administration, get everyone on the same page and say must deliver on the promise. when it comes to obamacare, the most important thing the way to unify republicans is, let s focus on lowering premiums. the biggest reason so many millions of people are unhappy with obamacare and hurting so badly is that it s made premiums skyrocket.eo if we come together and have common sense reforms, more competition, more choices, more options, and we lower premiums, that s a win for everyone. that s how we get this done. sean: i talked to all the freedom caucus guys. you are literally up late at night talking to all the house freedom caucus members, to try to get it done in a way that would make it also work in the senate. i am really surprised not by you but by other senators saying we are not going to get this done. that was a health as promised in 2010. you had a filibuster in 2013.
board to accomplish their political goal because it was a dismantling of it, not trying to to bring something to bear on the system that had not been before. to david s point, and this is a good one. we often talk about we use the language repeal and replace. that s not really what s happening here. it s more reform and replace because much of the understructure. doesn t sound as good. doesn t roll of tongue. yeah. but they were start of starting from scratch in 2009. this is saying we re going to take this out, leave this in, leave this in. it s not literally getting rid of it it and that s why some of the freedom caucus guys voted against it because it wasn t a clear repeal. senator huckabee sanders was talking about reform today, less about repeal. and to that point it seems like donald trump has not been in the same police as congressional republicans when he s talking about how he wants
nos turning to yes or get this thing through? the conflict on march 24th, what is happening now is what i thought would happen, they would comeack from the easter recess and push thrgh bill because you had the freedom caucus guys and the tuesday group meeting together, and the tuesday group wanted, are you going to cover preexisting conditions. but they re not really. $138 billion over ten years, it s a step in the right direction. some think it should be closer to $200 billion in the next two years. it alleviates some of the tuesday group fears and with the freedom caucus dream weaver you re in the house, where does the public voice step in here? when i look at the numbers center for american progress has estimated if you have asthma 4 grand, pregnancy 17 grand, arthritis 26 grand. every person in my family has one of these three things. right. so when these members of congress have to go home to their town halls, where if and where do the public play a
there who do have cancer or other pre-existing conditions. no. i think this is a huge question. it feels a little bit like the president provided a fig leaf for those members who don t want to say that they voted for a bill that disenfranchised people with pre-existing conditions, but the fact is that most of the experts who looked at this have said this is not an adequate funding for this, and we ve had experience with these high-risk pools before before the affordable care act and it was disastrous for people with pre-existing conditions, so the game now is to try to get this out of the house by hook or by crook before the members go on recess and have to go and face their constituents, move it on to the senate and hope that something good will happen in the future, but it s only going to get harder because the senate is more moderate and the bill will come back, if it ever comes back to the house in more moderate form, and then you have the same problem that you had before is the
legislative record and then sort of start going for the home runs. we saw the freedom caucus guys come back and they wanted to pass the health care bill because they obviously went home and got scalded by their constituents for not repealing and replacing and something they didn t want to be blamed for. i think that s an important thing for president trump. the other thing in terms of legislative process going forward, i think the president has a unique opportunity and hasn t really used it yet. he has a unique opportunity to put together some interesting coalitions. there are folks in his white house that may be able to reach out to some democrats better if he stops beating them up publicly. it s not helping him in terms of trying to put together infrastructure bills, maybe even some sort of tax reform package that s more than just sliding the rates on individuals. we ll see what happens. he s even willing to throw threats of primary fights for republican members of congress. it s n