President Trump and Congressional Republicans were reeling Friday after their failure to reach consensus on healthcare reform cast doubt on their ability to govern and get things done.
The American Health Care Act was pulled from the House floor when it became clear that the Republicans were well short of the 216 GOP votes they needed to clear the bill and send it to the Senate.
After seven years of promises to repeal Obamacare, Republicans and the president failed to orchestrate a deal to replace the law, casting a shadow over Trump’s leadership and the party’s ambitious legislative agenda.
“Moving from an opposition party, to a governing party, comes with growing pains. And, well, we’re feeling those growing pains today,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said during a news conference. “Ultimately, this all comes down to a choice: Are all of us willing to give a little to get something done?”
Even to repeal the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s hated (on the right) healthcare law, the answer was “no.”
Support for the AHCA, a joint product of the Trump White House and House GOP leaders, fell apart over the course of this week when Republican majority’s insurgent conservatives and anxious centrists balked at the package.
For conservatives, the legislation didn’t go far enough in repealing Obamacare’s regulatory regime and replacing it with a market-driven insurance system. Moderates were concerned that their middle and lower class constituents would lose coverage extended to them under the ACA.
It was an outcome familiar to House Republicans since reclaiming the majority in the 2010 wave election driven partly by voter opposition to Obamacare.
“Americans are sick and tired of the dysfunction in Washington when far right-wing factions put their narrow interests above the will of the people that elected them,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said in an angry statement issued after his party pulled the plug on the AHCA.
Except it wasn’t supposed to be this way with a Republican in the White House who, unlike Obama, was willing to sign whatever healthcare legislation congressional Republicans could manage to send to his desk.
No matter. Even with repealing and replacing Obamacare tantalizingly within their grasp, House Republicans retreated to their factional corners and failed to get the deal done.
Republicans were at a loss to explain how they expect to accomplish complicated legislative maneuvers like a major overhaul of the U.S. tax code — the next item on their agenda — if they couldn’t agree on a unifying issue like repealing Obamacare.
“This process was never supposed to be easy; this is not supposed to be something where it runs smoothly all the time. This is exactly the way the Founders interpreted it,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said.
“We don’t browbeat our folks,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., added. “That is why it is hard to keep our Republicans line. There are differences of opinion and sometimes it can be frustrating but we are Americans.”
As predictably as this debacle was for House Republicans, Trump and his much-hyped negotiating skills were supposed to quell intraparty divisions and forge consensus in a way that Ryan and his leadership team never could.
The House Freedom Caucus, the group of insurgents that helped sink the AHCA, had nothing to gain by bending to House GOP leadership, viewed by their voters as the party establishment that has repeatedly let them down.
But their voters are some of Trump’s strongest supporters, and it was assumed that Trump could leverage that fact to bring Freedom Caucus members to the table.
The president’s supposed deal-making abilities, which he hyped on the campaign trail as the missing ingredient to make Washington work again, was supposed to do the rest. It didn’t make one bit of difference.
So after a debate that lasted three weeks in which the president often looked disinterested and uncommitted, he decided to cut bait and move on, conceding defeat on his first big legislative negotiation.
“I worked as a team player and would love to have seen it passed,” Trump told reporters. “It certainly was an interesting period of time. We all learned a lot — we learned a lot about loyalty, we learned a lot about the vote-getting process.”
Robert King and Al Weaver contributed to this report.
