By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
The president had closed meetings with various House Republicans to swade them to repeal legislation that gives millions of people health insurance.
The Trump administration has been moving forward to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that has given millions of poor people health insurance. And House Republicans have been helping him by trying to get the majority of their party to pass a repeal legislation, which is set for a floor vote on Thursday.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump is bullying lawmakers into voting for the repeal.
In a closed-door meeting at the Capital, Trump spoke with Republicans who are still on the fence. According to The New York Times, he told most of them if they didn’t vote for the repeal, they would probably lose their seats in next year’s midterm elections — that certainly caught their attention.
“He warned us that there are consequences if we don’t come together, for us as a party and also for individuals,” Representative Richard Hudson, North Carolina, said to NY Times. “He wasn’t threatening in any way. He was just giving us a pretty clear warning.”
Texas Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee chimed in: “He made it very clear he’s all-in on this legislation. This is a historic moment and a historic promise for Republicans to deliver on this Thursday.”
It’s clear that Trump wants to erase all the progress Obama and his administration has done, and I mean that literally.
As we previously reported, almost immediately after President Trump took office, the webpage for the Office of National AIDS Policy, which displayed President Obama’s goals for lowering national HIV rates, was removed (and continues to remain blank).
While Republican leaders are trying to appease their constituency, it’s becoming clearer by the month that the ACA is helping more people than they realized. As a result, it’s getting harder for lawmakers to ban together for a vote. So they’re left with a catch 22: vote for the repeal and risk losing a large voter base, or vote against the repeal and risk being shamed publicly by the president.
As the NY Times points out, House leaders gave a set of revisions to the bill aimed to try and sway swing votes. These provisions included a shift in Medicaid costs from counties to the state government; permission for states to impose a work requirement for certain able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries; and also to allow states to choose a lump-sum block grand to fund Medicaid.
Nonetheless, House Republicans are observing these provisions. And with pressure from the president that is anything but compromising (in fact it’s threatening), who knows what Thursday might bring.
