House Speaker Paul Ryan struck a hopeful note to Republican donors Monday, saying Congress will continue this year with its push to repeal and replace Obamacare, The Washington Post reports.
The conference call with donors sounded far different than Ryan's downbeat tone on Friday after pulling the GOP bill from consideration after the party couldn't come up with enough votes for passage.
Obamacare, the Democratic health care bill passed with no Republican support in 2010, would remain the "law of the land," an exasperated Ryan said on Friday.
But in the call with GOP donors, Ryan said, "We are going to keep getting at this thing.
"We're not going to just all of a sudden abandon healthcare and move on to the rest," Ryan told his political organization Team Ryan, according to the Post, citing a recording of the call. "We are going to move on with rest of our agenda, keep that on track, while we work the health-care problem . . . It's just that valuable, that important."
Though Ryan provided no details of what future legislation might look like, he did indicate that something would be put together soon enough for a briefing with GOP donors in Florida on Thursday and Friday, the Post reported.
"When we're in Florida, I will lay out the path forward on healthcare and all the rest of the agenda," Ryan said. "I will explain how it all still works, and how we're still moving forward on healthcare with other ideas and plans. So please make sure that if you can come, you come — it will be good to look at what can feasibly get done and where things currently stand. But know this: We are not giving up."
A vote on the American Health Care Act, a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, was withdrawn by Ryan on Friday after it became clear that not enough Republican support could be secured.
Members of the conservative Freedom Caucus vowed to vote down the bill over not doing enough immediately. GOP leadership insisted the bill was the first of three phases and that everything included in the first bill was all that could be achieved through the the budget reconciliation process which would allow it to pass with only 51 votes in the Senate.
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