GOP pivots to tax code amid infighting

have to win 60 votes in the Senate, where Republicans control 52 seats. And the budget bill would set a framework for other tax and spending matters, which affect everything else the GOP does.

Asked earlier in the week what would happen if the health bill failed, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla, said: “I think you have to go back to square one and rethink your entire legislative schedule.”

Ryan conceded that tax reform is more difficult with Obamacare left in place because that law included a bevy of tax increases the GOP had hoped to repeal.

“That just means the Obamacare taxes stick with Obamacare,” Ryan said. “We’re going to go fix the rest of the tax code.”

He also admitted that Republicans would have to do a little soul-searching to figure out what went wrong in the heath care debate and repair frayed relations inside the party.

“We will need time to reflect on how we got to his moment,” he told reporters Friday. “We were a 10-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do.” Now, he said, the party is undergoing “growing pains” as it adjusts to controlling all levers of government.

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg called it “quite an admission” for Ryan to acknowledge the GOP is not yet a “governing party.”

“What an embarrassment. What else can you say?” Rothenberg tweeted. “They promised. They voted to repeal — until they were in charge.”

Cohen, the political scientist, said Republicans should move now to infrastructure spending, where they could easily attract Democratic support and build some bipartisan rapport.

“You could probably get (an infrastructure bill) through the House and the Senate and put some points on the board and show that you can govern,” he said. Tax reform is more complicated, he said, and it could expose the same rifts that caused the health care bill to collapse.

Democrats, meanwhile, were gloating. Giddy at the health bill’s demise, top House and Senate Democrats chastised Republicans for being in disarray and gave little indication that they would come to the table on other issues.

“If they get keep governing from the hard right, they’re going to have real trouble with everything they do,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. On tax reform, for example, Schumer said a Republican plan that favors “the very wealthy ... won’t fly” with his party.

Schumer and other Democrats suggested they could work with the GOP on smaller pieces of the health care puzzle. At the top of their list is lowering prescription drug costs, an issue Trump has also expressed an interest in addressing.

“That’s something we can work with (the president) on,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told USA TODAY.

But that’s not a major priority for Republicans in Congress. And their appetite to revisit anything related to health care may be greatly diminished after Friday’s painful episode.