billion. 50 billion of that roughly is simply giving more tax cuts to the rich. that is, obviously, not going to improve health care. they created a little bit of a piggy bank for the senate, a little bit of legislative slide of hand for the senate to then give back to the house that might improve coverage at the margin. but look. the cold hard fact is that there is nothing that the freedom caucus and the other far right conservatives want that would actually improve the number of people on obamacare on health care and, in fact, the cbo scored this as being no change in the number of people on health care. what they are trying to do is, in effect, roll back the whole insurance market whether it s preexisting conditions, whether it s kids under 26, whether it s ten essential benefits back to where it was before obama which means that essentially a health care system of what it was like before obama, 24 million people, fewer people insured and a lot of them on very inadequate plans tha
place where the insurance companies can offer these skinny packages and allow them to say there are still people on insurance. do you think that is part of their strategy? it is. when you talk to members of the freedom caucus, when they want to strip these essential health benefits and what insurance companies have to provide they say they will replace these elements of the affordable care act with conservative provisions, but many moderates and just rank in file regular republicans in the house, gop, are uncomfortable with the way the freedom caucus is pursuing some of this, believe that the current law will become too thread bare in what it requires insurance companies to do. bob woodward, internally, within the house, i mean, you ve been in washington a long, long time. have you ever seen an internal struggle within one party over such a major piece of legislation that affects so many people in this country run amuck the way this has? well, it seems to have. you go back to the
know, kind of stripping obamacare of some of the most popular elements and not enough to, you know, actually look at cost control and actually free market reforms that would help improve coverage. yeah. elise, that is the important thing. no free market reforms here. the conservatives, real conservatives could be excited about, that heritage would be excited about, that the freedom caucus would be excited about, that americans for prosperity would be. why does a conservative put their political careen e line getting behind this bad bill you owlast night, the cbo numbers, steve rattner, comes out and it ends up we don t know the exact numbers but the guesses are the changes will not improve coverage but will actually make the deficit go up even higher. take us behind the cbo numbers. it looks on bleak there too. well, as you know in the cbo report originally came out they said it would improve the deficit 337 billion. now they are saying it s 150
and this morning, the president gathered steve bannon and reince priebus last night and told them to go to the capital that this would be the last vote. it was an ultimatum. bannon delivered it with a larger group of republicans about two hours later. and they read a letter from the president and tom price, the health and human services secretary, two members of the freedom caucus saying they know they had all of these concerns about cost and the president and price listed six concerns they had and six ways to bring down premiums that they could do in the future with legislation. they are trying to get people the yes but what i m told also is members of the freedom caucus, manyf them, remain on the fence or against this bill which puts it in real peril early this morning. bob, it seems like on part of what they are trying to do, barnicle s list of thing they are stripping out and then there was another list of things they wanted removed that trump said no to is essentially get to a
another momentous day on capitol hill. plan a, blown apart. the vote didn t take place last night. and after a couple hours of considering his options, the president gave congress a take-it or leave-it option. so this morning everybody is looking at congress and trying to figure out exactly what they are going to do. willie, the freedom caucus has to decide whether to cave to donald trump or whether they are going to hold firm. and a lot of people believe that there s much riding on this, including the reputation of the trump white house. joe, good morning to you. we reached a stage in this process now where donald trump in the white house to the new york times and other publications.