House Republicans are no closer to consensus on Trumpcare now than they were when it so disastrously failed just three weeks ago, not even making it to the House floor because Speaker Paul Ryan couldn't get his conference unified. Even though it's recess, and even though Ryan gave everyone talking points full of pablum about how they were making good progress on a bill, they are most definitely not all on the same page. At Talking Points Memo, Tierney Sneed rounds up what members from each faction are telling voters back home, and it's definitely not the Ryan line.
You've got the Freedom Caucus types "dancing on the AHCA's grave."
Perhaps the only Republicans enjoying fielding Obamacare questions at events in their districts are those who were key to the repeal bill’s defeat.
“It didn’t repeal Obamacare,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), a vocal AHCA critic, said at a town hall. “It basically restructured Obamacare, and it didn’t resolve any of the problems, and in fact some of the changes would have made Obamacare even worse.”
There's a contingent that, for completely unknown reasons, is still hanging in with Zombie Trumpcare.
Some Republicans have been willing to defend their support for the euthanized bill and even expressed optimism that it would be brought back from the dead. The legislation, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) said at a town hall, “repealed about 70 percent of Obamacare, and that’s good enough for me.” As attendees chanted “Fix it,” he shot back, “The only way to fix it is to replace it.”
Then there's the "moderates" who really, really don't want to have to run with Trumpcare hanging around their necks in 2018 and insist that they're on the way to figuring out something much better.
“If you’re going to be a governing majority in the House Republicans, we have to work through this stuff,” Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA) said at a town hall in his purple district in the Philadelphia suburbs. “And I get concerned … finger-pointing can diminish our ability to marshal legislation forward.”
Rep, Mike Coffman (R-CO), who also represents a swing district, called the bill’s failure a “faceplant” while describing the legislation as “a good starting point.”
“I will protect those with pre-existing conditions. … I will maintain that commitment,” Coffman said, referring to attempts by conservatives to hollow out the ACA’s pre-existing conditions protections.
The latter group, ironically, contains one of Trumpcare's lead writers, Oregon's Rep. Greg Walden who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Walden's been focusing on the good stuff in Obamacare that he swears he wants to keep. He's lying, of course. You can tell that because he told the crowd "There is a lot of reform with health care that is being done on a bipartisan basis and will be done on a bipartisan basis." Which would be news to Democrats.
If anything, this recess seems to be driving Republicans even further apart on what to do about Trumpcare.