What they couldn't do in seven years, then in 18 days, could happen by the end of this week, says House Speaker Paul Ryan. Because, sure. He only needed one more week to have health care reform all figured out. Sure, he can cook up something new in four days.
Apparently Friday's humiliation wasn't enough for him, so he's going back for another bite at Obamacare repeal and replace. Because by Thursday or Friday of this week, he says, he'll have a plan in place to share with major donors meeting in Florida.
On an afternoon call [Monday] with donors to his Team Ryan political organization, he continued: “We’re not going to just all of a sudden abandon health care and move on to the rest. We are going to move on with rest of our agenda, keep that on track, while we work the health care problem. . . . It’s just that valuable, that important.”
Ryan (R-Wis.) did not disclose details of what the next iteration of health-care reform might look like, but he suggested that a plan was being developed in time to brief the donors at a retreat scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Florida.
“When we’re in Florida, I will lay out the path forward on health care and all the rest of the agenda,” Ryan said. “I will explain how it all still works, and how we’re still moving forward on health care with other ideas and plans. So please make sure that if you can come, you come—it will be good to look at what can feasibly get done and where things currently stand. But know this: We are not giving up.”
As long as it includes anything that was included in Trumpcare 1.0, good luck. The Freedom Caucus had what they consider a massive win. They're not going to let anything other than straight-up repeal and nothing else happen this time, either. This is where Ryan's going to have an even more interesting time of it, because he apparently called the maniacs out during this phone call. He told the donors "90 percent of our members of the conference were there and ready to go and be a governing party and were happy with where we were, and around 10 percent were still in what I would call 'opposition party mode.'"
That 10 percent—and the Koch brothers who have vowed to support them—aren't going to react too kindly to that. None of Ryan's problems are going to be solved in one week, particularly the one where he just doesn't have any ideas that he can sell to 218 of his members.
