House repeals healthcare law

The House voted on Wednesday to repeal the sweeping healthcare law
enacted last year, as Republicans made good on a central campaign pledge
and laid down the first major policy marker of their new majority.

The party-line vote was 245-189, as three Democrats joined all 242 Republicans in supporting repeal.

{mosads}Speaker
John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the healthcare law on the books would
increase spending, raise taxes and eliminate jobs.

“Repeal means
paving the way for better solutions that will lower the costs without
destroying jobs or bankrupting our government,” Boehner said in remarks
on the floor before the vote.

“Let’s stop payment on this check before it can destroy more jobs or put us into a deeper hole.”

The
vote to roll back the president’s signature domestic achievement of the
111th Congress just 10 months after its passage underscores the deep
divisions that still surround the new law. But whether House action will
signal the beginning of a rapid dismantling of the healthcare overhaul
or serve merely as a historical footnote remains to be seen.

Democratic
leaders in the Senate have vowed to shelve the repeal bill, and
President Obama has said he would veto repeal if it ever reached his
desk.

With those threats in mind, GOP leaders dared the Senate to
take up the measure, and they promised to fight the healthcare law in
other ways if repeal failed.

“The American people deserve to see a
vote in the Senate, and it ought not to be a place where legislation
goes into a dead end,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said.

Cantor
noted that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) had said the debate over
repeal of healthcare would be a “political win” for Democrats.

“If so, let’s see the votes,” Cantor said.

Absent
action in the Senate, Republicans defended their move to hold a repeal
vote as upholding a key tenet of the “Pledge to America” unveiled during
the midterm election campaign.

“Today we are keeping that pledge, and it is a start,” GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said.

If
repeal were ultimately unsuccessful, Cantor has said, Republicans would
“do everything we can to delay and defund the provisions of the bill.”

The
seven hours of floor debate on repeal served as something of an
extension of the nearly yearlong debate that preceded the law’s initial
passage, as lawmakers argued over the merits of a measure that has yet
to be implemented fully. Republicans said scrapping the law would allow
Congress to start over on healthcare, while Democrats said repeal would
increase costs and remove access to healthcare for millions of needy
Americans.

The three Democrats who voted for repeal were Reps. Dan
Boren (Okla.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), and Mike Ross (Ark.), all of whom
opposed the law last year. Seven other Democrats who opposed the
original law also opposed its repeal. Only the hospitalized Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) missed the vote.

No amendments were
allowed on the bill, and Republicans fought back a Democratic motion
that would have required a majority of members of both the House and
Senate to forgo federal health benefits for repeal to take effect. The
motion was aimed at highlighting what Democrats argue is the hypocrisy
of Republican members opposing expanded health insurance for ordinary
Americans while they accept the benefits themselves.

The second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), was one of only five Democrats to oppose his party on the motion.

The
Obama administration and congressional Democrats mounted a
full-throated campaign to defend the healthcare law, using the repeal
effort to increase support for a measure that, overall, never gained
popularity with the public.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.), who as Speaker shepherded the reform law to passage last
year, staged a hearing on Tuesday featuring testimony from citizens who
said they’d be negatively affected by repeal.

“Democrats have made
a firm commitment: that we will judge every proposal that comes before
us as to whether it creates jobs, strengthens the middle class and
reduces the deficit. The repeal of the patients’ rights fails on all
three counts,” Pelosi said.

The secretaries of Health and Human
Services and Agriculture, Kathleen Sebelius and Tom Vilsack,
respectively, attended the House Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday
morning.

The Health and Human Services Department also released a
report indicating that nearly 130 million Americans under the age of 65
have pre-existing conditions that could cause them to lose their health
coverage if the reform law is repealed.

Sebelius highlighted those
findings Wednesday, arguing that the sheer number of beneficiaries
should give repeal supporters pause.

“People talk about repeal as
political theater or symbolism,” Sebelius told reporters in the Capitol
before Wednesday’s debate began. “It isn’t symbolic to the 129 million
Americans with health conditions who now are locked out or priced out of
the market. And it sure isn’t symbolic to those working families who
desperately need health security for themselves and their families and
are looking forward to the day when they, indeed, will have that kind of
security.”

Democrats have said they would be open to tweaking the
new law but oppose wholesale changes. Boehner seized on the comments to
push for repeal. “If we agree that this law needs improving, why would
we keep it on the books?” the Speaker said.

Republicans will bring up a measure on Thursday to instruct House committees to draft replacement legislation.

There
is no timetable for that bill, however, and Boehner said Wednesday he
saw no need to set “artificial deadlines” for the committees to complete
legislation.

Democrats have been giving Republicans flak for
repealing some of the law’s consumer protections — including coverage
for individuals with pre-existing conditions and the ability for grown
children to remain on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26 —
without a plan to replace them.

“Repeal and replace” had been the GOP’s campaign mantra.

The
repeal vote was delayed a week after the shooting of Giffords on Jan.
8, and lawmakers from both sides demonstrated visible restraint in their
rhetoric regarding the bill. While Republicans have not removed the
“job-killing” description from the official title of the repeal bill,
none of the six party leaders holding a press conference Wednesday used
that term; instead, they referred repeatedly to the 2009 law as
“job-destroying” legislation.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a
Tea Party leader, called the healthcare law “the crown jewel of
socialism.” She said Republicans would “repeal the president” and
“repeal the Senate” and “continue to fight until ObamaCare is no longer
the law of the land.”

Mike Lillis, Pete Kasperowicz and Jordan Fabian contributed to this report.

This story was updated at 9:30 p.m.