GOP health plan lacks votes
House passage remains uncertain amid calls to ‘start over’ on bill
WASHINGTON — The Republican health care overhaul spearheaded by House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and backed by President Donald Trump suffered a significant setback Wednesday, as personal appeals by both the president and vice president failed to sway conservatives to back the bill.
In a last-ditch effort to persuade key GOP opponents of the bill to stand down, Vice President Mike Pence huddled with members of the House Freedom Caucus in his office Wednesday morning, while Trump met with 18 House Republicans at the White House.
While Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who met with Trump, came out in favor of the bill Wednesday, that single switch was not enough to put the measure over the top. GOP leaders can afford only 22 defections, given that one Democrat is expected to be absent Thursday. A Freedom Caucus spokeswoman said Wednesday that “more than 25” members of the group oppose the bill.
The caucus’s message, spokeswoman Alyssa Farah tweeted, is “start over.”
At the same time, two more Republican moderates — Reps. Frank LoBiando of New Jersey and David Young of Iowa announced their opposition Wednesday, increasing pressure on leaders to win over the conservatives.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the Freedom Caucus chairman, said Pence had offered the group gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building “a couple of options” at the meeting but there was “no official offers tendered on either side.”
By the time House Freedom Caucus members had huddled along with GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas and Michael Cannon of the conservative Cato Institute, their opposition to the bill had solidified. “There’s not enough votes to pass this,” Meadows said. “Nothing’s changed.”
Several caucus members leaving the meeting said they would not accept the changes floated by Pence, because White House and leadership negotiators were offering to support future changes to the bill once it was considered in the Senate.
“There have been promises of hopes that something constructive might happen in the Senate, but that’s after we vote, and that’s not going to work,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Conservatives are seeking to eliminate more of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandates, known as “essential benefits,” which require plans to include, among other things, mental health, prescription drug and preventive care coverage.
Ryan, who hopes to bring the bill to the floor for a vote Thursday, called opposition to the measure part of “the tempest of the legislative process” in a radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt. He did not rule out that further changes could be made to the bill to win additional votes.
But the speaker warned that fulfilling those GOP demands would violate Senate budget rules and leave the bill vulnerable to a blockade by Democrats.
“Our whole thing is we don’t want to load up our bill in such a way that it doesn’t even get considered in the Senate,” Ryan told Hewitt
In a Facebook video Wednesday afternoon, King said he had gotten “a full and firm commitment” from Trump that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would strip the current essential benefits requirement once the bill reaches the upper chamber and that the president “will use his political leverage to again go public and work hard to get the Mitch McConnell amendment passed.”
“I expect everyone in this arrangement to keep their word,” King said. “I’ll keep mine.”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters the bill was picking up supporters and would pass the House, adding there is no “Plan B” if the proposal goes down.