bdmetronews Desk ॥ The failure to push an Obamacare repeal through the House was a major setback in President Trump’s first real test in office.
President Trump’s failure to push a repeal of Obamacare through the House on Friday was a major setback in his first real test as president.
It’s a good moment to take stock of lessons learned. Here are five:
1. This is a blow to Trump’s presidency, but let’s not get carried away.
The bill’s defeat is not a mortal wound to Trump. Disregard the Chicken Littles who describe the health care failure as the end-all of everything. Trump has only been president for two months. There is plenty of time for him and for Republicans to learn their lessons, regroup and recover.
But the admission of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the United States will be “living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future” means that it’s unlikely Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act any time soon, if at all, during the next two years. They had a limited window of time to do this now, for complex procedural reasons, and because of Trump’s insistence that they do it quickly.
Now, Trump wants to move on to tax reform, which means that they can’t do health care reform this year. And it’s unlikely they’d want to touch such a controversial topic next year, when every member of the House is up for reelection.
2. Trump didn’t lead from the beginning, because he didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and it cost him.
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump famously said five weeks after his inauguration. The new president did not grasp the process of passing a health care bill, the politics or the policy.
Trump is notorious for scorning details. And so he provided no leadership on what the bill should look like at the front end of the process, leaving the entire venture to Ryan, who will also come in for plenty of criticism for drafting a bill that was widely criticized for its incoherence — even by some of the speaker’s close allies.
3. Ryan’s failure to win over conservatives was both inexplicable and unsurprising.
Ryan spent all of 2016 creating consensus about how to replace the ACA, in a widely praised process. Then he rushed the actual legislation through the House, without trying to win over conservative groups and lawmakers beforehand.
In one sense, Ryan had to hurry because Trump was announcing to the American people that repealing Obamacare would be done quickly, and because the process necessary for passing its replacement, known as budget reconciliation, also meant Republicans had to be done with health care before they moved on to tax reform.
4. Tax reform is not going to be any easier.
Trump, after the failure of the health measure, moved immediately to talking about tax reform. That, however, is an even more challenging topic for Congress to address, largely because there are so many interests arrayed against it.
The GOP tax reform bill in its current form raises revenue to offset the cost of tax cuts through a tax on imports. That proposal is opposed by big retailers like Walmart, and by the powerful Koch Brothers’ political organization. A large number of senators have signaled that they are opposed to the border trade adjustment tax.
5. Trump, so far, is looking a lot like Jimmy Carter
Several journalists have noted a number of similarities between Trump and Carter, many of which have been on display during the battle over health care. But the comparison goes only so far.
Carter and Trump both ran as Washington outsiders, and against the political establishment. Carter in 1976 said the government was “disorganized, wasteful, has no purpose and its policies — when they exist — are incomprehensible or devised by special interest groups with little regard for the welfare of the average American citizen.”
