Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus Monday night urged Republican Party leaders to swiftly schedule a vote to repeal Obamacare, a move that puts further strain on the already difficult effort to dismantle and replace the Affordable Care Act.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to pass this ASAP — there’s also no reason we should send anything less to President Trump’s desk than we did Obama’s,” one GOP source familiar with the vote told CNN. “No need to reinvent the wheel.”
The vote by Freedom Caucus members Monday night, confirmed to CNN by an aide, to press ahead on the repeal plan crystalized the frustration building up among conservative lawmakers unhappy with the delay in repealing Obamacare.
The development also sets up a potential political clash between the conservative wing of the party and its more moderate members, who are wary of the backlash that could come from swift and wholesale repeal of the health care law.
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, many congressional Republicans have asked party leaders to slow down the repeal efforts to ensure that a consensus is reached on an Obamacare alternative.
Republicans have previously used the budget reconciliation process to repeal major portions of Obamacare (in 2015, it was vetoed by President Barack Obama).
Conservative House Republicans have become more vocal in recent days in pressing GOP leaders to move that same 2015 repeal bill rather than taking more time to craft a new version.
“For goodness sake, we should be able to put something on President Trump’s desk that’s at least as good as what we put on President Obama’s desk. Not something watered down,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told CNN in a recent interview. “Let’s repeal it. Let’s do what the voters sent us here to do.”
