Addressing reporters during the weekly House Leadership press conference Tuesday morning, Speaker Paul Ryan expressed frustration with the Senate's inability to come to an agreement on healthcare and reminded Americans watching that the House has done its job to fulfill the promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare.
"We'd like to see the Senate move on something. We are proud of the bill we passed. We passed a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare and to replace it with a better system. As you well know, the legislative process for it to work, the House has to pass a bill. We've done that. The Senate has to pass a bill for us to even move forward. That's the next step, so we're hoping they can achieve that next step so that we can bring real relief," Ryan said.
But a healthcare stall in the Senate isn't stopping President Trump's agenda in the House. Ryan detailed plans to move onto tax reform in the coming weeks.
"Tomorrow the Ways and Means Committee will hold another tax reform meeting. This one focuses on the need to simplify the tax code for families. Under the status quo, we have a complicated system," Ryan said. "We want to simplify the tax code and bring down rates to get people real relief and real peace of mind. To set the stage for tax reform, we're working on a balanced budget."
Last night the Senate version of the House bill, the Better Care Act, died after Republicans lined up to oppose it. As a result, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered to bring clean repeal up for a vote with consideration of a separate replacement bill down the road.
"Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful," McConnell said.
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