On Friday, the House Freedom Caucus decided to withdraw legislation for the Republican bill to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) rather than sending the vote to the floor due to lack of support. Tackling healthcare legislation is difficult to say the least, but one would think that with a Republican majority in Congress, it would’ve gone better than what we saw this past week. President Trump has already started pointing fingers in light of this defeat, but can some blame be put on Trump himself? His style of negotiating from his business days seemed to have played a role in his failure of repealing Obamacare.
With the lack of support being clear, instead of making changes to the bill, Trump basically gave an ultimatum that his bill was a ‘take it or leave it’ kind of deal. With Trump’s history as a businessman, this type of negotiating is what he’s been used to. However, now he has to deal with more checks and balances and a more complicated legislation process. This kind of hard negotiating isn’t successful working from the Oval Office because he needs to be more cooperative with his Party. The hope now is that he’s learned from his mistake and will have a better working relationship with Congress with future legislation. But, he is apparently keeping his word on moving past healthcare reform by working on tax reform instead.
Photos by Gage Skidmore and Ania Mendrek