House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that the difficulty Republicans have had in passing an Obamacare repeal bill would not deter them, arguing that the House GOP has “weeks” to continue to work on the bill.
“We are not going to take one setback and call it a day,” Ryan said at a Q&A Wednesday with WisPolitics.com President Jeff Mayers. He said that his caucus was engaged in “very productive conversations” at the “concept stage.”
“We can keep working this for weeks now,” Ryan said. “We don’t have some kind of artificial deadline in front of us.”
His comments comes as the renewed push for a deal to pass Republicans’ American Health Care Act — which was dramatically pulled from the floor two weeks ago due to lack of votes — appears to be petering out. Participants in a late-night meeting between White House officials and leaders of the various wings of the House GOP emerged Monday evening saying that no agreement had been made to reach consensus on the bill.
Ryan said Wednesday that Republicans had been “90 percent” of the way to coalescing around the bill, but that they needed to be “95 percent” there for it to pass on the House floor.
“I am hopeful that there’s a health care deal. I don’t want to put any specific odds on it,” Ryan said.
