The GOP healthcare bill AHCA failed before Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) could even bring it to the floor.
Of course, the Democrats have used this opportunity to gloat and take credit on television, even though they hold the minority in the House and Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led the charge.
Schumer appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday Morning to celebrate the AHCA failure and criticize President Donald Trump. He also stated that the Democrats will work with the GOP if they decide to not repeal Obamacare:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you just heard Congressman Meadows right there. He says the repeal effort’s not dead.SCHUMER: Well, it won’t succeed. And, you know, there’s one point we’re missing here. The American people hated Trumpcare. The more they learned about it, the more they didn’t like. And you know, not only did we have a totally unified Democratic caucus from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin, but I want to salute all the people out there — the average people, who called and wrote and picketed and protested.If they keep on this repeal path, they’ll get nowhere. And it’s mainly because i they want to do what Mr. Meadows does, then all the moderates will jump off. It’s — you know, they have seven kids in the bed and they have enough covers for five. So they ought to get rid of repeal. Drop it. It’s been a flop for them because of the substance of repeal. And work with us to improve it.
After the GOP pulled the bill, Pelosi held a press conference to call the failure a victory for the American people:
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday was a “victory for the American people,” after Republicans pulled their bill to replace Obamacare before a scheduled vote.”It’s about our country and the vision of our founders. It’s about our faith, and it’s about the unity of the Democrats, united by our values,” she said in a news conference.The Republicans failed because of their own actions and choices, Pelosi said.”But it was also because the American people weighed in. Our phone lines were all deluged,” she said. “I want to thank all the people who expressed themselves to members of Congress, either to say thank you for supporting the Affordable Care Act or kill the [GOP] bill to whomever they were calling.”
Side note: Does anyone really think our Founders would approve of the government meddling in healthcare?
Sanders, the former presidential candidate, expressed much happiness of CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning over the AHCA failure:
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: Well, Dana — Dana, let me just begin by saying this.The bill that was defeated should have been defeated. It was a disastrous piece of legislation primarily designed to provide $300 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent, throwing 24 million people off of health insurance, raising premiums for older workers in a very, very significant way.It was defeated. The American people wanted it defeated. And I’m glad that we were able to accomplish that.Now, as you indicated, of course, Obamacare has serious problems. Deductibles are too high. Premiums are too high. The cost of health care is going up at a much faster rate than it should. Ideally, what — where we should be going is to join the rest of the industrialized the world and guarantee health care to all people as a right.
Oh, it gets better. He then tells host Dana Bash he will “introduce a Medicare-for-all single-payer program.” He didn’t provide the details, though.
Two days ago, Sanders told Anderson Cooper that the Democrats should receive credit for killing AHCA….even though the party holds the minority in the House and the Senate:
“Democrats should take credit for killing a really, really bad piece of legislation,” the Independent senator from Vermont told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday night.”Poll after poll showed that’s exactly what the American people did not want,” Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, said of the bill.
At Pelosi’s press conference, Rep. Swalwell agreed that the Democrats defeated the bill:
“And I’ll just say to that that unified Democrats did defeat this bill and we did it for the American people,” he said. “We did it because we heard them, we fought for them, and today we won for them.”
Other Democrats used social media to celebrate the death of AHCA:
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