GOP’s ‘repeal and replace’ bill dies
What happened
Senate Republicans all but abandoned their attempts to overhaul the nation’s health-care system this week after a lastditch effort to repeal Obamacare collapsed in disarray, dealing a major blow to President Trump’s legislative agenda. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had originally intended to hold a vote on the GOP’s health-care bill, known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act—but was forced to abandon the legislation after four Republican senators came out against it, leaving him at least two votes short of the necessary 50. McConnell moved to a fallback plan to vote to abolish major parts of the Affordable Care Act in two years without an immediate replacement, but that effort also sank when three moderate Republican senators pledged to oppose it, saying it would irresponsibly cause chaos on the insurance exchanges offering individual policies. “I did not come to Washington to hurt people,” said Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), one of the defecting Republicans. McConnell said he would still schedule a procedural vote on the repeal-alone plan “early next week,” though he conceded it was unlikely to pass. “It’s pretty obvious we’ve had difficulty getting 50 votes,” McConnell said.
Trump said he was “disappointed” with his party’s failure to repeal Obamacare, and at a White House lunch for all 52 Republican senators, he pressed them to pass “an even better” health-care bill before the August recess. “Inaction is not an option,” said Trump. If Republicans were unable to revive their repeal-and-replace legislation, he said, he would “let Obamacare fail” and blame Democrats for refusing to work with Republicans on a replacement. “I’m not going to own it,” he said.
McConnell pushed back against that strategy, saying that Republicans might have to work with Democrats to shore up Obamacare’s insurance markets, which in some rural states have seen an exodus of insurers and rising premiums. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for a joint effort to provide bigger subsidies, lower premiums, and lure back insurers. “The door to bipartisanship is open now,” said Schumer. “Republicans only need to walk through it.”
What the editorials said
The GOP’s self-inflicted health-care fiasco “is one of the great political failures in recent U.S. history,” said The Wall Street Journal. Republicans campaigned for years on undoing President Obama’s ill-advised signature health-care policy. Now they finally have a majority in the House and Senate and “a president willing to sign literally any bill that lands on his desk, but in the clutch they choked.” If Republicans can’t fulfill their basic promises, why should voters elect them?
The GOP’s assault on Obamacare is over—“as least for now,” said The
What next?
The GOP’s health-care meltdown is “just a hint of what’s to come,” said in WashingtonPost.com. Congressional Republicans face an “unusually challenging few months,” including looming fights over the debt ceiling and the budget—and they could again find themselves caught in a paralyzing dispute between their conservative and moderate members. That division is “already undermining tax reform,” said in National Review. Republicans were hoping tax cuts would salvage the party’s legislative agenda—yet neitherTrump nor Congress has “a clear sense” of whether to cut individual or corporate taxes, or how large those cuts should be. It’s a farce. Republicans have total control of the government. Will they ever “get anything done?”