House Speaker Paul Ryan got down on one knee and begged for congressmen to vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a report claims.
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
According to a detailed account in the Washington Post, the Wisconsin native “got down on a knee to plead with Rep. Don Young” on Thursday night, just hours before the House was supposed to vote on the bill, because he remained undecided.
“When the speaker finished with Young, he spent about 10 minutes in an animated discussion with Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), one of the bill’s most outspoken critics,” the Post noted. “At one point, the speaker took his own arms and held them up, his hands at face level, then slowly lowered them to his waist — presumably trying to demonstrate his belief that the bill will lower costs.”
Rep. Joe Barton added that the effort involved a lot of “back-patting and butt-kicking.”
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Ryan, who later ended up pulling the bill after he told Donald Trump that it did not have the votes to pass, held a press conference Friday after the bill was abruptly yanked.
“We are going to go back and figure out what the next steps are,” Ryan said during a press conference after the bill was pulled. “We believed this bill was the best way to go, but we just didn’t get the consensus. I think our members know we did everything we could to get consensus.”
“This does make tax reform more difficult,” Ryan conceded. “We are going to proceed with tax reform — this makes it more difficult.” (RELATED: Republicans Pull Health Care Bill Just Minutes After Members Were Scheduled To Vote On It)