Trumpcuts implodes as feuding Republicans face the reality that they don’t have the votes

We’re going to win at every sin­gle lev­el. We’re going to get rid of Oba­macare, we’re going to win on health care, we’re going to start win­ning on every lev­el. I say it kid­ding­ly, but I mean it 100 per­cent: We’re going to win, win, win! We’re going to win so much, you’re going to get sick and tired of it. You’re going to say “Mr. Pres­i­dent, we can’t take it any­more, we’re win­ning too much! Please, we don’t want to win that much any­more, we can’t take it, Mr. Pres­i­dent!” And I’m not going to care — we’re going to keep winning!

– Don­ald Trump on the cam­paign trail last year (March 16th, 2016)

Con­ced­ing that they sim­ply don’t have the votes to pass the mas­sive wealth trans­fer that they false­ly call a replace­ment for the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, Paul Ryan and top House Repub­li­cans today threw in the tow­el on H.R. 1628, can­cel­ing a planned vote that Don­ald Trump had insist­ed be held only hours earlier.

Despite hav­ing a large major­i­ty in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and despite hav­ing con­trol of the rest of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, feud­ing Repub­li­cans were unable to mar­shal the req­ui­site num­ber of votes need­ed to pass the wealth trans­fer scheme dis­guised as a health bill that the Trump regime wanted.

“We’re going to be liv­ing with [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] for the fore­see­able future,” Paul Ryan con­ced­ed in a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the decision.

Aban­don­ing the swag­ger he had pre­vi­ous­ly showed, he acknowl­edged it was a defeat for the Repub­li­can Par­ty. “I will not sug­ar­coat this, this is a dis­ap­point­ing day for us… This is a set­back, no two ways about it.”

A furi­ous Trump says he blames Democ­rats for the col­lapse of the legislation.

“We couldn’t get one Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote and we were a lit­tle bit shy, very lit­tle, but it was still a lit­tle bit shy so we pulled it,” he told The Wash­ing­ton Post.

Of course Trump blames Democ­rats; as far as he is con­cerned, Democ­rats are to blame for every­thing that does­n’t go his way. All Democ­rats did here was say no — and they don’t even con­trol any branch of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment anymore.

Nei­ther Trump nor Ryan ever made any attempt to work with Democ­rats to devel­op leg­is­la­tion on health­care. And that is because they did­n’t want to. They are not inter­est­ed in expand­ing access to health­care for the Amer­i­can people.

What they are inter­est­ed in is gut­ting our coun­try’s social con­tract and enrich the already wealthy with a $1 tril­lion tax cut. And they want­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion (more like capit­u­la­tion) so they could claim lat­er that the destruc­tion of the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act was bipar­ti­san. They want­ed Democ­rats to sim­ply lay down, betray their prin­ci­ples, and cough up some votes in sup­port of one of the most mon­strous, atro­cious bills ever seen in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But Democ­rats — remem­ber­ing the enor­mous polit­i­cal cap­i­tal that was expend­ed to pass the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act in the first place — wise­ly refused to have any­thing to do with Trump­cuts. They stood unit­ed in their oppo­si­tion. And they have been reward­ed. They and the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who spoke out against this bill have won the day. Repub­li­cans, despite being in pow­er, have lost.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee led the way in laud­ing the implo­sion of H.R. 1658.

“Today 600,000 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans beat Con­gress, and can rest easy know­ing that Speak­er Ryan and Pres­i­dent Trump have failed in their mis­guid­ed attempt to destroy health care in Amer­i­ca,” said Inslee. “Today’s deci­sion to can­cel the vote on [Trump­cuts] — leg­is­la­tion that would have tak­en cov­er­age away from twen­ty-four mil­lion Amer­i­cans — is an enor­mous vic­to­ry for Washington.”

“This vic­to­ry didn’t hap­pen by chance. Thou­sands of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans made their voic­es heard at town halls and in phone calls and emails to Con­gress. The Repub­li­can plan to take away health from mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and give tax breaks to mil­lion­aires was unacceptable.”

“I’m pleased that Pres­i­dent Trump and Speak­er Ryan have indi­cat­ed that they will move on, and give up their effort to repeal this land­mark law that has done so much good in Wash­ing­ton, and across the Unit­ed States.”

