Free Republic

According to The New York Times, 10 moderates, 15 conservatives, and eight other Republicans would have voted against the Republican repeal and replace Obamacare bill. So, then, 15 or so conservatives made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump. If that is the case, what we have here is another conservative example of purism and principle damaging another major opportunity to do good. The first purist conservative example were the Never-Trumpers, who believed it was better for Hillary Clinton to be elected president and for the Left to have four...

House Speaker Paul Ryan got down on one knee and begged for congressmen to vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a report claims. According to a detailed account in the Washington Post, the Wisconsin native “got down on a knee to plead with Rep. Don Young” on Thursday night, just hours before the House was supposed to vote on the bill, because he remained undecided. “When the speaker finished with Young, he spent about 10 minutes in an animated discussion with Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), one of the bill’s most outspoken critics,” the Post noted. “At one...

Texas U.S. Rep. Ted Poe quit the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Sunday after lawmakers failed to pass a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act two days before. Poe had prepared to vote for the Republican American Health Care Act, which was ultimately pulled from the House floor when Republicans learned they did not have enough votes to pass it, reported Fox News. Poe said he was unhappy with the caucus opposition to the bill. "To deliver on the conservative agenda we have promised the American people for eight years, we must come together to find solutions to move...

Get back to work and do your jobs, Republicans (and that goes for Trump, too). After seven years of telling us they would repeal and replace ObamaCare at the first opportunity, the Republican House worked on it all of 63 days before apparently deciding it could not do so - despite a Republican majority in the Senate (however small) and a Republican president prepared to sign the bill. Did they ever intend to do this in the first place?

Gabriel Sherman writes that White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon (or, for those concerned with SEO, Steve Bannon) has privately expressed concern that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) betrays the populist voters who put Donald Trump in the White House.

The White House gave the House Freedom Caucus a final offer as it tries to win support for a bill to repeal and replace parts of Obamacare, but the conservative group's leader said no deal was reached by Thursday afternoon. The lack of an agreement throws more doubts on a planned Thursday night vote on the legislation. The conservative contingent has threatened the bill's passage, as its members have said the GOP plan does not go far enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. President Donald Trump met with the contingent earlier as he and House...

This isn't complicated. No vote means the DOW will TANK on Friday. And any further momentum on the economy, and all the other things including the wall, et all, are dead and Schumer and Pelosi wins. As the DOW tanks, the Democrats and their left wing MSM will be non-stop 24x7 telling the American people that "Trump destroyed the economy!". Enough Americans will believe it to put the Democrats back in power. The "conservatives" - those 20 fools - are now the do nothing Republicans. They will taint this Congress as once again the Do Nothing Congress. They say if...

President Trump, who promised to totally repeal Obamacare, is threatening Republicans with political retribution if they do not support the House bill which would leave the worst elements of Obamacare intact. The House bill does a few good things -- it eliminates the individual mandate to buy insurance, and relieves employers of the costly burden of providing insurance for their workers. But, mostly, the worst parts of Obamacare stay in effect. ****SNIP**** And President Trump is threatening any Republican who votes against it. President Trump on Tuesday turned up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to support a sweeping bill to...

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday turned up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to support a sweeping bill to overhaul the health care system, threatening wavering lawmakers in his party with political payback if they failed to get behind a measure that has become an early test of his negotiating power. In a series of meetings and phone calls at the White House and on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Republican congressional leaders haggled with holdouts over details as they struggled to assemble a majority to support a bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable...

House Freedom Caucus declines to take united position, which is probably good news for the bill I assume you already know enough not to take anything Justin Amash says seriously, so the fact that my ex-congressman isn’t satisfied means nothing. For people who don’t live in the utopian fantasyland of their adolescent dreams, here’s how House Republicans have improved the American Health Care Act in the past 24 hours: Under the modified version of the GOP replacement bill, states would be allowed to require able-bodied Medicaid recipients without dependents to work beginning in October — and would get a funding...

House Speaker Paul Ryan agreed Tuesday with PresidentDonald Trump that Republicans risk losing control of Congress if they don't unify this week to force passage of the leading bill to replace key parts of the Affordable Care Act. Ryan said he disagreed with the notion that there are not enough votes to pass that bill on Thursday. "Yes, absolutely," Ryan said when asked if he agreed with Trump's personal admonition to GOP House members during a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday that "many" of them would lose their seats if they voted against the bill. "The president of the...

A spokeswoman for the House Freedom Caucus told Breitbart News the technical and Medicare-related changes to the RyanCare bill up for a House floor vote Thursday will not save the bill from defeat. “The amendments offered by Republican leadership do little to address the serious concerns of House conservatives,” said Alyssa Farah, the caucus communications director. “At this time, the bill does not have the votes to pass,” she said. “The Freedom Caucus will continue to work with House colleagues, the Senate, and the White House to find a path forward that works for the American people.” Speaker of the...

Sen. Ted Cruz wasted no time mincing words on what he thinks about the three phases of the American Health Care Act Sunday morning on Face the Nation. “That ain’t gonna happen,” Cruz told host John Dickerson when asked about the 3-phase plan President Trump and House Republicans have been pushing since the roll out their non-repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

The leader of a key group of conservatives on Friday said the House healthcare reform bill still doesn't have the votes to pass the lower chamber despite changes. In an interview filmed for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said there are at least 40 House Republicans who are opposed to the legislation and another 20 to 30 who are undecided. If every member votes and all Democrats vote no, GOP leaders can't afford more than 21 defections. The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus made his comments before House GOP leaders announced Friday they are making modifications to...

President Trump claimed Friday that House conservatives previously opposed to ObamaCare replacement legislation moving through the chamber are now on board after “changes” were made – an assertion that could be put to the test as early as next week. The president voiced confidence during a meeting with members of the conservative Republican Study Committee. “We are doing some incredible things … I am 100 percent behind this,” Trump said, before looking around the room and saying: “All of these no’s, or potential no’s, are all yes’es. Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.” He added,...

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but for governments it’s not that easy. Once something is given — say, health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans — you take it away at your peril. This is true for any government benefit, but especially for health care. There’s a reason not one Western democracy with some system of national health care has ever abolished it. The genius of the left is to keep enlarging the entitlement state by creating new giveaways that are politically impossible to repeal. For 20 years, Republicans railed against the New Deal. Yet, when they...

House Republicans will vote Thursday on Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement bill, two senior GOP sources told POLITICO. The move shows that GOP leaders are confident they have the 216 votes needed to pass the bill, even as as the far-right and centrist Republicans continue to press for changes.

The Trump administration and House GOP leaders are eyeing three possible changes to their ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill as they seek the votes to pass it through the House. The White House on Friday won support from key conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) members by agreeing to give states the option to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and the option to block grant Medicaid instead of the cap system in the bill, GOP sources said. Separately on Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price privately told House Republicans in a closed-door meeting that changes could include alterations to tax...

"The president should confound expectations, pivot, and turn to the Democrats for a bipartisan deal. Here is the tradition. If you are Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 and you want to create Social Security—an act that affects Americans very personally—you get the other party in on it. You need them co-owning it, invested in it. You want the American people saying, “Congress did this,” not “the Democrats did this,” because if they say the latter the reform will always divide. FDR got 81 Republicans to vote for it in the House, and 284 Democrats. The same with Medicare in 1965: Lyndon...

Watch his remarks at the link https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/842748525343641600