Ryan counting on Trump to help steamroll House maniacs and ram through Obamacare repeal

Daily Kos

House Speaker Paul Ryan is still operating on a three-week timeline to ram his top-secret Obamacare repeal bill through Congress, despite the fiasco he has created by trying to treat the document like the most sensitive classified information. Ryan maintains that Republicans are united and as for those who aren't, popular vote loser Donald Trump will bring them around.

At a closed-door meeting with Republicans on Thursday, Speaker Paul Ryan said he plans for the House to hold a vote on the leadership's Obamacare alternative in three weeks, sources in the room told POLITICO. The White House and the Senate support the House GOP leadership's effort, Ryan added — comments many in the room took as a warning for the far right to get in line.

On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence and newly installed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will join Ryan in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, to pitch their health care agenda. It's the clearest display of unity yet between the White House and GOP leadership on an Obamacare replacement strategy.

Price, meanwhile, has been summoning to his office conservative agitators who oppose Ryan's draft proposal. While Price didn't try to strong-arm them into standing down, the meetings themselves send a signal that the White House is in Ryan's corner.

"We're all working off the same piece of paper, the same plan," Ryan said at a Thursday news conference when asked about conservative opposition. "We are in sync — the House, the Senate and the Trump administration, because this law is collapsing."

It looks like they're going to tell the maniacs it's this repeal bill or nothing, and after all their promises of repeal they made to their base over the past seven years, they'll have to lump it. But that depends, one "senior Republican lawmaker" tells Politico, on Trump.