Most GOP lawmakers aren’t interested in another
failed effort to gut the health law in an election year.
02/01/2018 11:45 AM
EST
By JULIA IOFFE
By TAYLOR GEE and ZACK STANTON
WHITE SULPHUR
SPRINGS, W.Va. — Republicans are giving up on their years-long dream of
repealing Obamacare.
Though the GOP still
controls both chambers of Congress and maintains the ability to jam through a
repeal-and-replace bill via a simple majority, there are no discussions of
doing so here at House and Senate Republicans’ joint retreat at The Greenbrier
resort. Republicans doubt they can even pass a budget providing for the powerful
party-line “reconciliation” procedure used to pass tax reform last year, much
less take on the politically perilous task of rewriting health care laws in an
election year.
“I don’t think
leadership wants to,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who worked with South
Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on a last-ditch repeal effort last fall.
“In the sense of Graham-Cassidy, a partisan exercise? Doesn’t look like it.”
Republicans' decision
to abstain from another attempt at gutting Barack Obama’s health law — at least
this year — goes back on a pledge the party has made to voters since 2010. And
it underscores how Republicans overpromised in their ability to reform the
nation’s health care and never fully recognized how divided the party is over
key Obamacare planks like protecting pre-existing conditions and preserving the
law’s Medicaid expansion.
And now the GOP is
facing reality. Senate Republicans would struggle to pass a bill slashing at
Obamacare under the best circumstances this year. They lost a Senate seat in
Alabama in December and are down another vote as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
undergoes cancer treatment. GOP leaders would rather put the debacle of last
year’s failed attempt behind them.
“It would be a heavy
lift. I think everybody knows,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 GOP
leader. “We sort of tested the limits of what we can do in the Senate last
year. And we’re one vote down from where we were then.”
Republicans very well
may lose the House or Senate this fall, which would officially stick a fork in
their efforts to move a partisan agenda item like Obamacare repeal while
President Donald Trump is in office. But there appears to be no urgency to
capitalize on unified Republican control: None of the lawmakers interviewed for
this story believe that Congress will pass a budget this year that would allow
Republicans to use reconciliation to evade the Senate’s supermajority
requirements.
And rather than make
a major play to the frustrated conservative base on health care, Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has charted a bipartisan approach in
his comments when asked about the matter.
“I don’t think we’re
going to get a budget. And without a budget I don’t think we can do
reconciliation,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “When you hear the
leader speak, he’s speaking about bipartisanship. So I think that’s the
direction we’re going to go in this year.”
The news is not being
taken well in some corners of the party. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who leads
the conservative House Freedom Caucus, winced when reminded of the party’s
failure to repeal Obamacare and the lack of formal discussion on undermining
the law at the retreat.
Yet he was hopeful
that Republicans can pick up Senate seats in November and try again with a
bigger Senate majority.
“Do I see a full
repeal of Obamacare happening on a reconciliation vehicle this year? No. And to
suggest otherwise would be to ignore 51 votes in the Senate,” Meadows said. “If
we keep the majority in the House and they get a larger majority in the Senate
then you might look at a reconciliation vehicle after November.”
Republicans took some
heart in having recently passed laws that repealed Obamacare's individual
mandate and delayed some Obamacare taxes. And most GOP lawmakers said that they
believed those provisions are as far as they can go given the political
constraints and the ugly nature of last year’s attempt, including a failed
Senate vote and months of party infighting.
But Graham, for one,
is not willing to give up. After a herculean, if failed, effort in September to
push legislation repealing Obamacare and block granting federal health care
funds to the states, Graham said the GOP will be savaged by its voters if it
tries to give up on fully scuttling the law.
"We're coming
back at it. Republicans have no choice but to try to replace Obamacare after
repealing the individual mandate," he said, citing an obligation to GOP
voters to try again. “I’m certainly not giving up without a fight. And to any
Republican who thinks you can avoid the consequences of Obamacare collapsing,
you're kidding yourself."
Asked about Graham’s
latest push, Thune responded: “We’ll believe it when we see it.”
“If he’s got 50 for
it, more power [to him],” Thune said. “The leader’s not going to bring that up
if he can’t get it through.”
In the meantime, some
members of both parties are pushing bills to help stabilize the insurance
markets, hoping to bring down premiums after Trump eliminated key payments to
health insurers. But even that effort has flagged in recent weeks as
conservatives have fought any effort seen as propping up Obamacare, most
notably the stabilization bill written by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and
Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
“It’s on the
backburner too,” Capito said. Altering Obamacare is "still being looked
at. But not with the intensity it was."
Jennifer Haberkorn
contributed to this report.
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