Republicans abruptly pulled their health care bill from the House floor on Friday, just minutes ahead of a planned vote, dealing a devastating blow to efforts by President Donald Trump and the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Shortly after the bill was yanked, House Speaker Paul Ryan addressed reporters, saying, “This is a disappointing day for us. Doing big things is hard. All of us, all of us, myself included, will need time to reflect how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.”
Ryan said that he told Trump they didn’t have the votes to pass the bill and recommended that they pull it.
Washington Post reporter Robert Costa told MSNBC that the president called him Friday afternoon and said he had “worked with Speaker Ryan” on the vote and that “he decided to pull the health care bill.” Costa said the president “didn’t blame Speaker Ryan, it was clear he didn’t have the votes.”
The move comes after a chaotic week of intense negotiations to convince at least 215 Republicans to support the leadership-written health care bill, but it was ultimately not enough to fulfill a seven-year long pledge to undo the Affordable Care Act, one of Trump’s major themes on the campaign trail last year.
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