U.S. House Set To Vote Friday On Republican Bill
KATE RILEY, CNN WORLD SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: I'm Kate Riley with your CNN WORLD SPORTS headlines. London is still coming to terms with Wednesday's terror attack on Parliament. And the Football Association in England has said, they will pay tribute to those who died and recognize the bravery of the security services and all those involved. When England play Lithuania at Wembley on Sunday, stars and clubs took to social media to show their support. The England football team hosting on Twitter saying,"Sometimes football isn't everything. A message to London, our city, stay strong, stay safe, stay together." David Beckham who captained England, 59 times, took to Instagram: "My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones and were injured in London. Prouder than ever of our great city and the people who protect us." And three-time Formula One World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, is in Australia, ahead of the start of the first race of the season tweeted: "Praying for all those affected in London." One of the lives claimed was Keith Palmer, a policeman and season ticket holder for League One Football Club at Charlton Athletic. The team posted a video on their Twitter account showed their support. The club all lay a red and white scarf of their seat. He occupied for many years as a local supporter of the club and will remain until their home fixture on April 4th. That's a look at all your sports headlines. I'm Kate Riley.</s>VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody, the investigation into alleged ties between the White House and Russia is growing more partisan. Atop health democrat says, he's seen new information on possible collusion between associates of President Donald Trump, and the Kremlin. Adam Schiff suggests that it could even merit a grand jury investigation.</s>SESAY: But that's not the case according to the Chairman of the Intel Committee. Republican Devin Nunes, indicated he doesn't know what Schiff's talking about. Here's what the two lawmakers told CNN's Manu Raju.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: You said that there's more than just circumstantial evidence of collusion. What did you mean by that?</s>ADAM SCHIFF, UNITED STATES CONGRESSMAN FROM CALIFORNIA: I don't feel comfortable talking about particular evidence: either that the FBI is looking at, or that we're looking at. But I do think that it's appropriate to say it's the kind of evidence that you would submit to a grand jury at the beginning of an investigation.</s>RAJU: This new evidence of collusion from Schiff, you said you have no idea what he's talking about?</s>DEVIN NUNES, UNITED STATES CONGRESSMAN FROM CALIFORNIA: I don't know.</s>RAJU: You haven't seen any new evidence of collusion?</s>NUNES: Not that I'm familiar of, no.</s>VAUSE: Keep in mind, though, they sit on the same Intelligence Committee. They're both the ranking member of -</s>SESAY: Well, the Republican plans to rollbackObamacare: heads for a make or break vote on Friday, but chances for passage seem slimmer than ever. The vote was supposed to be held on Thursday: the seventh anniversary of Obamacare. But it was postponed when Republicans couldn't get enough of their own party members to support the bill.</s>VAUSE: Now, defeat, would be a blow to the President. He's campaigned to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. After a day (</s>INAUDIBLE 14: 43) the negotiations, the White House and Republican leaders announced an ultimatum. They were done. And they will hold the vote now, on Friday.</s>PAUL RYAN, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE SPEAKER: We have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it is collapsing and it's failing families. And tomorrow we're proceeding.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have the votes? Do you have the votes? Do you have the votes?</s>SESAY: Do note, there's no answer. No response to, do you have the votes?</s>VAUSE: Deadly silence.</s>SESAY: Many conservatives opposed the Republican bill for not getting rid of Obamacare's main provisions. Our own Phil Mattingly explains.</s>PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Meeting after meeting and lots of legislative wrangling, the Republicans are still short of a health care deal. GOP lawmakers shuttling into closed-door meetings on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue.</s>DONALD TRUMP, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: Only politics is we have a great bill.</s>MATTINGLY: Underscoring a clear reality despite the all-out blitz from President Trump and House Leaders, they don't have the votes. That comes in the wake of a moment of brief daylight as the White House and House Leaders agreed to changes sought by the conservative house freedom caucus.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Earlier today, you think you're confident that they have the votes. Do you believe that?</s>BRADLEY BYRNE, UNITED STATES HOUSE REPUBLICAN: Yes, yes. If it took us up for a vote it's going the pass.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why do you say that?</s>BYRNE: Because if you are a Republican, you have one choice, you are going to vote with Donald Trump to repeal and replace Obamacare or you're going to vote was Nancy Pelosi to defeat the only bill that repeal and replace Obamacare. And if you are a Republican, that's a pretty simple choice.</s>MATTINGLY: But even as its members filed into the White House today and gave President Trump a standing ovation, still, unwilling to commit to the bill.</s>MARK MEADOWS, UNITED STATES HOUSE REPUBLICAN: I'm still a no at this time. I'm desperately trying to get to yes and I think the President knows that. I told him that personally, and I can say with all the freedom caucus they are really trying to get to yes. That's why we met for such a long time. It was at times a not contentious but I would say very rigorous debate.