Sean sits down with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, arguably the most qualified person in the world, to share his unique perspective on the challenges Paul Ryan faced today as he struggled to push through the American Healthcare Act. How did Speaker Ryan perform? Listen to the breakdown from the man who shares some of the same scars. The Sean Hannity Show is live weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, here we are on a Friday.
Happy Friday to you.
Write down our toll-free telephone number.
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There's no news at all.
There's no drama in Washington, et cetera, et cetera.
There's plenty of it.
We're going to get to it.
And I'm going to give you the real scoop here because I've been more active, more involved from the very beginning in terms of talking to people, even before this bill was laid out.
And I'm going to tell you exactly why this bill is not going to pass today.
But before I get to that, it is Friday and we do need a good laugh.
And the Democrats, nobody ever talks about them in this process.
And of course, you know, Obamacare is collapsing of its own weight and they are going insane, literally insane on the House floor.
And here's the latest example, a slight montage of the fun.
30 million people lose their health insurance.
I have not seen any Republican studies as to how many of those people will die, but certainly many thousands of them will die.
Our mothers and our doctors have warned us about poison pills.
Well, let me say that this morning the Republicans are giving to the American people a poison meal.
The American people clearly understand that Trump care will be an unmitigated disaster.
And Trump care will lead to increased death, disease, and destitution.
What is it about this, Mr. Speaker, that you don't understand?
You are wrong on this.
Don't let your base push you over the cliff on this bill.
Because of age discrimination in this bill, the age tax, it will put our seniors in the terrible position of having to choose between eating, visiting their doctors, or purchasing medication.
Which one do you, Mr. Speaker, suggest they choose?
I stand in opposition to the Republican Pay More for Less Care Act, under which Americans will suffer from higher health care costs, less coverage, a crushing age tax, and a ransacking of the Medicare Trust Fund, which our seniors depend on for long-term care.
It is an immoral piece of legislation.
And as a breast cancer survivor, I urge every member to stand with my sister survivors all across the country who number in the millions to make sure that you don't devastate our health and make sure that we don't have our legal.
What does the GOP stand for?
Get old people.
That's what this bill does.
That's what people are going to vote yes for today.
Health care is a right.
It is not a privilege reserved for a wealthy few.
For what does it profit this body to pass this bill and lose our soul?
This bill is a shame.
It is a disgrace.
Mr. Speaker, today my heart breaks for the disabled, for women, for senior and working families.
I fought too hard and too long to back down now.
I will fight any bill to turn the clock back to a darker time.
I will fight every single attempt to turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a cold shoulder to the sick, to our seniors, and to working families.
Mr. Speaker, I will fight every day, every hour, every minute, and every second.
I pose this bill with every breath and every bone in my body.
We must not give up.
We cannot.
I will not give in.
Not today, not tomorrow, and never, ever.
Ah, yes, the snowflakes this time on the floor of the House of Representatives.
All right, I want to dig it, make a deep dive here.
And I'm not going to mention all the people that I talk to, but I have talked to people throughout this entire process.
A couple of weeks before this bill was released, I had been putting people on this radio show and on my television show, and I had been telling people, and I've heard all the opposition, one of the biggest problems that exist, and the reason this failed, and I'm reading all the stories, they're going to blame the Freedom Caucus.
There's one story, one report that White House officials may blame Speaker Ryan.
This bill's not going to pass today.
There's really no drama here.
And they're saying, there's a Fox headline.
White House is saying, Speaker Ryan has done everything that he can do.
I just have a very strong disagreement with that statement.
And I've told you and I promised you that I am going to hold them accountable.
And I'm just, I'm going to tell you the truth.
And the simple truth is, is that basic fundamentals of legislating were not followed here.
You want to be a good baseball player?
There's fundamentals if you want to be a good pitcher and get the ball over the plate.
There's certain things you have to do.
You don't throw with just your arm.
You use your legs for your power.
And there's a certain way you drive off the mound.
If you're a hockey player, there's a certain way that you've got to hit a slapshot or a wrist shot or a snapshot.
And it's a fundamental of the game.
If you want to play hockey, one of the fundamentals is you need to skate well.
The better you skate, the better that hockey player you can be.
You want to be a great quarterback like Tom Brady.
All he does every day, all year long, is work on the fundamentals of being a great quarterback.
Doesn't matter what profession you're in.
You've got to work at the fundamentals.
Before this bill was ever released, nobody saw the bill.
Now, if you recall, I went down to Washington.
I interviewed the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
And I was shocked in that interview when Paul Ryan actually told me that, oh, no, there is a.
I said, are you going to build a consensus bill?
I kept using the word consensus.
Why was I using the word consensus?
Because like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is a coalition party.
Not everybody is as conservative as me in the Republican Party.
As a matter of fact, I'm not even a registered Republican.
I'm a conservative.
And so not everybody is involved in the Republican caucus.
Then you got the Tuesday group, the study group.
Then you've got, you know, more moderate members.
Then you've got some that are in districts that Hillary Clinton won, some 20 of those people.
So before you release a bill of this magnitude and the first set of legislation, you've got to build consensus.
Well, that never happened.
I talked to Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan said, you know, we have the consensus bill.
The consensus bill is now being scored by the CBO.
I was surprised when he said that.
And then right after that, we had a series of people on and people that were associated with the Freedom Caucus, Rand Paul, other people, and they all said the same thing to me on this program and on TV that they'd never seen the bill.
If it's a consensus bill, it's news to them.
And then the bill stood with the CBO and nobody knew what was in it.
But they kept getting rumors about what they thought was in it.
And then it turns out when they finally, and one of the things I was saying is build the consensus before you release the bill.
That consensus was never built.
Nobody had a clue what was in the bill.
And then all of a sudden, the bill gets released, and the very things that these critics feared from the get-go were in the bill.
So now you're starting backwards.
It's sort of like a contract.
You know, I was a contractor, it would be sort of like saying, here, sign this, and then we'll negotiate the terms of the deal.
It doesn't work that way.
You got to negotiate the terms of the deal based on the principles you set forth, and then you write up the contract, and then the wording has to match the deal points that you made.
And once that happens, you come to consensus agreement, then you can go forward.
There was such a better way to do this.
And if they would have brought the differing factions within the Republican Party together before the release, we wouldn't be in this position today.
That's just a fact.
Now, I just want to go over this in great detail because it's so important that you understand.
And again, I promised you I'm going to hold Washington accountable.
And today I'm holding them accountable.
This is an unforgivable screw-up to me.
You know, I said last night on TV: okay, let's start with a fundamental civics lesson.
We have a federal government that consists of three branches of government, all with enumerated constitutional powers.
And all of them have a duty to use their powers in the best interest of the people that they're supposed to be serving.
And, you know, so far, to the president's credit, the things that he could do on his own, the promises he could keep, which have been numerous.
We got the Keystone XL pipeline on tap today.
That's a huge win for the president.
And he's rolling back burdensome regulation.
He's in the process of building the wall.
He's trying to vet the refugees.
He's meeting with businesses.
He's putting together a tax and economic plan that's going to incentivize business.
I mean, the guy's been pretty busy.
He kept his promise on Neil Gorsuch.
He's kept a lot of promises here.
Now you have in the legislative branch, the executive branch, I think, is doing a very good job at this point.
And, you know, their job is to legislate.
And the reason we are here today with a vote on repealing and replacing that's going to fail is because the legislative process has been contentious, unorganized, disjointed.
There's been no unity.
There's been secrecy.
We've seen all the infighting, the miscommunication.
We've seen it on TV.
We've seen it on radio.
And once that started, I told them before: build consensus before you roll out the bill.
Then they rolled out the bill.
Then everything that I predicted would happen started happening.
All the critics came out of the woodwork and they started criticizing a bill that they never saw beforehand.
You know, for seven long years, eight long years, the GOP has been saying, we're going to repeal or replace Obamacare.
Give us the House in 2010.
They got it.
Give us the House and Senate in 2014.
They got it.
Give us the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
They got their wish.
Now, as I've been saying, why didn't they begin writing this bill, building consensus on November the 9th?
It didn't happen.
They should have built the consensus among these differing factions within the GOP, the moderates, the conservatives, the Freedom Caucus.
It never happened.
And in the weeks leading up to the release of the bill, you got House members saying they're dissatisfied with the legislative process.
You know, during this, there were three long weeks leading up to just a few days ago where Paul Ryan and the leadership never spoke with the Freedom Caucus.
Now, the president did.
The president ended up having to do the heavy lifting that the legislative branch should have done from the get-go.
So that's not his job to legislate.
His job is to, you know, lay out principles, get the legislative process rolling, and they're supposed to build the consensus and get a bill with the majority and get the bill passed.
They failed today, or they're about to fail.
So, you know, and so many people left in the dark, all that had real concerns, the bill is not going to work the way they had promised it would work.
And so, you know, all this infighting is going on, and it's all so unnecessary.
You know, the immediate release of this, what?
It's called Ryan Care, Obamacare Light.
President Trump, it's not his job to write legislation.
Then he gets tasked with bringing all these groups together, you know, from the very beginning.
Why didn't they seek out the input, you know, like Reagan did?
Reagan relied on the Heritage Foundation a lot for legislation.
You got some of the best, brightest, conservative, libertarian minds in these think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, Cato.
You know, when every group opposes it, that's a warning sign.
When every major conservative host that I know of says, uh-uh, this isn't what we were promised, that's how we get to where we are today.
And you would think after 2010, 2014, 2016, how is it that our representatives were so ill-prepared for this moment to lead at this important time?
They look like the gang that can't shoot straight.
And I'm saying this: the president was not served well by his party in the House of Representatives here.
Why was he put in a position to do their job?
Why did he have to do all the heavy lifting here?
Because the headline's not going to be Paul Ryan screws up.
It's going to be Trump screws up.
And it's no wonder congressional approval is at, what, 20.8%, the real clear politics average.
You know, so I've got some ideas going forward to balance how to fix the mess they've created.
This is just embarrassing for them.
Not for me, for them.
Not for the president, but for the house.
Putting America and Americans first.
Now there's a novel idea.
On the Sean Hannity Show.
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I know it sounds so strange when you're talking about government.
This bill, I predict, is going to be pulled any minute now because I don't think they're going to, they're just not going to have the vote.
The votes aren't there.
It's not going to happen.
And you know, there's a real big part of me that actually thinks that's a good thing.
And you're saying, why, Hennedy, how could that be?
It's not the right bill.
It's not the bill that's going to work.
It's not the bill the way a bill should be brought to the House floor.
It wasn't handled correctly from the get-go.
And that's what's frustrating to me.
You know, you think about how you run your own business, how I run my business.
And, you know, nobody writes the contract, signs it, and then says, oh, okay, now let's go negotiate the terms.
And that's what happened here.
And this is the old order, the old way that Washington works, the D.C. swamp.
And I will say this, the president was not served in this process at all.
And he should have been.
And the House leadership should have handled this differently, especially the president's first piece of major legislation.
Now, why do I think maybe in the end, this is not a bad thing?
Because Obamacare, and this is going to sound very cynical to people, the real death spiral of Obamacare is just going to happen.
Each year, it's dramatically going to show the American people how leftism and statism and top-down governments and abandoning free market competition and all of the things that we conservatives believe in.
It's just going to be so much more transparent, especially this year into next year, which is the death spiral year.
And when I mean death spiral, I mean a death spiral.
And the costs will go through the roof.
And then I think the country is probably going to be ready to hear, well, what are these cooperatives that guys like Hannity have been talking about?
What are the real solutions?
What would a healthcare savings account look like to me and my family?
You know, how can we create a better system that's actually going to work?
So I don't think the country has quite gotten there yet.
Only certain counties, certain parts of the country, the average cost increase is up $5,400.
Millions lost to doctors and plans.
And at the end of the day, though, it didn't have to be this way.
It could have been done differently.
All right, we'll give you all the inside story.
I've talked to so many people today.
I've been on the phone since 7:30 this morning talking to people.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
Your call's also coming up, 800-941-SEAN, toll-free telephone number, and we'll continue.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
30 million people lose their health insurance.
I have not seen any Republican studies as to how many of those people will die, but certainly many thousands of them will die.
Our mothers and our doctors have warned us about poison pills.
Well, let me say that this morning the Republicans are giving to the American people a poison meal.
The American people clearly understand that Trump care will be an unmitigated disaster, and Trump care will lead to increased death, disease, and destitution.
What is it about this, Mr. Speaker, that you don't understand?
You are wrong on this.
Don't let your base push you over the cliff on this bill.
Because of age discrimination in this bill, the age tax, it will put our seniors in the terrible position of having to choose between eating, visiting their doctors, or purchasing medication.
Which one do you, Mr. Speaker, suggest they choose?
