For all of Paul Ryan's TED talks and PowerPoint presentations, he's still got a raucous GOP caucus to wrangle to get Trumpcare passed, and the White House isn't helping much. There's Press Secretary Sean Spicer enraging Rules Committee chair Rep. Pete Sessions by telling the public that everybody in the House and Senate was going to be able to offer amendments, then there's Trump himself encouraging the House extremists to keep on keeping on making the bill closer to the full repeal they want.
The move by extremists to cut Medicaid immediately, instead of in two years is gaining some steam. CNN reports that the White House is "beginning to urge House GOP leadership to include an earlier sunset of the Medicaid expansion funds authorized under Obamacare than the 2020 date set by the current bill." This move would potentially get the Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee—where the idea emerged—behind the bill. But that would be at the cost of less maniacal Republicans in the House and potentially a half dozen in the Senate.
The other problem—with the floodgates open thanks to Trump's invitation to chaos—is that conservatives keep moving the goalposts.
On Wednesday night, [Republican Study Committee leader Mark] Walker told reporters that he could get to 'yes' on the bill if leadership accepted two changes: One that would phase-out the current Medicaid expansion this year or the next instead of on Dec. 31, 2019; and another that would alter the structure of health care tax credits created in the bill.
The next morning, the RSC group as a whole asked for another change: the addition of work requirements for non-disabled adults receiving Medicaid. The press release announcing the request also mentioned the group's support for phasing out the Medicaid expansion sooner, but gone was the mention of tax credits, which are still a big issue for the Freedom Caucus.
“We’re a ‘yes’ if we get both of them and we are ‘lean-yes’ if we get one of them,” Rep. Walker told reporters Thursday afternoon of the Medicaid changes. “We’ve got to remember that these programs should be measured by how many people we’re transferring off — not how many people we’re transferring on.”
This isn't enough for the Freedom guys, though. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-who knows) screeches "I don't want another mandate, and there is a 30 percent penalty!" And being wooed by Trump himself was not enough for maniac Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who despite having "a 'good meeting' with Trump, indicated that the discussion was not enough to convince him to back the current bill."
Meanwhile, on the House leadership front Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says about moving up the Medicaid cut off date "I think right now that would be very difficult to do." Well, no shit. They put the killing Medicaid expansion after 2018 for a reason—so it's after 2018 and the midterm elections! Forcing Republicans who aren't in safe, gerrymandered districts in the House and who have to run statewide in the Senate to do this now would be a disaster. One that you think someone in the White House would be smart enough to figure out. Clearly, that person is not Trump.