Larry Kudlow, the economist and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said the Republican plan reform the healthcare system and roll back parts of Obamacare is good for the U.S. economy.

He spoke as Senate Republican leaders delayed a vote on their healthcare bill until after the July 4 recess because they couldn’t get enough support to even begin debating the legislation.

“The roll-back of Obamacare is a significant tax cut and reduction in regulations,” Kudlow said on CNBC. “By itself, these reforms of Obamacare are good for health and they're good for growth.”

The bill to change President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law has been one of the party’s top priorities for years, and the delay is a major embarrassment to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. At least five GOP senators — conservatives and moderates — has said they would vote against beginning debate.

Kudlow discussed the GOP plan on CNBC while paired against Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at University of Chicago who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Barack Obama.

Goolsbee said the Republican plan hurt poor people while offering generous tax cuts to the wealthy such as Trump’s family.

“It is high-income people's capital gain tax rates going down,” Goolsbee said. “Look at how much your premiums are going to go up and how many people are losing their health insurance. They're going to say: Look at how big of a tax cut this is for Donald Trump and his family. I think it is going to kill this bill.”

Kudlow said Democratic arguments for taxing the rich aren’t winning special elections for the party to fill seats in the Senate and House. Last week, Republican Karen Handel won Georgia's special congressional election, dashing hopes of Democrats to pull off an upset in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections.

“Taxing the rich does not work for the Democratic party, you are losing these special elections, that stuff is not helping,” Kudlow said. He said changing the healthcare law to remove requirements that people buy expensive insurance plans they don’t need will help to push down premiums.

Stocks started to sell off on news that the healthcare bill was being delayed until after July 4. The S&P 500 fell 0.5 percent to reach the lowest since June 16.