House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) washed his hands of concerns that the direction he’s taking Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill in the House will make it dead-on-arrival in the Senate.
“My job is to move bills through the House,” Ryan said at his weekly press conference Thursday, while noting the feedback from House members leadership is receiving through the process.
The legislation, the American Health Care Act, has come under fire from a range of Senators that have included Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC). According to a report in the Hill, some GOP senators are privately hopeful that the bill will die in the House so they don’t get blamed if it fails in the upper chamber.
“I have not yet heard from those senators. The senators who have been critical of the House bill, none of them have called me. So I am not sure what exactly their concerns are,” Ryan said. “All I would say is, senators are not helpless with respect to the House. The House passes its bill. It’s sent to the Senate and then they get to take it from there. Senators, if they have a concern or an issue, are free to amend that bill when it goes over there.”
Ryan’s ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ lesson aside, the obstacles the bill faces in the Senate are worrying members of his own caucus, particularly Republican moderates who have balked at the changes that House conservatives are pushing.
“There’s a real concern that the bill is going nowhere in the Senate, that would not be wise for us to take it up,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA), the chair of the centrist Tuesday Group, told reporters Wednesday.
Remember when we laughed at Trump during in 2016? Thought he could never ever be elected because…
Although I don’t think this will get out of the House… there’s hope that the Senate will put the kibosh on this mess.
The thing that is scary to me is that this is a really really bad bill that they know will fail so that any thing they crank out will look good by comparison.
A laxative’s job is to move turds through the colon.
Because he knows it’s not going to pass the House in its present form? What a worm this man is.
What Ryan needs to say is, “If you vote down this repeal bill, Stephen Miller will draft the next one.” Ryancare would pass with unanimous Republican approval in both houses.
I’d like to hear him say “A vote against AHCA is a vote FOR ACA”
On those terms, I think the answer is clear, even to Republicans.