Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who opposes the bill pushed by House Republican leaders to repeal and replace Obamacare, on Tuesday evening said that the legislation will not pass in the House.
“I think they should cancel the vote because they don’t have the votes,” Lee told Fox News.
House Republican leaders have said the bill will come up for a vote on the House floor on Thursday. But some conservatives in the House are still opposed to the bill, leaving it unclear whether House leaders actually have enough votes to pass the bill.
Lee told Fox News that Republicans should not unite behind the bill currently working its way through the House.
“I don’t think this bill was what we promised. What we promised was, what we’ve been promising for seven years, is that if Republicans were given the chance to govern, we would repeal Obamacare root and branch. That’s not what this bill does, and that’s what we need to do. And that’s why I’m holding out for a vote that actually fulfills that promise,” he said.
“President Trump’s message has been hijacked. His agenda of repealing Obamacare has been hijacked by people who don’t share his values, by people who don’t share his desire to repeal Obamacare,” Lee later added.
Asked if if he felt House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) had hijacked Trump’s message, Lee said he wasn’t accusing any one person of doing that.
“This bill contains a false promise of providing Americans with meaningful health care cost relief,” Lee said.
If you mandate ear-boring for the uninsured and those who purchase inadequate polices, you should find more than enough Republicans to support the bill. Sure, America is by far the Number 1 in cost inefficiency in healthcare delivery, paying over 18% of GDP and still not covering everybody. Not to mention poor outcomes. Surely we can improve that cost inefficiency, like to 20 % of GDP, 38 million fewer people covered and even more premature deaths.
“His agenda of repealing Obamacare has been hijacked by people who don’t share his values.”
Would those be the values of stealing, lying and cheating or treason?
There is a certain delicious irony here.
Because if the bill doesn’t pass the House, or dies in the Senate, the GOP will almost assuredly drop any repeal/reform of healthcare entirely and simply move on to tax reform.
And folks like Lee, Paul, the Freedom Caucus…will likewise drop any mention of healthcare entirely.
These folks exist simply to gum up the works, and they really don’t care whose works they are. Democrats trying to pass legislation, republicans trying to pass legislation, doesn’t matter. They want no legislation passed, ever.
And when they move on to tax reform…they will pull exactly the same stunt. No matter what is proposed, it won’t be “pure” enough, and they will be screaming the only legislative word they know…“NO!!”
The only thing about this cretin that interests me is, is he right? i.e., not enough votes even to pass the legislative piece of $%^& out of the House? Nothing better than to see this thing die there, without ever seeing the dim light of the Senate, the mangey carcass ingloriously laid bare at Paul Ryan’s feet.
None of these RepubliKKKlan assholes will admit that the real reason they want to do away with Obamacare is because their Wall Street masters demand yet another tax cut!