Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel is joining calls for Congress to cancel August recess until Obamacare is repealed and replaced.
“Republicans are fighting for the American people because we have a healthcare system, Obamacare, which is failing,” McDaniel said in a statement the RNC provided exclusively to Breitbart News.
“I don’t know if you saw the news today that two million more people will be uninsured; this is the system Democrats put in place without any Republican input and now that it’s failing the Democrats have run away as quickly as they can. Republicans are trying to solve a very difficult problem. It’s not easy, there’s a lot of diversity of thought, we’re having a dialogue and discussion, I do think it’s critical we find a resolution and I agree with the President that Congress should not take an August recess until they figure out the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. Our voters are depending on them and that’s part of why we were elected to lead and we need to get that done.”
McDaniel’s statement to Breitbart News comes after she made a similar call in a radio interview with Fox News’s Todd Starnes, and it echoes calls by President Donald Trump on Twitter Monday morning for Congress to stay in session, forgoing August recess until this critical issue is handled.
LISTEN TO RONNA ROMNEY MCDANIEL ON TODD STARNES’ PROGRAM ON FOX NEWS:
https://soundcloud.com/user-612088219/chairwoman-mcdaniel-congress-should-not-take-august-recess-until-obamacare-is-repealed-and-replaced
These calls come in the wake of a push by House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)—a strong ally of President Trump in Congress—to do just that.
On Saturday, Meadows joined Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 to discuss his call for Congress to skip August recess.
“It’s really starting to gain momentum,” Meadows said. “The House Freedom Caucus took a position several weeks ago that we believe we need to put more things on the president’s desk. You know, he’s out there working members of Congress—we’ve got a president who works into all hours of the day and night—and yet we’re not putting things on his desk. Whether it’s healthcare or tax reform or the debt ceiling or the budget, we need to be about the people’s business. There’s only one place you can pass legislation, and that’s in Washington, D.C., so let’s cancel the August recess and let’s be serious about the people’s work. We got some senators that are coming on, but I’m sure there will be some kind of online petition that starts up and says ‘is your member of Congress willing to stay in and make America great again?’ When that happens, I think you’re going to see people from coast-to-coast and all over—all your listeners—believe we should be working just as hard as they do every day.”
Meadows is the reason the House was able to eventually pass a bill that repeals and replaces Obamacare. After Speaker Paul Ryan failed multiple times, embarrassing himself and President Trump publicly, Ryan took off to Europe and Hollywood, California.
While Ryan was gone, Meadows joined forces with then-House Tuesday Group co-chair Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) to work out an amendment to win enough votes to pass the legislation through the Congress’s lower chamber. Now, in the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—a much more adept leader than Ryan—is facing some of the same problems, but in this case, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is working out an amendment designed to get a similar healthcare bill through that chamber.
Meadows is confident, however, that if Republicans in the Senate work together they will be able to repeal and replace Obamacare once and for all.
“They’ve got to stay engaged, but some of the comments that Leader McConnell made in the last 24 hours have been very troubling in that he said, well, we just need to pack it up and deal with Democrats and stabilize the Obamacare exchanges and I fundamentally and vigorously disagree with that,” Meadows said on Breitbart News Saturday.
“We’ve all campaigned on repealing Obamacare for seven years. I can tell you, yesterday, I was talking to some folks in Transylvania County, North Carolina, which is really part of my district, and they said ‘we don’t really understand why there wasn’t a plan on the president’s desk on January 20 let alone July 20.’ My advice to them is to stay engaged. Sen. Ted Cruz has a great amendment called the Consumer Choice Freedom Amendment. They need to get on board with that, but we need to stay engaged. I can tell you, the president is personally engaged to make sure it happens. But failure is not an option. This coming week is going to be a critical time on Capitol Hill as you well know,” Meadows added.
When healthcare is taken care of, Congress can then focus on tax reform—which Meadows says will further unleash the American economy.
“Not only is the economy humming—we had a good jobs report, 222,000 new jobs—much better than what was expected, but part of that is that they believe in this president’s job creating message,” Meadows said, adding:
“But we’ve got to deliver on it. That means making sure that we get corporate rates down, making sure that we double the standard deduction for moms and dads and aunts and uncles on Main Street, making sure that we deliver. For that, I think it’s also critical in the next two weeks—either this week or the following week—we make some real critical decisions on tax reform so we start working the legislative language. That means the Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) is dead—you can argue for it or against it—but the reality is there’s not enough senators and not enough members of Congress to support it so we must go ahead and move on. For me, I’m really closer to the president’s plan on tax reform. We need to make sure we have a corporate rate that’s 15 to 16 percent. We also need to make sure it passes through to those small businesses. And we need to do a repatriation plan that allows us to bring back those foreign earnings and allows us to put them back to work creating American jobs again. We can’t delay. One of the things is we continue to get surprised by deadlines we know are coming. It’s kind of like the debt ceiling. We need to go ahead and address it. It’s kind of like a florist being surprised by Valentine’s Day. It’s coming, we might as well go ahead and make the decision. I think it’s time, and I think the next two weeks are critical.”
LISTEN TO MARK MEADOWS ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY: