House Passes Bill to Replace Obamacare
TAPPER: We're back with more in the politics lead. Let's pick back up with our political roundtable. Bill Kristol, let me start with you. We just heard Democratic Senator Mark Warner touch on something we've been talking about during the commercial break, which is Democrats really haven't made much of a stink about the fact that about $800 million, $900 billion in Medicaid funding is going to be pushed to the states from the federal government. In other words, a Medicaid cut, while repealing the ObamaCare taxes will be a tax cut of a trillion dollars or so. A lot of which was - is going to go to rich people.</s>BILL KRISTOL, THE WEEKLY STANDARD EDITOR AT LARGE: Yes, obviously ObamaCare taxes were levied mostly on the wealthy. That's how President Obama sold them. The republicans were a little bit mechanical in thinking about this. We have to repeal ObamaCare, that means we have to repeal every tax increase that paid for ObamaCare. Instead of saying - which would have been more of</s>TAPPER: Do you agree?</s>RUTH MARCUS, THE WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST: Well, it's a slightly less politically - it has the appeal of being bashing on tax cuts for the wealthy, which always plays well. The downside is that you're then concentrating on a lot of money from Medicaid which goes to poor people, which isn't necessarily - I mean I think that these Medicaid cuts are very severe and going to be big problems for states. I think Senator Warner is right in saying that we should be hearing from governors about this because, you know, ObamaCare expanded Medicaid greatly, at least allowed states to choose it. But when you're trying to rile up, as democrats, a big proportion of the people arguing that this hurts poor people isn't necessarily congruent with the message that you're trying to get out.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And I get what you're saying that - you know, to say, oh, look, another tax cut for the rich is very politically potent, but the idea of people who are suffering and sometimes suffering the most in their personal lives, it is such a human message to say, you're going to be, you know, basically screwed even more because of these guys. And that's why Nancy Pelosi was so forward leaning in her political speech, 100 percent political speech on the House floor saying, your constituents don't know your name but they're going to when I'm done with you. And they were singing na, na, na, hey goodbye because they feel they that they have political momentum because they feel that this is so dire in a lot of these districts. They might be flat wrong, and they certainly might be flat wrong. At the end of the day, when this goes through the Senate and you have a different spectrum of republicans who are going to have to deal with this in order to get it out of Senate.</s>OLIVIER KNOX, YAHOO NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: And part of this is a calculation too about who the swing voters going to be in 2018. And they're going to figure out what you see in terms of engagement from middle-class suburban parents isn't necessary the tax cut for the rich. It's the -- you are taking away healthcare for babies, pregnant moms. And so, that's a more potent argument for some of the people that democrats think are going to be the swing voters in the midterm.</s>TAPPER: A lot of politics here though obviously not surprisingly. I know that there were democrats in the House that wanted to introduce the bill a few weeks ago with ObamaCare fixes. Obviously, there's some problems, insurers are pulling out of state exchanges. Here are our fixes, and they were discouraged from doing so. I suppose it is easier if you're in the minority to not have an alternative that people can pick apart. You're just the ones who are standing there with your hands up blameless.</s>KRISTOL: Remember, the republicans refused - they had a sort of quasi-media alternative in 2010 but they didn't actually introduce, which they could have a full-blown tax credit replacement, alternative to the exchanges. And so both parties have done this. It paid off for the republicans in 2010. The bad stories, true bad stories about ObamaCare. We will see what happens this time. I think it is a political very tough vote. I talked to one republican member who said, we may have just have voted -we may be about to vote to elect Nancy Pelosi speaker.</s>TAPPER: You could have -</s>KRISTOL: Exactly the same thing that happened in 2010. On the other hand, it's - we'll see what the Senate does. I think the most interesting reporting I've just seen, I know you guys reported this on as well on CNN is that the Senate - Mitch McConnell convene I think a dozen senators in his office Tuesday to begin working on a Senate bill and I think they exposedly say was, well begin from the House bill? No, let's just write a Senate bill.</s>TAPPER: Is that right? Tell us about that.</s>BASH: Well, I should say our Ted Barrett is reporting that there was a group of about 15 republican senators across the republican spectrum.</s>TAPPER: From Mike Lee to Susan Collins?</s>BASH: Exactly, the most conservative to most moderate, starting over and getting together and trying to figure out where they need to go to get the republican votes to get this off the Senate floor. That's the way it should be done, by the way. You should start from there. [16:50:065]</s>KRISTOL: But then it's going to come back to the House and then Paul Ryan will have a tough time making the House swallow the Senate bill.</s>BASH: Before it comes back down, it's got to - it's got to go to the Senate.</s>KRISTOL: Well, true.</s>MARCUS: Right. And the Senate republicans with even less - a smaller margin are going to face exactly the same problem that Paul Ryan and the House republicans did, which is that that caucus ranges the gamut from Mike Lee -</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Exactly.</s>MARCUS: - and Ted Cruz to Susan Collins. And you can only lose a few of those, even with Vice President Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote. That's a hard - that's a hard caucus of cats to herd there.</s>BASH: You know what, at the end of the day, even by the 2018 election it's unclear if we're going to know the core answer, which is, is cost going to go down as republicans promised? Probably the answer will be no, and the question is then will constituents and voters punish republicans.</s>TAPPER: Short term though, President Trump, Olivier, seems to have some spring in his step. He does have a victory, it is a smallish victory in the sense that there's still a lot of obstacles before this becomes law and we still don't know what this will mean in terms much voters and his voters.</s>KNOX: Right. And I actually want to grab something that Bill said at the very top of the show, which was basically that one anything that the republicans did today was avoid what would have been a catastrophic defeat. Let's flip what actually happened into what might have happened. Take the bill to the floor, either have to pull it or it goes down. Now you have an angry base to whom you've made promise after promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare. You have something that republicans are very concerned about, which is looking like they can't govern, and you have a President whose ability to sway his own party is already under fire, who would have lost another time. So a big part of the victory party here today is kind of we dodged a bullet, you know. This is - it's good that we started this process, but, man, just imagine, just imagine had it gone the other way.</s>TAPPER: It would have been a catastrophe so -</s>MARCUS: A little bit of a self-inflicted bullet. I - even if this gets through the Senate, which I think is going to be very hard to do, then if something gets through the Senate, how does that something then pass the House given that 217 vote today?</s>TAPPER: Oh, you're thinking about tomorrow.</s>MARCUS: I don't stop thinking about tomorrow.</s>TAPPER: You're thinking about tomorrow, you always are. Dana and Bill, Olivier and Ruth, thank you so much. Health care is of course not the only victory the president is celebrating. He signed an executive order protecting in his view religious freedom. What does this new executive order do? We'll talk about that next.