Donald Trump ran for president as a businessman who could make a deal. But on Friday, he failed to close the biggest deal of his young presidency.
And then, like a businessman, he moved on.
“That’s what you have to do in business if you fail,” said Rep. Roger Williams, a Texas Republican and, perhaps more relevantly in this instance, a car dealer. “You move on. You don’t worry about it. He’s going to move on.”
For Trump, House leaders’ decision not to vote on a Republican replacement for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act when they realized they did not have the votes to pass it was his first legislative setback – on one of the biggest promises he’d made on the campaign trail.
But after working to win passage, calling or meeting with 120 House members over days and inviting insurance and pharmaceutical companies, business owners, patients, union leaders, truckers and workers to the White House to lobby them, Trump appeared to be ready to move on to the next fight.
Even as House leaders were still trying to gather votes Friday morning, Trump had picked a new battle, announcing that his administration had approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. After the repeal bill was pulled, Trump said his next battle will be tax reform.
“We couldn’t quite get there. We were just a very small number of votes short in terms of getting our bill passed,” Trump said after the bill was pulled.
We have a president that is a master negotiator. We have a president that is a business guy, that's a hands on guy
Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Ok.
That means, Trump said, that Obamacare, as the ACA is known popularly, will remain the law of the land. At least until it fails and Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on an alternative. “Bipartisan,” he said, “is always better.”
Still, the stunning defeat of what has been a legislative priority for Republicans for seven years could make it more difficult to get through Trump’s other legislative priorities, even though Republicans control both chamber of Congress: changes to the tax code, curbing illegal immigration, pumping more money into the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges, and keeping the federal government running.
“It makes it very difficult to do the tax reform that a lot of us think that we need to do,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, who voted for the bill. Failure, he said, is “a big blow to the agenda and that means everything.”