I stand in opposition to the Republican Pay More for Less Care Act, under which Americans will suffer from higher health care costs, less coverage, a crushing age tax, and a ransacking of the Medicare Trust Fund, which our seniors depend on for long-term care.
It is an immoral piece of legislation, and as a breast cancer survivor, I urge every member to stand with my sister survivors all across the country who number in the millions to make sure that you don't devastate our health and make sure that we don't have our lives.
What does the GOP stand for?
Get old people.
That's what this bill does.
That's what people are going to vote yes for today.
Health care is a right.
It is not a privilege reserved for a wealthy few.
For what does it profit this body to pass this bill and lose our soul?
This bill is a shame.
It is a disgrace.
Mr. Speaker, today my heart breaks for the disabled, for women, for senior and working families.
I fought too hard and too long to back down now.
I will fight any bill to turn the clock back to a darker time.
I will fight every single attempt to turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a cold shoulder to the sick, to our seniors, and to working families.
Mr. Speaker, I will fight every day, every hour, every minute, and every second.
I pull this bill with every breath and every bone in my body.
We must not give up.
We cannot.
I will not give in.
Not today, not tomorrow, and ever.
Yes, the snowflake music continues.
By the way, this is interesting.
The president won on the latest battle in the dispute over the terrorist travel ban.
Federal judge Virginia ruled today the president's travel ban was justified, increasing the likelihood of the measure may go now before the Supreme Court.
So we'll see where that goes.
Look, there is an upside to all this.
The bill has been pulled.
It's now official.
House vote on the GOP health care bill has been postponed.
You know what the good news is?
Now they can actually, if they want, they can move forward with their economic plan.
They can move forward with all the other issues.
And now they can work quietly behind the scenes as they should have done in the very beginning and get this thing right.
You know, the idea that they didn't is ridiculous.
And, you know, and I can tell you, I know where the blame is going here.
I know that it's headed right towards the Freedom Caucus, and they're all going to blame them.
And, all right, well, they had their list of demands.
So did the moderates have their list of demands.
And, you know, but the problem is when you hide a bill and people are guessing what's in it, when you don't build consensus before you release the bill and nobody has a clue what's in it, and then all of a sudden you release it and surprise everybody, this is the bill, this is it, and it becomes a binary choice or a loyalty test in terms of those that are part of a party, it's ridiculous.
And I can tell you for a fact, I know the leadership didn't speak for weeks to some of these different coalition groups in the lead up to what has happened today.
And I know that certain fixes were made, but I'll give you one example.
They said that I know the Freedom Caucus, for example, they wanted work requirements as part of the bill, one of the components of the bill.
And they said, well, then they said, okay, we'll give you that.
Then they said, well, they're optional.
Well, optional is not a requirement.
And they were willing to go along with that, but that's just a typical Washington bureaucratic swamp that we all despise at this point.
You know, you had threats, you had intimidation, talk of primaries by millionaires.
You know, now the blame is going to go out on television.
You'll see a lot of these guys on all these networks.
It's going to be viewed as a failure.
It's not at all.
It is a setback in the sense.
But I think what it really revealed to me in great shocking detail is just how ill-prepared Republicans have been.
And I don't see that there's really any excuse for this.
I don't think the president should have had to do the heavy lifting on this bill.
He's not the legislative branch.
I think that there should have been consensus built.
I think, you know, with eight years, you know, you would think that they're able to put a bill together that they can cobble together that, yeah, nobody, not everybody's going to like, but it's going to work and going to serve the American people better.
You know, then they've got one side saying, well, this isn't full repeal, but let's do the 2015, well, the 2015 bill wasn't full repeal either, although it was more of a repeal than this part.
You know, why would you do a bill in three parts?
Why not do it all at once?
That never made any sense to me at all whatsoever.
Because what they're asking some groups of people to do is, well, count on us.
We'll get it done in phase two or phase three.
Well, phase three, you need 60 votes in the Senate, so I'm not sure how much phase three would get accomplished.
So, you know, you see weaknesses in here, and the media.
And I'll be honest, one of the things that's so frustrating to me is, you know, the president now finds himself in a position where he's got to work with people that did not support him in his run for the presidency, including the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
I remember that, you know, here's Donald Trump going into Wisconsin in the final weeks of the campaign, and the Speaker's nowhere to be found.
