Divided GOP faces painful choice on vote
WASHINGTON — For the House Republicans who have never served under a Republican president — roughly twothirds of them — Thursday’s vote on a measure that would repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law is a legislative fantasia, the culmination of seven years of campaign promises impeded by Obama’s veto pen.
But weeks of backroom machinations to bring a disparate group of lawmakers on board have left many Republicans with an excruciating choice: pass a bill with an extremely limited constituency that could well wreak havoc with their own voters, and on Republicans’ re-election prospects, or turn it back, leaving President Trump’s agenda deeply wounded.
Should House Republicans reject the measure, the working relationship between the White House and Republican leaders in Congress, still in its infancy, would suffer a powerful blow. In Washington, failure often begets more failure, as opposition forces strengthen, allies fragment, and the thin foam of bipartisanship evaporates.
“How do we have any momentum to do anything else?” asked Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C. “Without this bill, I don’t know how you do tax reform,” he said. If the bill fails, “it’s going to have negative repercussions for all of us.”
On Wednesday morning, House leaders and the White House continued to scramble for a portion of the roughly 25 more votes they need for passage of their repeal measure — scheduled for a vote on Thursday — working one by one to woo — or cajole — members they think can be moved.
A group of the most conservative House members met with the president at the White House on Wednesday. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump met with moderate House Republicans for over an hour in the Oval Office to entertain their concerns, but did not appear to have a clear grasp of the policy specifics in question, some of them said.
Trump, a man who rushes to hang his name in gold anywhere he can, has rejected the moniker that some have given the House bill, Trumpcare.
But he has begun a last-minute campaign to both sweet talk and vaguely threaten fellow Republicans into supporting the leadership’s hastily written bill, though the measure, which would replace the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance mandate and generous subsidies with tax credits to purchase insurance, has suffered criticism from the right and left. Republican leaders are depending on Trump to finish the job.
Even if Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., manages to secure the bare minimum of votes required, the bill that would pass the House would not become law. The Senate expects to greatly change the legislation, dragging out the process deep into the spring.