GOP bill’s fate teeters on new financial analysis

Bloomberg

House Republicans are waiting anxiously for a new financial estimate on Wednesday on their Obamacare repeal proposal that could force them into an embarrassing do-over on the bill they barely passed early this month.
Speaker Paul Ryan says he is uncertain about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the measure’s budget impact — critical for meeting Senate rules that would let the GOP pass it with a simple majority amid unanimous Democratic opposition. “We have every reason to believe we are going to hit our mark,” Ryan of Wisconsin told reporters. Still he added, “CBO scores have been unpredictable in cases in the past.”
For the health plan to comply with requirements for using a streamlined Senate process called reconciliation, the CBO will have to conclude that it reduces the deficit by at least $2 billion over 10 years. If not, the House will have to redo the bill to meet that standard and vote on it again. And that won’t be easy after the weeks of negotiations and revisions that led to the American Health Care Act’s May 4 passage by a narrow 217-213 House majority.
The CBO analysis may not be the final word on whether the GOP can push a health-care bill through the Senate without facing a Democratic filibuster. There are several other arcane budget rules that it must also satisfy, which will depend in part of the interpretation of the the Senate parliamentarian.
House Republicans had rushed to vote on the health bill — without waiting for the CBO analysis of last-minute changes — so Senate could get a quick start on it. But Ryan then decided not to immediately send bill to Senate, as he normally would, in case the CBO analysis requires House to revise parts of it.
This uncertainty is evidence “of the consequences for Republicans of trying to move as quickly as possible” to pass the Obamacare replacement, said a congressional specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.