I don't think there was one appearance where Speaker Paul Ryan was with Donald Trump during the campaign.
He was with Mike Pence, but he wasn't with Donald Trump.
And what does it say to the people of Wisconsin when the Speaker of the House doesn't want to be seen with the nominee of his particular party?
And then what does it say when he ends up winning the state of Wisconsin?
It was just poorly managed.
It shows, you know, it's embarrassing for them.
I'm not embarrassed.
I don't really care.
I have health care.
All right.
That's selfish.
But I do care about people that don't have health care.
I do care that the average cost for the average family has gone up $5,400.
I do care that this election was supposed to be about the forgotten men and forgotten women of this country, which is why I gave you all the statistics of the millions more in poverty and on food stamps and out of the labor force and the lowest home ownership rate in 51 years.
I care.
But in the sense that I don't care that it didn't happen today because I'm not in a rush.
I'd rather get it right.
I'd rather people understand it.
Well, now, phase two, which is the discretionary options of Health and Human Services Secretary, you know, remember there's 1,442 instances where the secretary shall, the secretary may.
And in every one of those instances, he has the authority and discretion to make specific changes to the Obamacare bill to end up making it better and more helpful to the American people.
Look, Obamacare led to an increase.
Remember, the promise was Keep Your Doctor, Keep Your Plan, on average, save $5,400, on average, save $2,500 a year per family.
Well, the average family during the Obama years saw their premiums go up $5,400 a year.
Well, nobody can pay that amount of money and survive.
And then they're forced into the exchanges.
I used to use the funnel example when we were debating Obamacare.
The idea eventually is to funnel everybody into one system.
Then we count on the CBO numbers.
The CBO was telling us 24 million Americans will be on the Obamacare exchanges.
Well, it ended up being less than 11 million.
That's why their numbers are absolutely meaningless and useless at the end of the day.
Now, I'm not, look, Republicans are going to have to do what they're going to have to do here.
And the finger pointing, you know, Paul Ryan's going to hold a press conference coming up here in a few minutes.
It's going to be interesting to see what he has to say.
I guess he's going to say, well, the freedom caucus.
Well, I would argue that maybe the way this was handled from the get-go could have been handled better.
Maybe if they would have worked behind the scenes with the differing groups and factions and coalitions that exist within the Republican Party, then maybe that could have led to a better result today or a better bill that was ultimately released here.
And a lot of pressure was brought to bear.
But, you know, I've got to remind you, just give you some historical context.
You know, Reagan was opposed when he had given the initial tax cuts.
Remember, top marginal rates during his presidency went from 70 to 28 percent.
And at one point, there was an adjustment where he went back and was raising taxes.
And there was fierce Republican opposition to that.
George W. Bush, in a presidential debate, Herbert Walker Bush said, read my lips, no new taxes.
Said it at the convention.
And then he was pressured and pressured and pressured and pressured.
And then he gave in to the Democrats.
It ended up being his undoing, but guys like Newt Gingrich said, no, that relationship was never repaired.
This is not the first time, and it doesn't mean we won't survive.
It just means that it is now tabled for today and tabled until maybe they bring it back up again.
If I was Health and Human Services Secretary Price, today I'd be working on the bill that is going to fix the problems that the different groups had with this particular bill.
There's one report in Bloomberg News out about now.
According to some sources, White House officials are ready to blame Paul Ryan for the health care bill.
If it crashes and burns in public, Donald Trump is standing by the House Speaker.
Behind the scenes, the president's aides are planning to blame Ryan if there's an embarrassing defeat.
Well, there's no defeat because there's not going to be a vote today.
And asked whether Ryan asked whether Trump, Ryan, or the Freedom Caucus Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows would be most to blame if the bill fails.
The administration official said, Ryan, the official insisted on anonymity, I just think there's going to be a lot of infighting here.
You know, Ryan, when he went over about two hours ago to the White House, was telling him we don't have the votes.
I heard the vote count was so bad that it wasn't even going to be close in the end.
And the Obamacare ultimatum that, you know, Trump said, take it or leave it.
And remember, Trump had been saying from the get-go, hey, listen, the easier thing to do is let Democrats own health care.
We're going to come in and fix it.
And because it's going to take years to take effect, we're going to be blamed for it.
And he was right about that.
Well, now it's back in the Democrats' lap.
They have it.
They own it.
