House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was continuing with the happy talk on Trumpcare Friday morning, as popular vote loser Donald Trump himself was meeting with some grumbly House conservatives.
“I'm talking to members today that are undecided, that are ‘no’ and ‘lean-no’ and frankly there's a path for most of them to get to ‘yes,’” Scalise said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.” “And we're working very closely with the White House on very specific changes that gets some of those members that are ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ vote on the bill.”
Trump reinforced that after the meeting with Republican Study Committee members.
Trump, who said the group made “certain changes” but “frankly very little” to the proposal, also said he wanted “everyone to know I’m 100 percent behind” the plan.
“I also want everyone to know that all of these no’s or potential no’s are all yeses,” Trump said. “Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.”
Who wasn't sitting in the room? The 16 "no" votes that NBC News has identified. That's the Freedom Caucus group, the caucus that formed because the RSC wasn't conservative enough. Here they are:
Trumpcare is a travesty: It cuts taxes for the rich, kills Medicaid expansion for the poor and defunds Planned Parenthood. We can defeat it in the Senate, if you call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and contact your senators.
As for the changes Trump says he's agreed to with the RSC, and apparently House Speaker Paul Ryan and team are going for, they appear to be adding a work requirement to Medicaid, changing the per capita cap that will be put on Medicaid to a straight block grant for states that want it, and making the tax credits for older people more generous. [Update: per the RSC’s official statement, they will add an anti-abortion bit—prohibiting the tax credits from being used to pay for abortion. Because of course.] Since the Freedom Caucus wants no more Medicaid and no more tax credits, that's probably not going to cut it with them, and is also unlikely enough to completely win over the Senate Republicans who are opposed.
But Thursday seems to be Ryan's deadline, most likely because of its symbolism: the seventh anniversary of the signing of the ACA. That means, because this new stuff hasn't been put into legislative language and has not been submitted to the Congressional Budget Office for an updated score, they'll vote on it before the CBO weighs in. Which seems like a pretty bad idea, but it wouldn't be the first one out of Ryan.