Republican leaders are digging in deep in their efforts toward repealing and replacing Obamacare after a turbulent week of harsh criticism from across the political spectrum.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined top committee leaders guiding the repeal-and-replace bill through legislative markups to issue a strong defense Friday morning of both its content and how they’re trying to get it made law through a special process allowing them to bypass Senate Democrats.
“There are going to be questions on both sides of the aisle, but sometimes when you have pushback from both ends of the political spectrum, you might have found the sweet spot,” McCarthy told reporters.
The bill is headed to the Budget Committee next week, after two top House panels approved it along partisan lines on Thursday. Leaders appeared not to waiver on the timeline they’ve laid out for getting a House vote within the next few weeks, despite threats from conservatives to oppose the measure because it doesn’t discard enough of the Affordable Care Act.
McCarthy said he doesn’t agree with groups, such as Heritage Action and Freedomworks, who have demanded a complete repeal of the bill immediately. That would require getting Democrats on board with a replacement at a later time, and would result in an even less-conservative bill, he said.
Chairmen Greg Walden, Kevin Brady and Diane Black, who said they’re meeting with President Trump at the White House Friday, also said conservatives should be happy with the bill because it does away with big parts of the healthcare law and enacts major changes to the way Medicaid is funded.
“This bill secures key conservative victories,” said Black, R-Tenn., who heads the Budget Committee.
House Republicans, including conservatives, should be “embracing” the legislation as it moves ahead, said Walden, R-Ore., who presides over Energy and Commerce.
“This is a step forward in the conservative cause to get the Washington bureacracy out of the middle of all the decisions,” Walden said.
Asked whether leaders might be willing to expire the law’s Medicaid expansion two years earlier, which could help appease conservatives, Walden indicated that would be hard to do based on conversations with governors who have expanded Medicaid in their states.
