As Republicans were licking their wounds after their drastic failure to pass a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Friday, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the press that the reason Republicans failed in their effort to repeal the ACA was because the Trump administration was "incompetent."
For both terms of the former Obama administration, Republicans have taken the view that they would Repeal and Replace the ACA -- also called Obamacare -- and when they finally got the chance to do so this, they could not get enough votes within their own party to do so.
The better part of the week was spent with the White House lobbying lawmakers, trying to get many of those within the hard-right Freedom Caucus to vote for their replacement bill, but delayed the vote until Friday where House Speaker Paul Ryan finally decided to pull the bill with President Trump.
Sen. Schumer strikes back
According to one account by The Hill of Chuck Schumer's statement, he said that: "The Trumpcare bill failed because of two traits that have plagued the Trump presidency since he took office, incompetence and broken promises." He even took the opportunity at the press briefing to take a swing at the President's claims that he was a brilliant deal-maker by referring to his book called "The Art of the Deal," saying: "So much for the art of the deal."
Schumer on reasons bill failed: "I've never seen such incompetence," and, "You cannot govern from the hard right" https://t.co/f7ehPLbvPM
— CNN (@CNN) March 24, 2017
At the same time, Trump took a swing at Democrats saying that now that they were unable to get the votes to pass their bill, that both Schumer and House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi were "losers" and that they owned Obamacare, adding that it would fail.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, during his press briefing, said that Democrats (the architects of the initial ACA bill) would find that the ACA was so bad that they would end up doing something about it. Chuck Schumer did not ignore the President's efforts to pin blame on Democrats or when the President said that he would be willing to work out a better deal with the participation of Schumer's party.
Schumer's response was that the President never tried to reach out to them and so it is both the President and the GOP who are to blame for their failure to pass the bill.
Democrats do a victory lap
Senator Schumer was also on CNN with Wolf Blitzer saying that the President needs to stop blaming others and become a leader. During another press conference with Democrats, California Senator Linda Sanchez said that for seven years the Republicans have tried to repeal and replace the ACA, and that because they failed, that they had in fact been bluffing all along.
She also stated that if Republicans were serious about fixing the ACA, that they would be willing to work with Republicans. But much like her reference to the past seven years, many feel that Republicans refused to contribute to fixing the bill. When they did in 2010, it marked the beginning of their obstruction against a Democratic president to defeat the ACA hoping they would get enough support to repeal and replace it once in power.
Pelosi also credited the American people for flooding the phone lines to prevent the repeal of the law. Pelosi also took as "swing" at Republicans saying that she thought that they might have accomplished something by now during the first couple of months after President Trump's inauguration.
Its been said that President Obama took a year or longer to get the Obamacare passed and that for Republicans to give up so soon is embarrassing. Pelosi also made comparisons with Obama against a Republican President Trump saying that within weeks, Democrats had already passed bills and that Republicans have no record of accomplishments, and that they only wanted to take away things from the American people, rather than govern.
