President Trump has more to lose than does speaker Speaker Ryan
President Donald Trump is being set up for a big fall on Thursday if he supports a bill that was not crafted by his team. The American Health Care Act the GOP bill offered as a repeal and replacement bill to end Obamacare belongs to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Yes, recently President Trump has supported the bill but in the end this will be a loser for him.
The passing of this bill is not win for President Trump it is a win for Speaker Ryan and the president needs to bail on this bill now. President Trump will likely see the bill pass by a very small margin and then die a week or so from now in the Senate.
The bill that Speaker Ryan has crafted will cause President Trump to be seen as a liar to his base. Trump loyalists warned that the president is at risk of violating some of his biggest campaign promises — such as providing broad health coverage for all Americans and preserving Medicaid and other entitlement programs — in service to an ideological project championed for years by Ryan and other establishment Republicans.
President Trump won the White House by winning, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky, all by slim margins. His voters in those states stand to be the biggest losers by the Ryan bill.
Let me be clear I have sent the last week not speaking to Democrats but to talking to Republicans and Conservative think tanks. I have consumed all conservative media from Breitbart to watching Fox News Channel and listening conservative radio. These are all media outlets that have Trump’s ear, the message has been blunt: The plan being advanced by congressional Republican leaders is deeply flawed — and, at worst, a political trap.
Back in 2010 then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rushed the Affordable Care Act through Congress. She famously told her Democratic House members to “Pass the bill now and we will worry about the details later.”
In the House, 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voted against it but the bill passed 219-212 in the House. Then the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, became law shortly after the Senate, passed the bill 60-39 with all Democrats and two independents voting for it and all Republicans voting against it.
Ir was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23rd, 2010. That brought a a groundswell from Republican’s who cried that the bill was “rushed and jammed down their throats.”
That vote on we now know as Obamacare, cost the Democrats the House and the Senate. It could happen to the Republican’s just like it did back in 2010 and 2012.
What Speaker Ryan is doing is no different from Speaker Pelosi and he is selling a bill that will hurt President Trump. Ryan is not concerned about the blue and purple states that Trump was able to win by selling a populist message on healthcare.
Let me be clear, not a single Republican lawmaker or Conservative policy-maker I have spoken to is a fan of Obamacare. But they see The American Health Care Act, as something that could make President Trump a one term president and they think that someone has to hit the pause button.
They think it is time to scrap Ryan’s plan and start all over this time with more input from the White House, and all voices in the Republican Party.
“Trump figures things out pretty quickly, and I think he’s figuring out this situation, how the House Republicans did him a disservice,” said Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend. “President Trump is a big-picture, pragmatic Republican, and unfortunately the Ryan Republican plan doesn’t capture his worldview.”
Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media, published a column Tuesday urging Trump to “ditch” the current bill.
Republican governors who were part of Medicaid expansion have cautioned President Trump that this bill is a bad idea. GOP members of the Senate have said the bill if passed by the House would be “Dead on arrival,” when it got to the Upper Chamber.
President Trump has been in office two months and two days. Ryan for some reason is in a big rush to pass a bill that will kill the president’s agenda. This is a bill that has no support from insurance companies, hospital groups, and patient groups.
President Trump was elected as a deal maker but this Ryan healthcare plan is going to be something that the White House will own. The GOP plan would make things worse, especially for many of the “forgotten” Americans who voted for Trump. The CBO projected annual health care costs for the average enrollee would increase by $1,542. Older Americans would pay $5,269 more per year on average, the CBO said.
So President Trump faces a Catch 22 that is not of his making, but one that belongs to Republicans. If the bill passes and causes millions of Americans to lose insurance or pay a lot more for coverage, that’s bound to hurt President Trump more than Congress.
Yes, Obamacare is doomed to failing but under any new law would take at least two years to put into action. So, the rush that Ryan is pushing is a self-imposed timeline.
President Trump can craft a deal that both Republican and Democratic support. Give him time, kill this bad bill and let President Trump sit down with the key players, lawmakers, insurance executive’s, healthcare executives and other people who are involved in the success of any long term healthcare bill.
This needs to be Trumpcare not Ryancare, because in the end the president will own it.
Video comes from The Trump News Network
