ZitatRepublican leadership has decided to pull their Obamacare replacement bill at the last minute at the request of President Donald Trump -- capping a rocky series of weeks since the controversial measure was introduced and an order from the president for legislators to put their cards on the table today.
Sources tell ABC that Trump called Speaker of the House Speaker Paul Ryan at 3 p.m. to tell him to pull the bill. The next steps were not immediately clear.
The vote would have come after House GOP leaders postponed a vote Thursday and the White House delivered a late-night ultimatum: to vote today or the president will move on to other agenda items.
The president has “left everything on the field when it comes to this bill,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier today, adding that Ryan "has done everything he can” to collect votes but “at the end of the day, you can’t force people to vote.”
Spicer said the GOP leadership and the White House had continued to pick up “yes” votes throughout the day.
The White House insisted in recent days that there was no Plan B for the legislation and that the president was all in on the measure, which had been amended amid concerns from moderate and conservative Republicans.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney had earlier told Republican legislators if the House doesn’t act today, the president is prepared to leave the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in place, a GOP aide told ABC News.
How much time did the Repubs have to come up with an acceptable alternative to ObamaCare? Now, instead, they have made themselves look stupid and inept. Ryan is primarily responsible for this, as the Freedom Caucus adamantly opposed a warmed over ObamaCare2 which is what he offered, but it also reflects badly on the President who shouldn't have put his prestige behind the bill unless he knew for sure it would pass.
Now we are stuck with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future and the Republicans get to tinker, tinker and hopefully come up with something acceptable to a disunited Party.
Btw, note how everyone, save for a few dissident voices like mine, don't even question the authority of Congress to create a universal health insurance plan for Americans, even though the Constitution confers no such power. For me it's quite sobering to see how people accept this without reflection. That shows me how irrelevant the Constitution has become.
1. Republicans had seven years to come up with 'something.' This is the result? 2. Republicans thought they had the luxury of being against Obamacare but never having to actually do anything about it. They always (or so they thought) had a built in excuse. We don't have the House. We don't have the Senate. We don't have the presidency. They never expected to have the presidency. 3. One of the biggest fallacies is that republicans are against gov't run healthcare. On the surface, it seems to be the case since no republican fingerprints were on the original O care in 2010. Rest assured, however, that if any republican votes had been needed to pass it, they would have been there. 4. Obama and the democrats were evil geniuses. They knew that once an entitlement is created (no matter how bad it is) it will never go away. This will end up being exactly what Obama wanted - a stepping stone to single payer. 5. The fate of Obamacare was sealed - not with the election of Trump - but with 'republican' John Roberts.