White House To Spin Failure Of Health Care Bill
As A Success
With the deal in doubt,
Trump is taking his ball and going home.
By Jason Linkins
With the passage of the American Health Care Act in grave doubt
after the House of Representatives blew past their hoped-for Thursday night
deadline, President Donald Trump has abruptly decided he is “done
negotiating over repealing and replacing Obamacare” and is demanding a Friday
vote on the bill even though it may not garner enough votes to pass.
According to Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of
Management and Budget, Trump is “prepared to leave Obamacare in place.”
It’s a sudden and shocking move for a president who billed
himself as a dealmaker par excellence. Repealing and replacing Obamacare
was one of Trump’s “on day one” promises, and something
he’s long sold as a vital first step on the way to other promises. This was so
important to Trump that at one point he promised to call for a “special session” of Congress,
just for the purpose of getting it done as rapidly as possible.
Now, the Trump White House has evidently decided to spin the
possible failure of the AHCA as a success:
So, if the bill goes down in defeat, it’s a “100%” win. And if
it passes, well, Trump will obviously take credit. Apparently the real
“art of the deal” is finding a way to have it both ways.
But reports indicate that behind closed doors, Trump is
frustrated everything hasn’t gone according to plan. The New York Times’ Glenn Thrush
and Maggie Haberman say Trump spent Wednesday “grappling
with rare bouts of self-doubt” and blaming House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for
the entire mess. Per Thrush and Haberman:
Mr. Trump has told four people close to him that he regrets
going along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s plan to push a health care overhaul before unveiling a tax
cut proposal more politically palatable to Republicans.
He said ruefully this week that he should have done tax reform
first when it became clear that the quick-hit health care victory he had hoped
for was not going to materialize on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the
act’s passage, when the legislation was scheduled for a vote.
This is very strange to hear. Trump, along with senior White
House officials, have been acclaiming the virtues of Ryan’s bill for quite some
time. His March 10 weekly address was dedicated to
praising the bill. In it, he described Ryan’s plan as part of his
“three-pronged process” to reform health care ― one in which the legislature
would act in concert with Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price
to “expand choice, lower costs, and provide health care access for all.” For
his part, Price has been making the rounds, flacking for the House’s bill all over television. And as recently as two
weeks ago, Trump was threatening to support the primary challengers
of any Republican who refused to give the American Health Care Act their vote.
Additionally, Trump is now making out-of-left-field complaints
about the legislative process:
There’s a reason these steps had to be taken in this precise
order, and Republicans ― including Trump ― have long been articulating and
defending the rationale. Repealing the Obamacare taxes is a critical step in
getting to the tax reform deal that Trump wants, as well as the massive tax cut
for the wealthy that he and Ryan would like to enact.
The White House hasn’t been kept in the dark on this. As Jonathan Chait points out,
Trump has ― up until now, anyway ― been fully onboard with this strategy and
has taken up the cause personally. As he told Tucker Carlson in a recent
interview:
“One of the reasons I want to get the health care taken care of
— and it has to come statutorily and for other reasons, various complex
reasons, having to do with politics, and also Congress — it has to come first.
It really has to come first. One of the reasons I want to get it finished,
ideally soon, is because I want to start on the taxes.”
And at recent rallies, Trump has told his devotees, “I want to
get to taxes, I want to cut the hell out of taxes ... but before I can do that
― I would have loved to have put it first, I’ll be honest ― there is one more
very important thing that we have to do: We are going to repeal and replace the
horrible, disastrous Obamacare.”
This health care bill, and this specific legislative strategy,
is entirely co-owned and co-operated by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan. Trump’s
specific job was to cajole legislators to back the plan. And while this was
never going to be the easiest of tasks, as recently as Thursday afternoon, it
looked like a deal of some kind could be wrought. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.),
who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, was effusive in his optimism and fervent
in his praise for the president, telling reporters that “progress is being
made” and that Trump’s “engagement is unparalleled, I believe, in the history
of our country.”
“This is a president that wants to get things done,” Meadows
said on Wednesday afternoon. A few hours later, Trump would prove him wrong.
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