There was no vote Thursday for an obvious reason: As it stands right now, there's no bill that has enough support to pass the House. So the work continues to try to come up with one. But per the White House, that work had better not take very long:
Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney made clear Thursday evening that President Donald Trump is done negotiating on the hotly-debated health care bill and wants a vote on Friday.
And, if the president doesn't get a vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, he will move on to other priorities, Mulvaney said according to a source in the room during the tense talks with GOP members. A senior administration source confirms to NBC News the "very definitive, very clarifying" message from the president and the administration's intention to move on — should the health care bill fail to move forward — to other matters such as tax reform, trade and border security.
If the bill does not pass, the president would see it as "people in Congress breaking their promises to their constituents to repeal and replace Obamacare" even with a Republican president in the White House," the source told NBC News.
It was a long night for Trump aides who worked late to try and convince conservative House Freedom Caucus members to support the health care bill. Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist and senior counselor, met with the group's members to deliver a pointed message: stand and deliver.
Republican leadership worked to underscore the message.
"For seven and a half years, we have been promising to repeal and replace this broken law because it is collapsing and failing families," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday evening. "And tomorrow we are proceeding."
Trump and Ryan spoke for 45 minutes Thursday night, sources said. The conversation was described as an "entirely positive call."
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, a member of the whip team, said he believed Trump's ultimatum is "credible" and predicted the bill's passage during Friday's vote. He added he isn't worried about how the Senate would respond.
Keep in mind here, we're only talking about the bill passing the House. Early in the process that was considered a gimme, with the real challenge lying ahead in the Senate where Republicans hold only 52 seats and some of them are not exactly far right of center.
But concern about the Senate has always been the problem with the House bill. The AHCA as currently structured is designed to pass the Senate, as opposed to a far more market-oriented bill that could have easily passed the House but faced the prospect of defeat once Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner got their hands on it in the upper chamber.
I don't know why Ryan had it in his head that it had to go this way. The normal path for legislation is that the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a different version and then things are ironed out in conference committee. Why couldn't the House have simply passed a conservative bill, let the Senate take up its own bill and then let the dealmaking commence? That, it seems to me, is where Trump's skills as a negotiator would have been most useful. Instead, the House decided to water down its own bill in order to get it through the Senate - and as a result it may not even make it through the House.
Of course, a lot can happen in a day. And if Trump is to be believed, it had better happen in a day.
Now, let's parse what Trump is really saying here. To take it at face value, you'd have to conclude he is only willing to sign a repeal/replace bill if it passes the House today. As opposed to what? Vetoing it if it passes next week? This is a high-stakes threat, to be sure, and I believe him insofar as he's talking about moving his legislative emphasis to other priorities.
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But let's say for the sake of argument that the House basically ignores the ultimatum because it thinks it will take a week, or two, to come up with a bill that can pass and that actually works. The House passes its bill in mid-April. The Senate passes something too, the two go to conference committee and we've ultimately got a repeal/replace bill that reaches Trump's desk.
At that point, does Trump veto the bill because it didn't pass the House on March 24 like he demanded? Sorry, you're too late, we're keeping ObamaCare.
I wouldn't think so. But it's better for Congress to get anything passed and signed when the president is engaged in the effort, and Trump has had it with trying to get this thing to work. If he was building a hotel and his contractors and financiers were messing around and getting nowhere, I can see Trump saying "screw it" and walking away. He's trying to do the equivalent here, or at least make it look like he is.
Don't take your eye off the news today.
