Republicans Don’t Know How or When to Repeal Obamacare
In a debate Tuesday night, Senator Ted Cruz made it clear that nothing is happening yet.
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It was a “day one” goal for the Trump administration to repeal Obamacare. Vice President Mike Pence said in early January that the “first order of business” was to repeal and replace Obamacare, and President Trump backed up his urgency with a storm of tweets urging Congress to act. House Speaker Paul Ryan said work on Obamacare was a “first priority” for the first session of Congress under Trump.
But does anyone know approximate timeline of when a repeal might happen or what the Republican plan will entail? In an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly Sunday, Trump indicated that maybe the “process” of an Obamacare repeal might drag into next year, although Ryan later said that the legislation would be done this year. The uncertainty around repeal was the central subject of a a televised CNN debate on Tuesday night between Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, where moderators and audience members asked Cruz the question early: What do Republicans have planned?
Cruz essentially admitted that the answer is still uncertain, declining to even mention a specific timeline, though he did say that there is “an urgency to honor the promises we made … Should Congress move quickly to repeal Obamacare? Absolutely.” He spent much of his time attacking Obamacare and buying time for a repeal effort instead of providing specifics for what repeal might entail and the process for implementing it.
READ: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/nobody-knows-when-obamacare-repeal-is-happening/515955/
READ: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/obamacare-republicans-repeal-replace-234821
READ: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-do-republicans-say-theyll-do-about-obamacare-no-idea/2017/02/08/5eb5ce4c-ee45-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.8dfeb38a4fe9