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"If the conservative voters who handed the GOP the Senate had an Obamacare repeal on their one-year wish list, they’re likely to be disappointed come this fall.
Republicans' promises that Obamacare would be on the chopping block as soon the GOP took control of the Senate are unlikely to be met by years’ end. After years of heated rhetoric, over-the-top campaign ads and even Supreme Court challenges, the repeal Obamacare movement continues to be a can kicked farther down the road.
GOP congressional leaders are facing the political reality that the party lacks a concrete alternative to Obamacare, the votes to repeal it and, in the immediate future, a crowded calendar of extremely pressing other issues.
Now, GOP lawmakers are trying to figure out how to let down easily the base they primed for repeal across three election cycles, with some leaders lowering expectations for repeal maneuvers in the months to come and other Republicans weighing efforts to tweak the law instead.
As the GOP showed very publicly earlier this year when it failed to come up with a back-up plan if the Supreme Court gutted Obamacare, even coalescing members around the most basic approach to replacing Obamacare proves tricky.
If an alternative did exist, Republicans don't have a big enough majority in the Senate to repeal the current law, hence the latest push towards using the process known as budget reconciliation, which would allow them to avoid a Democratic filibuster and require only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass.
That approach brings along its own procedural shortcomings.
“You might be able to poke some holes in Obamacare regulations but you can’t repeal the whole thing,” said Stan Collender, a federal budget expert and executive vice president at Qorvis MSL Group."
"If the conservative voters who handed the GOP the Senate had an Obamacare repeal on their one-year wish list, they’re likely to be disappointed come this fall.
Republicans' promises that Obamacare would be on the chopping block as soon the GOP took control of the Senate are unlikely to be met by years’ end. After years of heated rhetoric, over-the-top campaign ads and even Supreme Court challenges, the repeal Obamacare movement continues to be a can kicked farther down the road.
GOP congressional leaders are facing the political reality that the party lacks a concrete alternative to Obamacare, the votes to repeal it and, in the immediate future, a crowded calendar of extremely pressing other issues.
Now, GOP lawmakers are trying to figure out how to let down easily the base they primed for repeal across three election cycles, with some leaders lowering expectations for repeal maneuvers in the months to come and other Republicans weighing efforts to tweak the law instead.
As the GOP showed very publicly earlier this year when it failed to come up with a back-up plan if the Supreme Court gutted Obamacare, even coalescing members around the most basic approach to replacing Obamacare proves tricky.
If an alternative did exist, Republicans don't have a big enough majority in the Senate to repeal the current law, hence the latest push towards using the process known as budget reconciliation, which would allow them to avoid a Democratic filibuster and require only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass.
That approach brings along its own procedural shortcomings.
“You might be able to poke some holes in Obamacare regulations but you can’t repeal the whole thing,” said Stan Collender, a federal budget expert and executive vice president at Qorvis MSL Group."