“Today is a vic­to­ry for 24 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who will con­tin­ue to have health care,” agreed U.S Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal of Seattle.

“It’s a vic­to­ry for old­er Amer­i­cans who won’t have to pay thou­sands more in pre­mi­ums. It’s a vic­to­ry for women who can con­tin­ue to access crit­i­cal birth con­trol and life­sav­ing care. It’s a vic­to­ry for peo­ple with pre-exist­ing con­di­tions who won’t be penal­ized for things beyond their con­trol. It is a vic­to­ry for all of us.”

“If this bill comes to the House floor again, we will orga­nize and defeat it. We know when we orga­nize, we win. We can­not be com­pla­cent. This is just anoth­er fight in a series of bat­tles. But today, we can say that we pro­tect­ed care for tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans across the country.”

“Repub­li­cans spent sev­en years vow­ing to turn back the clock on health care for women, seniors and families—but it took just a few weeks of them try­ing to jam [Trump­cuts] through Con­gress to real­ize that peo­ple across the coun­try absolute­ly reject their plans to increase pre­mi­ums, cut mil­lions of peo­ple off of their insur­ance cov­er­age, elim­i­nate women’s health care options, and put the insur­ance com­pa­nies back in charge of health care deci­sions,” said U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

“This vic­to­ry will make all the dif­fer­ence in the lives of patients, fam­i­lies, and seniors nation­wide. I am so grate­ful to the mil­lions of peo­ple who spoke up, not just for them­selves but for friends and neighbors—for access to Med­ic­aid and Planned Par­ent­hood, and for a coun­try that works to make sure all fam­i­lies have afford­able, qual­i­ty health care. Today shows just how pow­er­ful your voic­es are.”

“We will be vig­i­lant in defend­ing against con­tin­u­ing efforts to put the inter­ests of insur­ance com­pa­nies and the wealthy ahead of patients’ health and wel­fare. I fear that while [Trump­cuts] was dealt a sig­nif­i­cant blow today, the ter­ri­ble ideas that under­pin it will live on with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress and the White House. I hope that Repub­li­cans will learn from this, and instead, put peo­ple over par­ti­san pol­i­tics and work with us to build on the Afford­able Care Act and make health care even more afford­able, more acces­si­ble, and high­er quality.”

“We’ve been prepar­ing for the worst at the state lev­el, draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to help back­fill loss­es in cov­er­age if the ACA is repealed, and urg­ing our state’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion to do what­ev­er they can to pre­serve cov­er­age for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Annette Cleve­land of Clark Coun­ty, the rank­ing mem­ber on the Sen­ate Health Care Committee.

“If Con­gress is unable to repeal and replace the ACA, a lot of very vul­ner­a­ble Wash­ing­to­ni­ans will be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief.”

“The health care of more than 600,000 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans is at stake,” point­ed out Eileen Cody, Chair of the House Health Care & Well­ness Com­mit­tee. “Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple across our state have bet­ter care and have more secure futures thanks to the ACA. Under the Trump­Care­Less Plan, all of those peo­ple could lose their access to care and that can­not be allowed.”

“If Repub­li­cans craft­ed leg­is­la­tion that lived up to the promise of ‘insur­ance for every­body’ at low­er cost, they would have broad sup­port for their efforts,” said U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene (WA-01), who deliv­ered a blis­ter­ing floor speech lam­bast­ing the bill ear­li­er in the day.

“But it’s clear this bill left mid­dle-class fam­i­lies, seniors, women and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties far worse off. Allow­ing 24 mil­lion Amer­i­cans to go uncov­ered is just wrong,” Del­Bene added. “Since com­ing to Con­gress, I have worked tire­less­ly to find com­mon­sense fix­es to our nation’s health­care laws.”

“We should build upon the reforms we’ve already made to expand cov­er­age and reduce costs — this bill did none of that. Instead, most Amer­i­cans would have end­ed up pay­ing more for less, while mil­lions more would find cov­er­age com­plete­ly out of reach. I’m relieved we were able to stop this dan­ger­ous leg­is­la­tion before it com­plete­ly desta­bi­lized our nation’s health­care system.”