they have done,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, who was active in his party’s messaging on Obamacare when the law was originally passed. “You can’t work on something for 18 days and say that you’ve tried, especially when you’ve spent seven years trying to repeal the damn thing.”
When the House GOP bill was pulled last Friday, the president and Republican congressional leaders said they were moving on from healthcare to tax reform. Trump said he would wait for Obamacare to “explode” before revisiting the issue, perhaps on a bipartisan basis. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., conceded the healthcare law would remain in place “for the foreseeable future.”
Then Trump resumed cajoling the Freedom Caucus and Ryan insisted talks were still ongoing. “About 90 percent of our members are for this bill and we’re not going to give up after seven years of dealing with this, after running on a plan all of last year and translating that plan into legislation,” Ryan said Thursday.
On Twitter, Trump touted Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., as a Freedom Caucus members who gets it in contrast with Meadows, Jordan and Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho. Buck wrote an op-ed titled, “Governing means supporting AHCA.”
Frustration with the Freedom Caucus has been building inside other Republican factions. These lawmakers argue they are taking bigger political risks than the conservatives because they come from more competitive districts and express approval of Trump’s tweets.
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a key Trump ally, told reporters on Capitol Hill that if the Freedom Caucus calls, moderate Republicans should “just hang up.” Some in the party hope the president will do even more to apply pressure.
“I think he needs to be a little tougher,” said Jim Dornan, a Republican strategist. “I would have called the major talk radio shows in the Freedom Caucus districts and said, ‘Meadows and Jordan are keeping me from repealing Obamacare and I promised that to you when I ran for president.”
Others expressed hope that Trump would hold rallies in the conservative holdouts’ districts. Trump and the Freedom Caucus represent different strains of the Tea Party, with the president positioning himself as a politically incorrect bomb-thrower and the congressional conservatives making arguments for limited government based on principle.
Sitting down with the Examiner, Meadows and Jordan repeatedly and patiently explained that the caucus had moved quite a bit to reach a compromise with Trump, leadership and the moderates. They aren’t insisting on clean repeal, they say. They acknowledged that getting rid of the refundable tax credits, which they regard as a new entitlement, was “a nonstarter.”
“We got over that three weeks ago,” Meadows said. Just increase the number of Obamacare mandates repealed by the bill from two to four, targeting two they believe are especially costly.
“Our main goal, our only goal, is to lower premiums,” he added. Both Jordan and Meadows said the success of any Republican healthcare legislation would ultimately be judged whether it can reduce the cost of health insurance.
They hesitated to criticize Trump or Ryan. “I think what makes it hard is that this policy that will affect every American in their pocketbook and in their doctor’s office,” said Meadows. But they did acknowledge that the contention within the GOP made the task of Obamacare repeal harder.
“There’s a lot of agreement we need to do something,” said a Republican congressional aide whose boss already supports the bill. “But it’s hard to see how all the finger-pointing moves votes.”
