The House is expected to vote on a bill Wednesday that guts major parts of Obamacare and that certainly will be vetoed by the president.
But some leading conservatives said the eventual defeat of the bill isn’t the point.
The House has tried more than 40 times to repeal the controversial healthcare bill, but such efforts have usually died in the Senate. This time, House Republicans crafted and passed a bill designed to bypass a Senate filibuster through the budget reconciliation process.
Reconciliation allows bills to have a majority vote instead of the 60 needed to end a filibuster, but the bill must deal with the budget and spending. Therefore, the repeal legislation sticks to parts of Obamacare that generate revenue, such as taxes and mandates.
Going through the process now creates a template for how to repeal Obamacare through a simple majority vote should a Republican win the White House in 2017, according to the conservative group Heritage Action.
“This isn’t just a show vote. This is a dry run for 2017,” said Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action, the political advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation think tank. “By going through this now, in 2015, everybody can learn and be ready come 2017 to do the real thing.”
Heritage at first opposed the bill when it was approved by the House last year. But the Senate amended that bill before it was approved 52-47 in December.
“It is an improvement over what the House passed initially,” Holler said.
A leading conservative in the House echoed that sentiment, but added that the bill also fulfills campaign pledges dating to when the GOP took control of Congress in 2014.
“This reconciliation bill is a good step toward what we have promised voters for years that we would do with a Republican president in 2017: fully repeal Obamacare,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner. Jordan is the head of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of nearly 40 of the most conservative House members.
Leading Democrats took aim at the impending vote, including Democratic presidential primary front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“They’re willing to turn their backs on 19 million Americans, to turn our healthcare system back to the insurance companies so if you have a pre-existing condition it will be hard for you to afford care,” Clinton said during a town hall event in Iowa Tuesday.
It is not clear whether the House will pursue another vote to repeal Obamacare before the presidential election or bring up its own replacement plan for the healthcare law. The House Republican conference is meeting for its annual planning retreat next week in Baltimore.
House Speaker Paul Ryan “would like to hear from the conference before detailing agenda items,” Ryan spokeswoman Ashlee Strong told the Washington Examiner.
Holler said Republicans have plenty of ideas regarding a replacement for Obamacare but said having a plan in place isn’t essential to getting the law repealed.
“That should not be seen as a barrier to getting repeal across the table,” Holler said. “There has been the presumption that Republicans have to have a concrete plan that they lock down before they advance repeal.”
The reconciliation package also includes defunding Planned Parenthood, a reaction to a series of undercover videos that detailed the harvesting of aborted fetal body parts at the women’s health and abortion provider.
The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday to consider an amendment to the reconciliation bill that was approved by the Senate and a full House vote is scheduled for Wednesday. The Senate would have to approve the latest version the House votes on later this week.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentifed the state that Jim Jordan represents. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
