Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on Wednesday read from a laundry list of President Donald Trump’s failed promises to deliver a new health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
In remarks on the House floor, McGovern checked Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) moments after she declared that Republicans “have always proposed alternatives” to the ACA framework.
“But the truth is they’ve always said they have a plan but they’ve never had a plan,” McGovern said.
McGovern turned the clock back to February 2016 when Trump, then a GOP presidential candidate, vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare with “something so much better” if he were elected president.
He zoomed through more of Trump’s claims in the years since that a “really terrific,” “great,” “fantastic,” “phenomenal,” “full and complete” health care plan that’d be “so much better” than Obamacare was on the way.
Trump offered a range of times he expected to follow through on his pledges, too, ranging from “very soon” to sometime in the next two to four weeks.
McGovern recalled Trump making the talking point during his 2024 debate against Kamala Harris when he claimed he had “concepts of a plan” for health care, details which Americans would learn about “in the not-too-distant future.”
“Nothing happened,” McGovern said.
He later continued, “People are sick and tired of the empty rhetoric. They’re sick and tired of you saying you have a plan and you never produce one. All you want to do is undermine health care for hardworking, average Americans.”
On Wednesday, the House passed a GOP health care bill that didn’t include an extension to soon-to-expire enhanced ACA subsides, legislation that the Senate is unlikely to take up.
Four moderate House Republicans signed onto a Democratic discharge petition to force a vote on a bill that would extend the subsidies for three years, although the vote may not occur until next year.