President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan led the Rose Garden celebration, but the Freedom Caucus came out of Thursday’s healthcare vote big winners.
The group of conservative lawmakers had been derided as an obstacle to Republican unity, good only for killing legislation or forcing it to be passed with Democratic votes. But this time, the Freedom Caucus was instrumental in shaping a bill partially repealing Obamacare that could get to a majority in the House with only Republicans.
“I think they ultimately made the bill better,” Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., told the Washington Examiner about his fellow conservatives’ Obamacare efforts. “I think the trajectory of the bill has been changed in regard to real world savings in the individual marketplace, which I think will be very important not only from a political standpoint but from a policy standpoint as well.”
Trump himself blamed the Freedom Caucus for the initial failure of the Republican Obamacare replacement plan, suggesting they would need to be fought alongside the Democrats in 2018. On Thursday, the president sang their praises.
“The groups have all come together,” Trump said at the White House. “We have the Tuesday Group — we have so many groups. We have the Freedom Caucus. We have — and they’re all great people.”
Only one Freedom Caucus member voted against the latest version of the American Health Care Act, while over a dozen centrists and Republicans from swing districts voted no. Even Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., a leading libertarian lawmaker, voted yes.
“Tough vote today,” Amash tweeted. “I decided only after I had read and understood the entire bill. A lot of exaggeration from both parties about its effects.”
By contrast, there were reports that the centrist Tuesday Group was mulling the expulsion of the member most crucial to achieving a breakthrough on healthcare negotiations: Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J.
Sanford pointed out that Trump said he was “moving on” after Obamacare repeal failed the first time around, after leadership pulled the bill from the House floor, while Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., kept trying to negotiate with centrists.
“[T]hen you have Meadows and MacArthur begin to kick ideas around and form their amendment that I think resuscitated this bill,” he said. “Executive branch is always important but I think that the real credit in this one belongs to a lot of rank-and-file members who rolled up their sleeves and said, ‘This issue is too big to be abandoned and it’s too important in people’s lives and we have to work on it.’ So they did.”
“I think the lesson here is that the White House should work with conservatives right out of the gate,” said a Freedom Caucus source. “You can’t ignore conservatives in the Trump era.”
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Leading @DCExaminer: Freedom Caucus comes to save Obamacare repeal, not bury it https://t.co/u1VvWYxj6B by @JimAntle pic.twitter.com/9iDtIC2XFi
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 5, 2017
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