a report has surfaced that in the final days before passage of the bill, Pence pushed to label the bill “Ryancare.”
“The President and I are grateful for Speaker Paul Ryan and all the House Republicans who stood with us in this effort to begin the end of Obamacare,” said the Vice President, who lamented, “As we all learned yesterday, Congress just wasn’t ready.”
.. Pence vowed that they will cut corporate taxes. He said they would cut business taxes “to 15 percent so American companies will invest in American operations that create American jobs.”
Pence says Trump will keep promise of overhauling Affordable Care Act
Vice President Pence said that President Trump intends to keep his promise to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, pledging that the legislation’s collapse Friday was a setback that “won’t last very long.”
“President Trump is never going to stop fighting to keep his promises to the American people,” Pence said
.. “But as we all learned yesterday, Congress just wasn’t ready,” Pence said.
.. Pence pointed to a Saturday morning tweet from Trump suggesting Democrats would be forced to work with Republicans on a replacement bill once the Affordable Care Act “explodes.”
‘The closer’? The inside story of how Trump tried — and failed — to make a deal on health care
Shortly after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled the Republican health-care plan on March 6, President Trump sat in the Oval Office and queried his advisers: “Is this really a good bill?”
.. “Is this really a good bill?”
In the end, the answer was no — in part because the president himself seemed to doubt it.
.. The bill itself would have violated a number of Trump’s campaign promises, driving up premiums for millions of citizens and throwing millions more off health insurance — including many of the working-class voters who gravitated to his call to “make America great again.”
.. He did not speak fluently about the bill’s details and focused his pitch in purely transactional terms. And he failed to appreciate the importance of replacing Obamacare to the Republican base
for the president, it was an obstacle to move past to get to taxes, trade and the rest of his agenda.
.. As president, he was selling the rare product on which he refused to emblazon his name — devoting himself to an issue for which he has little real passion.. Alluding to the long-running dramas on Capitol Hill, Trump added, “There are years of problems, great hatred and distrust, and, you know, I came into the middle of it.”.. the president dialed Rep. Joe Barton, a wavering Republican from Texas
.. His senior aides described him as “an extremely good listener” and said his negotiating skills were the product of “total natural talent,” saying he could turn up the heat or the charm as needed.
.. found himself caught in the middle of factional House GOP dramas that have been simmering for years. As one member of the House Freedom Caucus described it: “We’re competing with Ryan. We like Trump.”
.. his thinking was straight from “The Art of the Deal”: If the White House continued to postpone the vote, the holdouts would gain leverage and learn the dangerous lesson that they could challenge Trump and win. Lawmakers wanting to oppose the president would have to do so publicly, in a vote, and face the consequences.
.. news Trump announced in a phone call with The Post, before Ryan even had time to personally brief GOP members.
.. Meadows said his mantra in negotiating with Trump had been, “If this was about personalities, we’d already be at ‘yes.’ He’s charming, and anyone who spends time with him knows that. But this is about policy, and we’re not going to make it about anything else.”
.. For Meadows, a sticking point was essential health-benefit requirements under the current law for insurance companies, such as maternity and newborn care, and substance-abuse treatment, which he wanted removed
.. moderate Republicans, known as the Tuesday Group, stood opposed to the bill
.. described it as “a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit,” with the president boasting about how “great” the bill was and his aides seconding his assessment “like a Greek chorus.”
.. which he likened to an act of betrayal
Byron York: 14 lessons from the GOP Obamacare debacle
1) Don’t over-promise
2) Jobs, jobs, jobs: Trump won the presidency on a pledge to create more and better-paying jobs. Taking up Obamacare as the first legislative project of his presidency was not consistent with that pledge
3) Find more votes.
4) Start with giveaways .. an infrastructure bill first, the story from Capitol Hill would have been a president and Congress giving things to the American people
5) ‘The Art of the Deal’ doesn’t work with ideologically-driven politicians
If the president wants to succeed in Washington, he’ll have to learn how to deal with people who aren’t in it just for the money.
6) Trump made a “rookie’s error” in bringing the Obamacare measure to a finale too quickly.
7) Trump and the House Republicans have different priorities and agendas.
8) John Boehner was right about the House Freedom Caucus. In an appearance last month, the former Speaker laughed at the notion that Republicans could agree on an Obamacare replacement.
9) Keep it simple. : It all got way too complicated to benefit from Trump’s talents as a simplifier and a salesman.
10) For years, House Republicans were able to pass bills like repealing Obamacare with the assurance that they didn’t really mean anything .. “We were a 10-year opposition party where being against things was the easy thing to do,” the Speaker said.
11) On big-ticket items, the president leads Congress, not the other way around.
12) while there is still intense opposition to the healthcare law inside the GOP, it has not stayed at that 2009-2010 level. In retrospect, Republicans were maddest at Obamacare before it actually went into effect
13) CBO estimates matter.