#house freedom caucus

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky floated a compromise Obamacare repeal plan Monday, hoping to break a stalemate on Capitol Hill by proposing to cut the level of spending to try to appease conservatives but keep the basic model of taxpayer subsidies in place to win over moderates.

Mr. Paul, a Republican, has met with President Trump to try to find a way forward after conservatives and moderates balked at Mr. Trump’s first attempt. …

“I think the compromise could be keeping some of the underlying payments in Obamacare, some small percentage of them, in order to placate the people who want that, but not affirmatively putting it in the bill,” Mr. Paul said. “Conservatives want 100 percent repeal, let’s say moderates want 80 percent repeal. Let’s vote on 90 percent repeal and be done with it.” …

The House GOP plan had scrapped Obamacare’s generous taxpayer subsidies to help people afford to buy insurance, and replaced it with a refundable tax credit. Mr. Paul would keep the subsidies in place, so conservatives don’t have to back a new GOP entitlement, but would cut the level of spending so it’s more palatable to budget hawks.

Mr. Paul said he mentioned the idea to Mr. Trump, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney over a Sunday round of golf, but that they leaned toward tweaks instead of wholesale changes.

“I think really their opinion right now is to see if they still want to just keep working with what they have, and we’ll see. If they can get enough votes, maybe it goes that way,” Mr. Paul said. “I’m trying to offer a different way in case we’re still at an impasse.”

Mr. Paul also pitched the idea to members of the House Freedom Caucus — the conservatives who helped sink the repeal effort last month.

The House bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare is officially dead.

The American Health Care Act (AHCA), which was scheduled for a vote this afternoon, has been pulled from consideration. …

The bill failed in part because… more conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus, who argued that the bill was too much like Obamacare, retaining its core scheme of subsidies and regulations.

But it also failed because Trump proved himself an ineffective negotiator and dealmaker—one whose preference for shallow political victories over substantive policy wins ultimately proved insufficient in a complex policy negotiation. …

The bill Trump backed made no attempt to balance either the policy or political interests of the legislators, influence groups, or stakeholders involved. Trump spent the week negotiating changes changes to the bill, but because he neither cared nor understood what was in it, and what lawmakers wanted from the bill, he couldn’t act as an effective negotiator. A handful of last minute updates to the bill intended to pick up holdout votes backfired: One reduced the bill’s projected deficit reduction, while another was so imprecisely drafted that it ran the risk of killing the individual insurance market entirely, while leaving the federal government in control of the regulations it was supposedly devolving to states. …

Trump repeatedly promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with “something terrific.” But he never described the policy mechanisms of the replacement he preferred. And the outcomes he described—coverage for everyone, lower premiums, no changes to Medicaid—had little or no connection to the bill that House Republicans eventually drew up.

That didn’t seem to matter to the president. As has always been the case with Trump, making a deal—any deal—was all that mattered.

In the end, though, the bill died. Trump couldn’t close the deal. And one of the biggest reasons that Trump couldn’t close the deal is that he didn’t understand or care about the details.

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. …

Trump’s latest salvo comes after House Republican leaders abruptly postponed a planned vote on the GOP health care bill Thursday as they struggled to find sufficient support to pass it. GOP lawmakers had previously been told procedural votes on the bill will still be held tonight and that a full vote on the measure could take place Friday.

The move to delay the vote came after House conservatives said there was no deal struck on the bill following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House Thursday. According to the NBC News vote count, GOP leaders were still at least eight votes short of winning enough backing for passage.

The president’s latest posture came as news to Rep. Mark Meadows R-North Carolina, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who earlier told reporters that there was no deal after the meeting, but added he was still hopeful one can be struck. …

“It is our leadership team that has set an arbitrary deadline — we are happy to keep working with the White House and the leadership team but we don’t think the arbitrary deadline of (Thursday) really means anything,” said Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan., who is voting against the bill unless desired changes are made.

The intense negotiations come as outside groups are putting more pressure on lawmakers.

The Charles and David Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners have reserved “seven figures” to reward members who oppose the bill. The development came as Trump told Republicans a day earlier that they’d be lose their seats if they voted against the Republican plan. And another conservative group, Club for Growth, is running television ads in some Republican districts to push members to vote against it.