House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said President Trump made a major blunder by pushing to repeal and replace Obamacare on the anniversary of the overhaul’s passage, saying it’s unwise to pick a day and then hope the support is there in time.
“Rookie’s error, Donald Trump,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said at her weekly press briefing.
Mr. Trump and GOP leaders are reaching for a highlight-reel vote to gut the Affordable Care Act on the House floor late Thursday — seven years to the day after President Obama signed his legacy overhaul into law.
Yet they’re still trying to cobble together enough votes for the plan, as conservatives push to kill a bigger chunk of the law and centrists balk at a plan that’s estimated to result in 24 million fewer Americans holding insurance a decade from now.
Mrs. Pelosi argued it’s Legislating 101 to get folks on board before you reach for a political prize.
“You don’t find a day and say we’re gonna pass a bill,” she said.
Republicans can’t afford to lose more than 22 votes on the floor, since no Democrats are expected to back a bill that repeals most of Obamacare’s taxes and its mandate requiring Americans to hold insurance, replaces its generous subsidies with refundable, age-based tax credits and reins in and caps spending on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor.
Mrs. Pelosi is no stranger to rough negotiations.
As speaker of the House in 2010, she was involved in last-minute negotiations with pro-life Democrats who were demanding more protections for their beliefs before they agreed to vote for Obamacare.
Later, some of them said they were betrayed in those negotiations by President Obama, who decided to force coverage of the morning-after pill as part of essential coverage that all Obamacare health plans needed to provide.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer waved aside Mrs. Pelosi’s gibes, and chided her for her infamous statement during the Obamacare debate that lawmakers needed to pass the bill for people to see the benefits in it.
“We have a pretty strong record on the Republican side of getting bills passed,” Mr. Spicer said. “We’ve done this the right way.”
In her press conference Thursday Mrs. Pelosi mocked Mr. Trump for being “transactional” in his negotiations, making changes to the bill in exchange for holdouts’ votes.
She said Democrats don’t do that sort of legislating.
“We are not transactional,” Mrs. Pelosi insisted. “We only can convince people about the merits of the bill.”
A reporter challenged Mrs. Pelosi, pointing to the “cornhusker kickback,” a sweetheart deal then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid included to pay for more of Nebraska’s Medicaid, in exchange for winning the vote of then-Sen. Ben Nelson.
“It came out of the bill. It came out of the bill,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “You remember, that came out of the bill.”
In fact, the provision remained in the bill that cleared Congress — but was stripped in a follow-up budget reconciliation measure, which is the same tactic Republicans are now using to try a repeal.
But Mrs. Pelosi didn’t address other deals Mr. Reid made, such as including billions of dollars in money for community health centers, designed to earn the support of Sen. Bernard Sanders, or millions of dollars in additional Medicaid money for Louisiana, to win the support of then-Sen. Mary L. Landrieu.
And just like Republicans, Mr. Reid was racing a self-imposed deadline trying to get his bill done by Christmas 2009. In the end, the Senate voted Christmas Eve.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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