Some Republican members of the House and the Senate want to slow the timeline for repealing the ACA.
The House Freedom Caucus, a Republican congressional group, seeks to slow down the ACA repeal process by delaying a vote on the fiscal year 2017 budget, reports Politico. Meanwhile, five senators introduced an amendment to extend the deadline to draft the repeal from Jan. 27 to March 3.
The group in the House wants to delay a vote until they receive more information about what a repeal bill and ACA replacement would look like, according to the Politico report.
"We need to slow down the process so we can understand a little bit more the specifics and the timetable of replacement votes and reconciliation instructions, etc.," Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told reporters this week, according to Politico.
The amendment submitted in the Senate also seeks to delay the deadline for drafting a reconciliation bill. The Senate is currently debating a budget resolution that, if approved, instructs four congressional committees to draft budget reconciliation legislation by Jan. 27. The senators who submitted the amendment Monday want to delay this deadline until March 3 to allow for more time to craft a replacement for the healthcare law.
"By extending the deadline for budget reconciliation instructions until March, Congress and the incoming administration will each have additional time to get the policy right," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., one of the five senators who introduced the amendment, said in a statement. The other senators included Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Susan Collins, R-Maine, Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Lisa Murakowski, R-Alaska.
In the House, a vote was expected to take place by the end of this week. However, if the vote is delayed, the earliest they could take up the budget would be the week after Mr. Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, according to the report.
According to Politico, it is not clear whether Freedom Caucus members would vote against the budget if they do not receive the information they seek or the delay. The report states that members want more information about whether a repeal of the ACA will include some replacement provisions or, if not, the timetable for having a Republican alternative.
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