correct. there has to be a balance. she gets it. one thing i don t think has been sufficiently appreciate side that the democrats expended an enormous amount of political capital to pass obamacare. it took 13 months to craft the law. president obama talked about it incessantly and mocked by republicans for pounding away at it. democrats lost 63 seats in congress and six seats in the senate. i don t know if republicans were mentally prepared if they cared about it so much to expend that kind of political capital and to know, okay, precisely because they re doing something unprecedented and taking away an entitlement. we might lose the house and the senate for doing this. do they care that much? i m not sure. it was a regulatory process, and i thought the graphic you put up the number of llegislatie days devoted to previous legislate, where your time is spent that s where your passion is. the problem for republicans the 17-day oddisy and a lot of
this is no longer a hundred-day priority. the president has things he wants to accomplish and he s not going to wait for congress to sit around and do the right thing. when it breaks and chuck, it s going to break, they will come back to us and ask us to take it up again. i will leave it there. as tax reform gets under way i ll see you there again soon. mick mulvaney, thanks for coming on. appreciate it. it was tanked by a revolt in the house, but it was facing steep opposition in the senate, senator of utah and charlie, and one thing they both agreed on, they weren t going to vote for this bill as it was written and they both join me now together. gentlemen, welcome. senator leigh, let me start with you, the president is blaming the freedom caucus, club for growth and heritage for, quote, protecting planned parenthood and obamacare. is that a fair read of what happened this week, sir? that is not at all how i see
obamacare is the time share that the democrats bought that they cannot admit the cost of, that they keep telling themselves was a good idea. it is in a death spiral. joy and i have had many disagreements about that. it s not the definition of an economic death spiral? it s not the definition. we ll point out the president of aetna and you will lose coverage and that s a death spiral. joy disagrees and i know she wants to jump in here. i appreciate her reticence. we know aetna lied and we ve had a federal uj j say aetna lied and they pulled out for other reasons and insurance companies raised premiums and it s what they do, and the congressional budget office made it quite clear the affordable care act is not, not collapsing and not in a death spiral. it s not. i want to quickly get to paul ryan here because it is is there a subtle palace intrigue campaign going on with some people in this white house to undermine paul ryan? i don t know about that, but
skills that he promised would break through gridlock in washington. if you can t make a good deal with a politician then there s something wrong with you. you re certainly not very good. and it damages the reputation of house speaker paul ryan. the self-described policy wonk that republicans drafted to push through conservative legislation, and it raises questions about the party s overall ability to govern. we were a ten-year opposition party where being against things was easy to do. quite frankly, we have a group of people that are no on everything. it is an early victory for grassroots activism on the left. after angry town halls put pressure moderate lawmakers to vote no. now obamacare s survival or collapse lies with mr. trump, a president who vowed to dismantle it. on friday he told the new york times, quote, he was pleased to have it all behind him. it s enough already. though the president tried to pin some blame on democrats.
it. this bill didn t pass because it didn t deal with the most fundamental flaw in obamacare. the part of obamacare that has made health care unacceptable and unaffordable. until we get a bill that actually brings down the cost of health care for hardworking americans we re not going to get something that passes. congressman dent, do you pin the blame? some people pin the blame on the moderates, it wasn t just the freedom caucus and the moderates helped tank this, too. what say you? well, i tend to agree with the president on that point. let s be very honest about this. a lot of the concessions the white house was making at the end of this process were to try to please and placate the hard right on essential benefits and other issues all to placate people who were not going to vote for the bill anyway. by doing that, they ended up alienating more people on the senate right or moderates. that is really what happened. the bottom line, chuck, that in order to reform health care in