Schumer seizes on Trump team’s offer to work with Dems

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s narrative that the Freedom Caucus is to blame for the House GOP’s recent failure to pass health care reform.

The Affordable Care Act has provided health care coverage to millions more Americans, but there are still some 30 million with no insurance. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from OR, said he’s open to sitting down with Republicans if they welcome Democrats into the negotiations early. “We’re smart enough to figure it out”.

With the health care defeat, President Trump learned that building consensus even within his own party can be extremely hard.

Still it was the Republicans who wouldn’t budge in their opposition to the GOP bill that went down who appeared most enthusiastic for another attempt.

Democrats cut Republicans out of Obamacare; House Republican ignored Democrats this year; the House Freedom Caucus refused a deal with Trump. It would be a 20 per cent tax on imports that, by making imports more expensive, would spur domestic production, they say.

“They have to have a victory here”, said Mr Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who advised Mr Trump during the presidential campaign.

The future of one type of ACA subsidy-cost-sharing reduction payments-is of particular concern, as a federal judge ruled in a case brought by House Republicans that the funding for CSRs was illegally appropriated.

That was the moment the Freedom Caucus made its choice.

Will the Freedom Caucus learn from its mistake?

“An appendectomy shouldn’t have to make me refinance my house”, she said.

According to Massie, Trump’s assertion that the Freedom Caucus “saved” Planned Parenthood is not true.

The Freedom Caucus is a hard-right group of House members who were largely responsible for blocking the bill to undo President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The divisions, coming on top of House Republicans’ inability to deliver on a priority they all share – repealing and replacing “Obamacare” – raised serious questions about whether they will be able to achieve their other legislative goals for the year or even pass must-do spending legislation in time to avert a government shutdown at midnight April 28.

Freedom Caucus members bridled at the criticism, insisting they had done Trump and fellow Republicans a favor by blocking a piece of legislation that polled poorly and embraced the basic structures of Obamacare without significantly reducing premiums.

After the meeting, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said that unless the issue is revisited in a month, he would force the House to vote on a bill that goes further than Ryan’s derailed measure in repealing Obama’s 2010 law.

With a deeply fractured Republican Party, the sentiment that Donald Trump needs the Democrats is growing. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who has a district office in Beaufort, was also opposed to the bill.

‘Trump is stuck, he can’t cajole the arch conservatives in the Republican Party and at the same time, my sense is the Democrats don’t want to throw him a bone either, so it is going to be hard, ‘ said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. “It was, ‘you have to do it here, now.’ When you do that you sound exactly like Nancy Pelosi”.

Fact check: Trump says ObamaCare is exploding.

But in the call with GOP donors, Ryan said, “We are going to keep getting at this thing”.

“I won’t tell you the timeline because we want to get it right”, Ryan told reporters at his weekly news conference.

Trump and Ryan agreed during the transition process to tackle health care first, partly for procedural reasons: With both health care and tax reform, Republicans planned to use a legislative tactic known as “budget reconciliation” that prevents Senate Democrats from blocking measures with a filibuster.

But total blame can’t be levied at Ryan.

“Republicans for the last seven years have promised to repeal Obamacare, and we really don’t have an excuse in the House for why this failed”, said a Republican strategist planning to work on 2018 midterm races. “Obamacare should be repealed by now”. “We have majorities in the House, in the Senate”.