Congress is 'bickering' over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, something that should cost House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., his top seat if he cannot get the job done in "pushing Donald Trump's agenda," a former Trump campaign adviser said Sunday.
"Paul Ryan isn’t doing his job," former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, R-N.Y., told "The Cats Roundtable" 970 AM-N.Y. "If he can’t do his job as Speaker, to hold these Republicans together and get a repeal and replace bill through, somebody else should be Speaker."
McCaughey sees Ryan's Obamacare replacement as merely "Obamacare Lite," something conservatives fear in how they're going to pay for the subsidies included in his plan.
"Ryan has attached things to his version of the replacement bill that are very unpopular," McCaughey told radio host John Catsimatidis. "He’s got to get on board with Donald Trump because Donald Trump’s program is popular."
The Trump plan, circulating among conservatives and operating as a GOP alternative to Ryan's own plan, seeks to lower premiums in the individual market by delineating two separate pools of the insurance: the healthy and the sick. The latter would be a "risk pool" paid for by federal public funding, according to McCaughey.
"Unfortunately, there's a real political logjam among the Republicans," she added.
McCaughey said the repeal of Obamacare should not be a debate, because the law has "badly hurt" 200 million Americans (those paying more for less) for the benefit of 20 million (newly insured through subsidies) – the healthy being forced to pay for the sick – and "that's not democracy."
"Repealing it would be a huge jobs program," she said. "There's going to be more jobs and higher wages."
House Speaker Ryan needs to relent to pushing through Trump's more conservative healthcare plan, she said, and the stalemate in the GOP has to end.
"That's the real problem, Congress isn't acting," she said. "The fact is Republicans in Congress are bickering about to fix Obamacare, how to repeal it and replace it.
"They're like firefighters arguing over the best route to the burning house. Just get there and put out the fire."
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