It’s been five days since House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pulled the American Health Care Act from the House floor without a vote, marking a defeat for the Trump administration’s first big agenda item. But as Republicans attempt to pick up the pieces and move forward, not all is lost and Friday’s vote shortage shouldn’t be taken as a sign nothing can be accomplished in the future.
On the short road to last Friday, Republicans got caught up in the typical Washington response to a crisis: We must pass something, anything for the sake of doing something. This is a dangerous way to govern and certainly leads to more problems down the road through unintended consequences that could have been foreseen or prevented if lawmakers simply slowed down. Republicans further emphasized their own need to “do something” by marking March 23, 2017, as the date when a vote on the AHCA would take place. After all, it would make a statement and splashy headlines on the seven-year anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law.
When the AHCA was initially introduced, critics called it “ObamaCare light” while supporters upheld the legislation as a way to keep the campaign promise of repealing ObamaCare without actually implementing full repeal. These issues weren’t reconciled among different factions of the GOP before the bill was put up for public scrutiny. When the bill started being picked apart, it became far too difficult to sell. Conservatives broke away from the bill at the beginning and eventually moderate Republicans did too, albeit for different reasons.
{mosads}By last week, just 17 percent of Americans supported the AHCA, which some dubbed “TrumpCare.” Why pass a bill that would only heap the political problems of the current healthcare system onto Republicans rather than keeping it on Democrats who destroyed it through ObamaCare?
The reality is — as the equally shared blame game between the White House, GOP establishment and Tea Party conservatives shows — the AHCA was a bad bill. On the surface, its failure to get a vote on the floor is optically embarrassing, but in the long term, passing bad bills is far worse than not passing anything at all. While criticisms of the GOP needing to step up and govern with newly issued power are fair, successful governing should not be defined by passing legislation that hasn’t been properly vetted or debated.
With the AHCA, Republicans were at high risk of passing legislation to “find out what is in it,” a phrase made infamous by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in 2010 and an action that caused severe harm to Americans in the following years.
Moving forward, the repeal of ObamaCare is far from over despite grave warnings from the White House the AHCA was plan A without plan B and the only option that was ever going to be on the table. Republicans have been in their super majority of power in the Oval Office, House and Senate for a mere three months. It’s only day 68 of the Trump presidency.
“ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” President Trump tweeted Saturday.
“We are united around a common set of principles. We are united around our agenda and we all want to advance the cause of freedom and limited government. We all want to make it easier for families to pay the bills and take care of their loved ones. We all want a system in healthcare where everybody can have access to affordable coverage with more choice and competition. We don’t want a government-run healthcare system — we all agree on these things,” Ryan said Tuesday after a meeting with members.
“We’re not going to retrench into our corners or put up dividing lines. Today we broke down many of those dividing lines within our conference. There is too much at stake to get bogged down in all of that,” he continued. “ObamaCare is a collapsing law. ObamaCare is doing too much damage to families. And so, we’re going to get this right.”
A new, much improved ObamaCare repeal bill will eventually make its way to the House floor with the votes it needs to pass. In the end, it’s better for Republicans to pass a good bill, rather than live with the consequences of a bad one for the sake of doing something, anything in the face of a crisis.
Pavlich is the editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor. The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.