As President Donald Trump and House speaker Paul Ryan spoke on the phone Thursday morning, hours before the House would vote on the American Health Care Act, they discussed an idea: If the bill passed, Ryan and a group of House Republicans would travel to the White House for a post-vote statement in the Rose Garden.
It passed, and they did. Following Thursday's 217-213 vote on the AHCA, Ryan, majority leader Kevin McCarthy, majority whip Steve Scalise, and 60 or so other House Republicans jumped on shuttles at the Capitol that took them up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, HHS secretary Tom Price (recently a member of the House himself), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma joined the group to tout the bill's passage.
Neither the White House nor Ryan's office will confirm whose idea it was to hold a victory celebration. The event had Trump's name written all over it, with all the fanfare of a bill signing. But the Senate has yet to take up the House bill and numerous changes are expected in order to pass the upper chamber.
Pence introduced the group to the crowd of seated White House staff and reporters. "Welcome to the beginning of the end of Obamacare," he said. Trump delivered a short speech, followed by remarks from Ryan, McCarthy, Scalise, and a seemingly endless cast of the Republicans spilling off the podium.
The festive mood at the White House underscored how significant Thursday's vote was—it was the first significant legislative victory for the Trump administration. After March's aborted vote on the bill, any major health-care legislation looked dead. But Trump, Pence, Ryan, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, and White House legislative affairs director Marc Short helped resurrect the bill, assisted by an amendment authored by the very conservative Mark Meadows and the moderate Tom McArthur that brought both sides together with the rest of the conference.
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05.17.2025