They can eat it.
And everybody that voted for Obama, you'll understand why.
You know, I wish things weren't as confusing in terms of procedural issues.
You know, what does the average American know about the bird rule?
What does the average American know about the challenges procedurally with reconciliation?
What does the average American know what a cloture vote is?
I mean, if I explained all of these terms on a regular basis, I won't go through them now, but there were procedural challenges with whatever the House ended up doing.
Even earlier today, I saw it didn't matter because the Senate now wasn't planning on taking this bill up until sometime in May anyway.
So if they do want to fix this bill, they have an opportunity to do it.
There were 11 amendments added to the health care bill in the end, some for conservatives to eliminate federal requirements that the plans be comprehensive.
Starting next year, they'd get rid of Obamacare retirement health plans, et cetera.
I guess at this point, there's no real reason for me to go through all of this with you.
Even the House Appropriations chairman opposed this bill, which was a pretty stunning rebuke to the House Speaker.
And that's Rodney, I don't even know how to say his last name.
But anyway, he said, seven years after the enactment of Obamacare, I wanted to support legislation that made positive changes to rescue the health care system in America.
He had been lauded in the Garden State as the most powerful congressman.
Unfortunately, the legislation before the House today is currently unacceptable as it would place significant new costs and barriers to care on my constituents.
So, you know, then, of course, we had the whole debate today over the essentials benefit provisions in this thing.
The amended health care bill was more costly under the new CBO scoring.
Why anyone counts on CBO is beyond me.
But, you know, I will tell you this.
You've got a media that wants the president to fail.
You've got Republicans that never supported him.
I'm not sure some of them really give a rip whether or not he succeeds or not.
Everything dumb that could have been done in the rollout of this bill was done.
No consensus was built for this bill.
Few conversations took place at the time when it was necessary.
They were hoping the pressure of last-minute politicking would get it done, and it didn't.
You know, everything, you know, no one says, you know, anything about the Democrats in all of this.
They were going to oppose everything the Republicans do.
So I just don't feel bad.
If you want me to feel bad today, I really don't.
I don't feel horrible about this.
All right, we're going to get calls in in the next hour.
We also have the latest on Deep State and the Devin Nunez comments.
James Rosen has a report.
Yes, the president was surveilled and the president, when he was president-elect, and his transition team.
So we'll get to that.
Newt Gingrich in the next hour.
Louis Gomert in the next hour.
We'll find out what's happening on the ground in Washington.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-SHOW.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Louis Gomert, he's going to try and check in at the top of the hour here.
We'll also get Newt Kingrich's reaction to all that has gone down today.
We have the other news of the day we've got to get to, not the least of which a big report by James Rosen at Fox News.
He, like circa news reporters John Solomon and Sarah Carter, are now revealing, and Devin Nunez now revealing, yes, surveillance against Donald Trump took place.
This is beyond a huge issue, and it is being ignored by the media.
And the implications in terms of how the deep state is releasing intelligence, an opposition party being spied on during and after an election is beyond the pale.
They better have a justification for that straight ahead.
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All right, here we are, hour two Sean Hannity show toll-free.
Our telephone number is 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
If you're just joining us, the House has pulled the health care bill that was to be voted on this afternoon.
The votes are not there for this bill.
And the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, is expected any moment to give comments.
And I assume at some point today we will hear from the President.
And let me first go to Louis Gomert, who is joining us.
He is a member of the Freedom Caucus.
How are you, sir?
President Trump, by the way, will make a statement shortly.
Congressman, how are you?
Well, I've been better, but thank you, Sean.
And yeah, I'm a member of the Freedom Caucus.
You helped talk me into that.
And I appreciate you very much.
But I love you like a brother.
You've been awesome.
But this bill, the way it was done, reminded me a lot of four years ago when we had a terrible border security bill that Boehner's assistant apparently had written in private.
And once we finally got it on Tuesday before we were supposed to vote on Thursday, they had all the votes they needed before anybody ever saw it because they were assured this is going to be a great bill based on our principles.
The difference in that and today is when people saw the bill was a problem and people were mad at each other, conservatives, moderates, whatnot, we had a conference like we just had.
And at that conference, a lot of guys got up and said, we still know this is a problem and we need to pass a bill.
Why don't we get all the interested people in a room until we agree on something we can all vote for?
Sean, that's what we did.
It took us two and a half hours that night.
