Do What You Said You Would Do by Jim Jordan

Author:Jim Jordan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2021-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

OBAMACARE REPEAL

Three buckets! It was a metaphor Speaker Ryan used to describe the process Republicans would use at the start of the 115th Congress to repeal Obamacare. Ryan’s plan was to first pass legislation that repealed parts of Obamacare using “reconciliation.” Reconciliation is a procedure by which the majority party—in this case, Republicans—can bypass the sixty-vote hurdle in the Senate. It also requires Congress to obtain certain savings from the previously passed budget. Ryan’s plan required a focus on the taxing and spending portions of the Obamacare law.

Subsequently, Tom Price, Health and Human Services Secretary, would implement rule changes to further repeal Obamacare. And finally, in “bucket three,” there would be additional legislation that would complete the job of repealing Obamacare. However, this final step would be done outside the reconciliation process and therefore would require sixty votes in the Senate. And of course, sixty votes in the Senate meant this final part would have to be bipartisan.

Three separate steps—one of which required rule changes by Price, another that required help from Democrats—to repeal a bill named for a Democrat president. And it all dealt with the most politically polarizing issue in a decade.

Are you kidding me? This may have been the most ridiculous and unrealistic legislative strategy in modern history. Think about it. If Secretary Price could make rule changes to help with Obamacare, why couldn’t he make them right away? Why wait? And, when those rule changes were made, they would inevitably be challenged by Democrats in the courts. And getting Democrats to help President Trump secure sixty votes in the Senate? Come on. In the spring of 2017, Democrats were already focused on the whole Trump–Russia collusion story. They weren’t about to help him repeal Obamacare.

The House Freedom Caucus took a more direct—MUCH more direct—and reasoned approach. Why not do what we said we would do? Why not do what we were elected to do, what we campaigned on for six years? Why not pass the exact same legislation we had passed and put on President Obama’s desk six months earlier?

In the previous Congress, we had passed a four-page bill to repeal Obamacare using the reconciliation process. All but two Republicans in the House and Senate supported the bill. House Freedom Caucus members wanted to pass this same legislation. We weren’t alone. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was there too. He supported this “clean repeal” approach. Unfortunately, Paul Ryan didn’t. Because all tax and spending legislation is constitutionally required to start in the House, Speaker Ryan was in the lead position on the repeal legislation, and he was wedded to his “three-bucket” approach.

In all fairness, the “clean” approach didn’t get rid of all of Obamacare. It would have required some additional work down the road. But the clean bill that had passed in the previous Congress did more to repeal Obamacare than the legislation introduced in the House on March 6, 2017.

A clean repeal approach would have passed without all the drama that played out over the two-month period between the introduction on March 6 and the House passage on May 4, 2017.

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