Vice President Mike Pence has been at the head of the table since Republicans resumed talks about repealing and replacing Obamacare, but so far the results have been the same: no healthcare bill capable of uniting centrists and conservatives in big enough numbers to pass.
As Pence worked to cut a deal on healthcare legislation left for dead less than two weeks ago, conservatives became more outspoken in their contention that the problem wasn’t the House Freedom Caucus’ intransigence but the centrists’ unwillingness to actually repeal Obamacare as promised.
“There’s not momentum at this point and it’s because of the intransigence of the Tuesday Group,” Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham told reporters on a conference call Wednesday, referring to the group of 50 centrist GOP lawmakers often contrasted with the conservative Freedom Caucus during the Obamacare debate.
Still, Pence did help get the sides talking again. The vice president joined budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former Freedom Caucus member, and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at a meeting with conservative legislators Monday night, sparking optimism that the repeal of additional Obamacare regulations might be on the table.
“Pence spoke to us for roughly 40 minutes last night and we were able to grill his top health policy guy, who we found to be well prepared and receptive to our potential concerns,” said a Freedom Caucus-aligned congressional aide.
This was just a few days removed from President Trump blasting the Freedom Caucus and criticizing several of its leaders by name. Trump said they “will hurt the entire Republican agenda” if they don’t get onboard soon, adding that the GOP might have fight both them and the Democrats in 2018.
Concerns remained, not least including whether it was viable to let states opt out of the mandates in question. There was no bill text. But for conservatives, it seemed like a step forward to once again be negotiating with one of their own in Pence rather than being fingered as the culprit for the healthcare bill’s failure by the president.
When not castigating the Freedom Caucus on Twitter, Trump’s initial message to conservatives appeared to be that they would now have to live with Obamacare until it imploded. Then he promised he would make a deal with the Democrats instead if they did not cooperate.
Pence’s conservative credentials could only carry him so far. He presided over a meeting of House Republican groups Tuesday and ran into a familiar obstacle. Conservatives want to repeal a provision called community rating, which they argue will help bring down insurance premiums in general but centrists contend will make health insurance too expensive for the old and the sick.
“He’s a nice guy and he gets it, but there are still some political realities here,” a Republican congressional aide said of Pence’s efforts.
After the second attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare faltered, conservatives refused to take the blame again. This time, they went on the offensive against the centrists.
“I think the Tuesday Group clearly wants to keep Obamacare in place,” Needham told reporters Wednesday. Instead of focusing on the Freedom Caucus, he said, “pressure needs to be put on the Tuesday Group to get to yes.”
“The left wing among House Republicans doesn’t want to compromise or keep their pledge to voters to repeal Obamacare,” Club for Growth president David McIntosh said in a statement on Wednesday, taking shots at both centrists and the GOP congressional leadership.
“Conservatives, including the Club for Growth, were willing to accept the latest deal that would let states seek regulation waivers, but moderates want Obamacare largely left intact,” McIntosh added. “This is big-government liberalism at work among House Republicans and Speaker Ryan is letting them run his conference.”
In fact, conservatives emphasized how much they had compromised throughout the process, moving from full repeal of Obamacare’s mandates to partial repeal to looking toward regulation waivers.
For their part, centrists emphasized they were in general representing much more competitive districts than their conservative counterparts and would therefore bear the brunt of any fallout from enacting an unpopular bill.
“Charlie Dent has walked the plank plenty of times,” said a Republican strategist, referring to the centrist congressman from Pennsylvania. “Why are we trying to placate a bunch of guys in safe Republican seats when there are a bunch of guys like him who are much more exposed?”
Pence was once a conservative rebel in the House himself, chairing the Republican Study Committee when it was the focal point of resistance to GOP spending plans under President George W. Bush.
As a congressman, Pence was among a small group of Republicans who voted against both the Medicare prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. Yet as governor of Indiana, he acquired a reputation among some conservative critics as someone who attempted compromises on issues like Common Core and the state’s Medicaid expansion that satisfied neither side.
So far, the Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare appear to fall in that category. Pence nevertheless remained adamant Wednesday night that while the timeline in unclear, “it’s going to get done.”
