Health bill’s failure puts GOP’s agenda in question
Infighting suggests party might struggle to get other priorities through Congress
USA TODAY WASHINGTON Republicans suffered a bruising, self-inflicted blow Friday when they tanked their own health care bill and gave up on that long-held priority.
The question now is whether the GOP can recover and accomplish other items on the congressional agenda — whether it’s passing spending bills to keep the government open or enacting sweeping tax reform.
“They lost their first major legislative fight and did it in spectacular fashion,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
That does not bode well, Cohen said, because “so much of politics is built on momentum,” with success begetting more success — or failure leading to more defections and distrust.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, RWis., painted a rosy picture of the GOP’s next steps Friday, even while admitting that their failure to pass the health care bill was a setback. He said they would move on to tax reform, deficit reduction, rebuilding the military, securing the border and boosting infrastructure spending.
Ryan and others said tax reform and other issues would be easier than health care because there’s more agreement within the party on how to proceed.
“Republicans are moving full speed ahead with President Trump on the first pro-growth tax reform in a generation,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which will oversee that effort.
But the divisions that sank the health bill are still raw, with Republicans engaged in a round of intraparty recriminations and finger-pointing.
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said tensions inside the House Republican conference are so high that some lawmakers aren’t speaking to each other, and some are even “storming past each other” in the Capitol’s marbled hallways.
And there’s a reason Republicans tackled health care first. They were rolling that into a budget “reconciliation” bill, a special framework that is not subject to a filibuster. Anything else the Republicans do will