Today, the House of Representatives was set to vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which would have repealed Obamacare and diverted funding away from Planned Parenthood and toward community health centers that do not provide abortions. Immediately before the vote was scheduled to take place, after hours of debate on the House floor, the bill was pulled and the vote was cancelled.
The Washington Post’s Robert Costa broke the story on Twitter:
President Trump just called me. Still on phone.
“We just pulled it,” he tells me.— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 24, 2017
“I don’t blame Paul,” Trump tells me
— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 24, 2017
Trump told me he’s willing to cut a bipartisan deal in the future: “When it explodes they [Dems] come to us and we make one beautiful deal.”
— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 24, 2017
“I would say within anywhere from 5 to 12 votes,” Trump told me, of how close the GOP came to passage
— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 24, 2017
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) held a press conference shortly after the news broke and conveyed his disappointment:
Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains, and well, we’re feeling those growing pains today. We came really close today but we came up short. I spoke to the President just a little while ago, I told him I think the best thing to do is to pull this bill, and he agreed with it…
Doing big things is hard. All of us, myself included, will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment and how we can do it better…
There remains so much that we can do to help improve peoples’ lives and we will. That’s why I’m here. And that’s why every member of this conference is here — to make this a better country…
I’m really proud of the bill we produced… We were on the cusp of achieving an ambition we’ve all had for seven years, and we came just a little short. We just didn’t quite get the consensus to get there.
According to a report from The New York Times, Speaker Ryan rushed to the White House earlier today to alert President Trump that the Republicans did not have the votes to pass the bill and urged the president to support pulling the bill. Trump, who had previously suggested that this was the last opportunity for Republicans to repeal Obamacare, ultimately agreed.
The big takeaway from all of this? For now, health care reform appears to be tabled as Republicans seek to move on to other legislative priorities.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
