Womack says GOP yet to learn give, take
Group hears governing, budget views
FAYETTEVILLE — Congressional Republicans haven’t learned how to govern and must get used to accepting only part of what each of them might want at a time, U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told a bipartisan crowd Friday.
The remark was one of several Womack made chiding some of the most conservative members of his party and President Donald Trump’s administration during a Political Animals Club of Northwest Arkansas luncheon. Dozens of local politicians and professionals gathered for the club’s event.
“It’s easy to say no,” Womack said, referring to almost uniform Republican opposition to much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda during his term.
But now that the Republican Party has the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, its efforts to alter tax and health care policy and pass a federal budget are being hamstrung by internal division and demands of ideological purity, Womack said.
“Every important negotiation I’ve ever been in in my life, I’ve never gotten 100 percent of what I wanted,” he said.
Womack’s talk came during a brief lull in a congressional session that has sparked protest and concern throughout the country. Much of the dissent has focused on the Republicans’ proposed alternatives to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The House’s health care bill and a Senate counterpart that is still under debate would repeal several Affordable Care Act-related taxes, loosen regulations on health insurers and restrict federal spending on Medicaid. Medicaid covers the cost of care for approximately 1 million Arkansans, including babies and the elderly, who have low incomes, disabilities or other medical needs.
Womack and Arkansas’ other representatives voted for the House bill. Womack at the time called it a “huge step” toward addressing the 2010 health law’s inability to control health spending more effectively.
“As imperfect as it was, at least we got it done” so the Senate could take its own shot, he said Friday.
Womack said any wide-ranging federal budget cuts should include the government’s mandatory spending, a category that includes Medicaid, Social Security and other programs. He criticized the Trump administration’s hopes of cutting nonmandatory health research and education spending to pay for more defense as “a fantasy.”
Opponents to the Republican health bills have said the changes will lead to unacceptably expensive care for the people who need it most, with many congressional Democrats calling for bipartisan tweaks to the health law rather than a full repeal.
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