</s>MATTINGLY: And the change they sought to strip the essential health benefits required by Obamacare risked alienating the party's centrist faction. One of them told CNN, quote, "This bill is collapsing", a conundrum that led house minority leader Nancy Pelosi who shepherded Obamacare to passage to provide some unsolicited advice of her own.</s>NANCY PELOSI, UNITED STATES HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: You build your consensus in your caucus and when you're ready, you set the date to bring it to the floor. Maybe a great negotiator rookies on an error for bringing this up on a day and clearly you're not ready.</s>MATTINGLY: So here's where we stand, it is now do or die. It is the highest game stakes of chicken you can imagine. The President made very clear through his advisers there would be no negotiating. He wants a vote. He is demanding a vote and he wants it on Friday whether the members like it or not whether they have the votes or not. And I think that's a really crucial component here. As it currently stands, they do not have the votes, which means they need something to change quickly. The President hopes that backing the members that aren't with him right now, that will be the answer. Well, we'll see on the House floor it's about as dramatic as it's going to get. Phil Mattingly, CNN, Capitol Hill.</s>VAUSE: Well for a lot more on the high drama on Capitol Hill, let's bring in Legal Analyst, Earl Ofari Hutchinson Author of the End of Obamacare and Republican Consultant John Thomas. OK. So, John, I guess this is a negotiating ploy right out of the art of the deal, you know reframe the vote not for necessary Trumpcare but a vote to keep Obamacare and explain that one to the folks back at home. But why rush on this? You know President Obama for about a year before Obamacare, actually got through he convinced his own party and passed on party lines, but he also got other groups on board like, you know doctors and medical professional groups as well. Why push this through so quickly?</s>JOHN THOMAS, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Well first of all this was one of the main campaign pledges he ran on day one, you know repeal and replace. We were past day one so he's got to get it done quickly. The other thing is he's tried the carrot approach, there is no more pork or backroom deals that he can provide to these members and he is worried that you - you end up going into a death spiral of negotiations. So he's made the determination he has gone as far as he can. Now it's time to bring out the stick.</s>SESAY: Well it is remarkable that the House Republicans voted nearly 90 times to reveal -- repeal parts of Obamacare. And now they have the White House and they have both houses of Congress and they can't get it together.</s>EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, you know, when they took all those votes they already knew it was dead on arrival in the Senate. So really they had nothing to lose. It was not going to pass in the Senate and it was not being attained in the Senate, and if it did the one time it did it got pass at. President Obama he did sell it. But now it's different. As John said, Trump made over and over again on the campaign trail repeal and replace. He kept saying that. That was one of the lynchpins of his campaign. Now you have taken the House and now you have taken the Senate, you being the GOP and you tried, you've had seven years to put a replacement on -- program on the table. You haven't done that. So everything is coming together if you don't do it now, when? Trump said something else he says that if you don't do it now as part of his ultimatum, what I'm going to do is move on. No, he's not going to move on. This is a crucial public policy issue and this is a political issue. So there's no moving on. It's going to keep coming up - coming up even if it doesn't pass within 24 hours.</s>VAUSE: You know what is interesting; we heard from Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker the Democrats, their facing they're saying this is a rookie mistake by a new White House administration setting a date before you have the votes. We also have this reporting from the New York Times in the last couple of hours about the strategy here and some regrets from the Trump administration. "Mr. Trump has told four people close to him that he regrets going along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan's plan to push a health care overhaul before unveiling a tax cut proposal more politically palatable to Republicans". So judges from this new strategy what have you hear? You know is Trump right? Should have they gone with the tax cuts first and then try to do the health care.</s>THOMAS: It might have made more sense. I mean, tax cuts are something Republicans can all agree upon and when you look at what the CBO said, I don't know that their projections are 100 percent accurate but by and large, I mean look, this isn't giving the amount of savings that Republicans want to. So look, they're rushing through on something that is controversial. It's not a simple fix. Yes, and this is -- to be fair to Democrats, this is what you get when you don't have somebody with a lot of experience in White House.</s>SESAY: And Earl, OK, according to New York Times reporting, some regret on the part of the President. Let's look at Speaker Ryan. I mean, because this is it now, if this thing fails, someone's looking at who is going to be left carrying the can. Should he be worried that it's going to fall to him-they - and he will have regrets that, you know maybe this is a President who is too open to negotiating?</s>HUTCHINSON: Well this is his kind of his fall back, kind of another ploy saying look, you know maybe we rushed it here shouldn't have listened to Paul Ryan. Maybe I should have used the tax cut Trump card at that point in time. I don't want to use the double on that time. But the fact of the matter is he didn't. You know, when you talk about tax and tax reforms you know that - been there's been a lot of proposals put on the table over the years on that too. Some have gotten some places, some have not. But health care is different. It has so much political dynamite to it you see that's the thing. So, they're going to keep focusing on that, they're going to keep pounding on that. Taxes will come along at some point but I'm going tell you it's almost a snoozer, a yawner. That doesn't draw attention. This does. We probably wouldn't be talking about that if it wasn't for health care. That is the jewel in the crown.