UnNews:With Obama-care repeal in tatters, GOP seeks new victories
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| With Obama-care repeal in tatters, GOP seeks new victories | 
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25 March 2017
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With the bill to repeal Obama-care in tatters, Donald Trump and his adopted Republican Party looked for fresh new beasts to slay.
The "American Health Reform Act" (AHRA) died not with a growl but a whimper, as Speaker Paul Ryan freed Congressmen to go to dinner rather than participate in a mortifying roll-call vote, which would have counted what Ryan had not. The Act, begun in an inspiring strategy of replacing a six-year campaign to "repeal" Obama-care with an inscrutable call to "repeal and replace," has now crumbled into "retreat and regroup."
Ryan was instrumental in 2015 in claiming that surrender to Barack Obama would "clear the field" for victory in 2016. However, that was before outrageous new initiatives creeped onto the field — and Ryan surrendered again, just before the November elections.
Trump, whose victory in those elections surprised no one more than himself, has now surprised himself again with inability to govern his own party, half of which wants to return the nation to its Constitution and half of which wants to promise more free loot to interest groups with bulging re-election slush funds. Ryan was unable to explain to this coalition how repeal repeal-and-replace was achieved by a bill with no repeal at all.
Consequently, a brief phase of finger-pointing — at the Senate Parliamentarian, the House Rules that Ryan is inexplicably powerless to change, and the Congressional Budget Office, over inability to pass real repeal — has now turned to finger-pointing between Ryan and Trump over inability to pass a bill without real repeal.
The principals are united, however, on Moving On from this crash-and-burn, to check off the next item from Trump's inspiring list of tweets: reform of the baffling tax system. Ryan guarantees that the skids are greased for a "clean bill," provided it contains a new 20% tax on everything sold at Walmart. After that sails through Congress, attention can turn to making Mexico pay for a border wall.
Sources[edit]
- David Morgan "With healthcare bill dead, Republicans turn to taxes". Reuters, March 24, 2017