Work on a plan to replace Obamacare will begin almost immediately during a congressional retreat that will include newly sworn-in President Donald Trump, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday morning.
"I don't want to put a set timeline on it because I want to make sure we get it right, but I think you're going to see it's one of the first actions we start working on," the California Republican told the "CBS This Morning" program.
"That's a focus the committees will do. Once we get the president sworn in now, next week we'll open up Congress, but we'll go away on retreat. That's for the Senate and House. The president will come. That's what we'll do at the retreat, getting a replacement plan to move forward."
McCarthy said that just after the November election, he sent a letter to the nation's governors and insurance commissioners to bring their ideas for the revisions, as "we want a system that's able to work for all."
Also next week, Congress will work to "uncheck what's holding the economy back," McCarthy said.
"Just since the election in November until January 5, there's been 142 new proposed regulations," said McCarthy. "Thirty-one of those are what are called major rulings, meaning that they cost more than $100 million to the economy. So more than $16 billion have been posed on this economy.
"So what we're going to look at inside the House, we want to make sure the people have a say."
Congress in 2015 passed the REINS Act, which requires Congress to approve all new major regulations, pointed out McCarthy, and now lawmakers will look at a Congressional review act that will allow it to look at legislative action passed in the past 60 days.
McCarthy noted that with Trump's election, the United States government for just the third time since World War II will have Republicans entrusted with the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, "so we know the responsibility that we have," but still, Trump is different than many Republican presidents.
"He won places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, so that means he listened to voices that were different than just one party," said McCarthy.
"This is an opportunity to bring people together and it may be that he's looking at things that are different than normal, that just Republicans would look at."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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