</s>VAUSE: Let's take a look at the latest polling because Trumpcare according to here its 17 percent support amongst the people who were polled. So, the choices here for Republicans are pretty grim. They can either fail to get the bill through or they can - and then suffer the consequences or they can get this bill through and then John, they're essentially, you know, if it gets through the Senate as well, they're taking a package to the American people that, you know, most people hate that they don't like. This is not how it was all meant to play out.</s>THOMAS: Well look, the administration is taking a risk that it will lower the costs and perhaps open up more access for people because of lower costs. So they're taking risks. If it doesn't do that, it's going to blow up in their face.</s>VAUSE: You see this what - this is why Obamacare it went through with 37 percent approval and hope that it would get more popular as people learned about it, it got less popular.</s>THOMAS: Right.</s>SESAY: But the more problems of Trumpcare not to pile on, but the CBO as you know released another some more data on Thursday showing that what we had thought would have been this 337 million -- billions saving of a 10 year isn't quite what we thought. Now as you look at those numbers, it's actually 150 billion. It doesn't make this even more of a lemon, doesn't it?</s>THOMAS: It does if those projections are right. The CBO has been wrong before, I mean I think the difference between John, you point of you know Obamacare and Trumpcare is that Democrats voted for the bill and didn't even read what the heck was in it. Republicans are actually reading what is in it and are trying to fix it as it goes through. So Democrats in the lineup more so than Republicans, which I think it's -- there's just has been bad press coverage from the outset about Trumpcare and that's what's been stalling it.</s>SESAY: OK is it bad press coverage or is it a bad bill?</s>THOMAS: That's a good question.</s>HUTCHINSON: Well, you got there's something else. It's not just the CBO I mean, look at the polls. This GOP has a problem. The problem is the majority, there have been a number of polls that show a majority of people do not, when they know what the Affordable Care Act is, not Obamacare. They don't want it replaced the way it is and the way the GOP is framing it. So there's really a double problem with Trump and Paul Ryan. On one hand, we made all these promises to make the change repeal and replace. But on the other hand, we've got conservatives in the party that don't like it they call it Obama land. We've got a majority of the American people that say we do not want to replace the whole thing. There are certain parts of it that we like. And many, by the way, has been pointed out. Many of Trump's supporters that voted for him, guess what? They are benefitting from the Affordable Care Act. So you got a triple problem.</s>SESAY: Answer my question. Bad bill, bad press, which is it?</s>THOMAS: Oh boy. I mean it's a combination. But I think we haven't seen the final form is going to change in the Senate. There are some tweaks that need to be made for sure.</s>VAUSE: Very wise answer. This health care reform stuff, it's complicated. No one knows how complicated it is. John and Earl.</s>THOMAS: Thank you.</s>SESAY: Anyway, moving on. The Kremlin calls -- claims it had one of its critics killed absurd, that Denis Voronenkov was shot and killed outside the Kiev hotel on Thursday.</s>VAUSE: The former Russian lawmaker fled to Ukraine last year. Ukraine's President calls this killing a Russian state terrorist act. More details now from Frederick Pleitgen reporting from Moscow.</s>FREDERICK PLEITGEN CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Denis Voronenkov calls wife devastated after her husband, a Kremlin critic was killed right in the heart of Ukraine's capital. Police say the assassin waited for Voronenkov and his bodyguard in front of a hotel and opened fire arrived once they arrived. As a result of the shootout, one man was killed. Kiev's police chief says, his bodyguard was wounded and the killer was also wounded. Both are in hospitals and being given medical assistants. The killer later died in hospital. Ukrainian authorities saying he never regained consciousness. Denis Voronenkov was a former member of Russia's communist party; he fled to Ukraine in 2016 and adopted Ukrainian citizenship. Though he denied it, Voronenkov was charged in absentia by Russian authorities for alleged fraud in a real estate deal in February. Highly critical of Vladimir Putin and Russia's annexation of Crimea, Voronenkov vowed never to be silenced. Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko quickly pointing the finger at the Kremlin saying on his official website, "The insidious murder of Denis Voronenkov in the city center of Kiev is an act of State terrorism by Russia which he had to flee for political reason". Denis Voronenkov is not the first Kremlin critic mysteriously killed. In 2015 opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down in central Moscow, or the former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, who British authorities believed was poisoned with a radioactive substance in 2006, London pointing the finger as Moscow as well. For its part, Russia points to recent political murders in Ukraine and calls the allegations against Moscow absurd. It seems like Ukraine will make everything so that no one will ever know the truth about what really happened today on March 23rd in Kiev. The spokeswoman for Russia foreign ministry said, "Ukrainian authorities have launched a full- scale investigation into the murder of Denis Voronenkov, another Kremlin critic dead, leaving behind a grieving wife expecting their second child." Frederick Pleitgen, CNN, Moscow.</s>VAUSE: And we'll return to London now after the break with more details on the man who drove his car into crowds of people on Westminster Bridge.