The leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus is reportedly planning to fight the GOP leadership's tentative timeline for repealing and replacing Obamacare.
In an interview with Politico, posted Monday night, North Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Meadows vowed what could be a three-year replacement plan "will meet with major resistance from Freedom Caucus members," adding the opposition will be "the first big fight I see coming for the Freedom Caucus."
"It should be repealed and replaced, and all of that should be done in the 115th Congress . . . not left to a future Congress to deal with," Meadows told Politico.
Meadows hopes the Freedom Caucus, which boasts roughly 40 members, will take a formal position as soon as January in favor of a shorter Obamacare replacement schedule.
"What you will find is there are some Freedom Caucus members who believe that the floor of what we passed in 2015 [the two-year plan] should be the worst-case scenario," he told Politico.
"But there are a number of other Freedom Caucus members who think we need to go beyond what we passed in 2015 and get rid of all the rules and regulations and be aggressive on that in" the first quarter of next year, he added.
Meadows, who was the instigator of retired Ohio Rep. John Boehner’s ouster as House Speaker in 2015, replaces Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan in the leadership role of the Freedom Caucus.