House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) is joining with President Donald J. Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in pushing for Congress to send a clean repeal of Obamacare to President Trump’s desk now, and work on the replacement later.
Meadows, who is making the call in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, joins them as both Trump and McConnell called for clean repeal of Obamacare to go to Trump now and a replacement later after the Senate health bill failed late Monday. When Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Mike Lee (R-UT) came out against the bill—joining Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Susan Collins (R-ME)—Trump and McConnell called for clean repeal of Obamacare now then a bipartisan replacement plan later.
Meadows is joining the president and Senate Majority Leader, as House Speaker Paul Ryan—whose “American Health Care Act” approach that aimed to repeal and replace Obamacare in one fell swoop started this whole mess months ago—remains silent.
“The Senate should continue to negotiate on the replacement bill but at a minimum give President Trump the opportunity to sign into law something that Barack Obama vetoed,” Meadows told Breitbart News on Tuesday morning, referring to the 2015 bill that repeals Obamacare in its entirety. That bill passed both chambers of Congress and was vetoed by now former President Barack Obama.
“The Senate must act and 51 senators voted for it and the House will find 218 votes to pass it,” Meadows added.
Ryan remains silent on the matter. His spokespersons Brendan Buck and AshLee Strong have not responded to a request for comment on whether the Speaker stands with the president. But it’s again worth noting that this whole mess began with Ryan setting the agenda to focus on healthcare first and his efforts to tie repeal and replace together. Now nearly seven months of the Trump administration have been wasted as Congress spent months and months dawdling away on this mess that Ryan made. The seven month mark of the Trump administration—exactly seven months since Inauguration Day—is on Thursday.
It’s also worth noting, too, that Ryan could not even succeed in his own chamber of Congress in getting the bill passed the first several times he tried. It took until Ryan pulled the bill off the floor, disappeared from Washington on a trip to Hollywood and to Europe, for other members outside the purview of Ryan and his leadership team to negotiate out changes that would get the bill passed through the House in the end. Meadows is one of those members who actually stepped for President Trump before to get the bill Ryan failed to handle properly through the House, and now Meadows is stepping up for the president again here.
Ryan meanwhile is Tweeting about emojis and about a House GOP budget that is meaningless because it depends on his now-failed healthcare bill to be a part of it. It will never be a part of it now.
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