Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said his fellow Republicans should repeal Obamacare before agreeing on a replacement, and dismissed concerns of a potential backlash when current beneficiaries lose coverage as a fictional “boogeyman” designed to scare lawmakers away from delivering on repeal.
Entering the new year, Republicans seemed to have had a clear strategy on Obamacare: pass a bill that repealed much of the law, while delaying its effective date for a few years to buy time to come up with a replacement. But a combination of mixed signals from the Trump administration and the blowback from the prospect of disrupting the insurance arrangements of millions of Obamacare beneficiaries has given many Republicans cold feet.
As fissures break out over the details of a replacement plan, conservatives such as Lee are pushing back, arguing that the baseline should be to pass the same repeal bill that Republicans already passed in 2015, which was then vetoed by former President Obama. The 2015 bill would have repealed the mandates, taxes, and major spending in Obamacare, and also denied federal funds to abortion provider Planned Parenthood.
“That’s the one that passed and because that one passed … I say bring that one forward,” Lee said during a Thursday discussion at the offices of the Washington Examiner. “Let’s vote on it. That’s the one we know can pass. We passed it in December 2015 and we did so with the understanding and also with subsequent promises that were made in the 2016 election cycle that this is what we’re doing now, this is what we will do when we’re given the chance to govern, if you give us majorities in both houses of Congress and give us the White House, this is what we’ll do. That was, I think, the understanding that a lot of people had and that a lot of members of Congress campaigned on so I think that’s what we ought to do.”
Lee argued that if Republicans don’t strike now, and instead get bogged down in a protracted fight over what would replace Obamacare, then repeal may never actually happen. When asked about Republican skittishness over political fallout from Obamacare beneficiaries losing coverage, Lee was dismissive.
“I think a lot of people who trot that boogeyman out are trying to do one of two things,” Lee said. “Either they want us to not repeal it at all, or they want us to not repeal it until such time as we have a single consensus piece to vote on, which may have the same effect as convincing us not to repeal at all. Because if we wait until there’s consensus on that prior to repeal, then I’m not sure we’re going to get there. We’ve got to keep the momentum going. One of the many problems with that boogeyman is that he’s not real. There’s a delayed implementation provision, a two-year fuse, so while that’s not an indefinite period of time that does give us something of a grace period in which we can operate and figure out what happen will next.”
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Mike Lee says GOP shouldn't be afraid of "boogeyman" of backlash if Obamacare is repealed https://t.co/RRTcXAYGii
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) February 17, 2017
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