WASHINGTON – House Speaker Paul Ryan resisted the notion that Republicans are trying to condition the public to the idea of “repairing” the Affordable Care Act, rather than using those other two “r” words: “Repeal and replace.”
“If you’re going to repair the American health care system, and fix its problems, you have to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better: Patient-centered health care,” Ryan told Chuck Todd in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “And that is how you repair this health care system.”
Bloomberg published a report that Republicans in Congress were working to rebrand their Obamacare strategy to “repair” from “repeal and replace.”
“Somewhere along the line there was confusion that we were going to take the Obamacare architecture and, you know, tinker at the margins and repair it,” Ryan continued. “You can’t. It is a collapsing law.”
Congressional Republicans are wrestling over how to do away with the law and implement their own alternative, and Ryan told 60 Minutes in December that repealing the law was their first priority in this new administration.
In response to a question about the Iran deal, Ryan noted that although he never supported the deal to begin with and believes it was “a huge mistake,” he acknowledged that “I don’t think you’re going to go back and reconstitute the multilateral sanctions that were in place.”
The key, he said, was to “rigorously enforce this deal.” Citing Iran’s history as a state sponsor of terrorism and human rights abuses, Ryan said he wanted to “ratchet up sanctions.”
After a federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s travel ban from seven countries, President Trump lashed out at the judge who issued the ruling. Ryan responded this weekend with a statement, saying, “This president is hardly the first one to express frustration with the judicial branch. What’s important is his administration is complying with the ruling and taking the proper steps to resolve the issue quickly. This is our system of divided government, and I’m confident that when the process runs its course the order will be upheld.”
Throughout the last year, Ryan has not had the smoothest relationship with Trump, stoking tension by not immediately endorsing him at the end of the Republican primary and criticizing Trump for several of his controversial statements over the course of the presidential campaign. But Ryan noted that they talk frequently, sometimes at 11 p.m. at night, and indicated the differences in tone between them symbolize the various views out of their party.
“We’ve always had different kinds of Republicans throughout our party,” he said. “It’s a big tent party.”
