GOP leadership and the White House were unable to convince conservatives
to back its repeal-and-replace bill; and Trump’s first major
legislative effort came tumbling down.
By Jackie Kucinich, Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Desiderio
Facing certain defeat on their increasingly doomed health-care bill, Republican leaders chose to pull it from the floor Friday afternoon rather than watching it die on live television.
“We just pulled it," President Donald Trump called to tell Washington Post reporter Robert Costa around 3:30 p.m. ET on Friday. “We had no votes from the Democrats,” Trump said later in remarks to press.
“They weren’t going to give us a single vote so it’s a very difficult thing to do…I think what will happen is Obamacare, unfortunately, will explode. It’s going to have a bad year.”
Republicans never sought any Democratic votes on this, and Trump has previously floated the idea of trying to have the Affordable Care Act cave in on itself rather than repealing it this soon.
Just minutes after the bill was pulled, a somber-looking House Speaker Paul Ryan emerged at a hastily called news conference to lament the new GOP governing coalition’s "growing pains." He refused to “sugarcoat” his party's major legislative defeat, and admitted he could not reach a consensus with hardline conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus.
“I spoke to the president just a little while ago and I told him that the best thing I think to do is to pull this bill, and he agreed with that decision,” Ryan said at a press conference following the decision.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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