But the difference is, I don't know, maybe there are people that are too upset to do something like that today.
But we have got to come back to the issue of health care.
I don't expect the president to do it because, my gosh, he did yeoman work on a bill that really didn't do what we needed to do.
So I but we're tell you what, Louie, we have the worst line imaginable.
And if it's driving my ears nuts, I don't want to drive our listeners away because of the clicking and the and the bad signal we have.
I'll tell you what, we're going to call you right back now, and we'll get back to Louie.
Now, we expect the president is going to make statements shortly.
When he makes his statements, we'll carry that.
The speaker of the house is about to hold a news conference.
We're going to dip in and out of that.
Let me just tell stations along the Sean Hannity Show network, we might be blowing off some breaks here.
We'll make you aware of it as we get to our break structure, depending on where we are in terms of the program and timing, et cetera, et cetera.
But if you're just joining us, the bill has been pulled from consideration, at least for now.
And I would expect they go back a little bit to the drawing board and do what I had been suggesting they do for the longest time, and that's build a consensus bill.
I fully understand that there are different factions within the Republican Party, just like there's different factions within the Democratic Party.
Actually, one upside is this is not groupthink like the Democratic Party.
Democrats are told to vote a certain way, they vote a certain way.
And you've got a lot of different competing voices in the Republican Party.
But, you know, my big complaint in all of this is I think the consensus for the bill should have been built before they actually released the bill.
And I think when they released a bill and they had not consulted with some of the best, brightest conservative think tanks in the country, and they don't consult with some of the differing factions within their party, and then they just release a bill and it's a surprise to everybody, and they expect everybody to just get in line.
And then when people have legitimate concerns about whether or not the bill says or is able to do what they say it's going to do, and then they have this cockamany idea, well, we'll do it in three parts.
It just never made sense to me in any way.
And I was just hoping that through the course of negotiations, they would be able to get it right.
Now, I think this actually gives them the breathing room to stand back and build the bill that actually does the job of repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Now, there certainly are the procedural issues that we have all talked about.
You know, look, I know some of you might be really angry today.
I'm not angry.
I'm not angry at all.
I'd rather wait and get a bill that's right than what we have going on here.
And I understand it's frustrating.
The entire process of legislating is frustrating.
So I look at this more as an opportunity today.
Do they look like they were ill-prepared after they got the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016?
Yeah, they look bad.
But if you learn from your mistakes, sometimes we could end up with the bill that actually saves the health care system in this country.
Louis Gomehert is back with us.
We're awaiting both the President and Speaker Ryan.
They will both speak shortly.
You there?
Yeah, I'm sure.
I hope that's better.
What's going on?
Well, shucks.
Shucks.
Shucks, Louis.
Look, I'm just saying, I don't necessarily think, you know, by the time we get to Monday, nobody's going to really care.
You know, we're just in the same position we were.
But we didn't pass a bill that was done.
I don't understand the piecemeal side of this, number one.
Number two, what I had been suggesting both on air and off-air to people is build consensus.
You know, this opportunity doesn't have to be wasted here.
We don't have to take, you know, we don't have to stop working on health care now.
But now you can build the bill that everybody, you know, not everybody's not going to get everything they want, but build the bill that's going to pass, but also a bill that serves the American people, which is what this should be about anyway.
Right.
Can you hear me, Sean?
Yeah, I can hear you fine.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, you're exactly right.
And this is an opportunity.
But, you know, the Speaker of San Lucas don't talk today.
And he may be right.
Maybe feelings are running so high right now.
It'd be hard to get together like we did four years ago and work out a bill that everybody can.
Louis, hang on one second.
The Speaker of the House is running to the podium here.
Here he is.
And well, we're feeling those growing pains today.
We came really close today, but we came up short.
I spoke to the President just a little while ago, and I told him that the best thing I think to do is to pull this bill, and he agreed with that decision.
I will not sugarcoat this.
This is a disappointing day for us.
Doing big things is hard.
All of us, all of us, myself included, we will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.
But ultimately, this all kind of comes down to a choice.
Are all of us willing to give a little to get something done?
Are we willing to say yes to the good, to the very good, even if it's not the perfect?
Because if we're willing to do that, we still have such an incredible opportunity in front of us.
There remains so much that we can do to help improve people's lives, and we will.
Because that's, I got to tell you, that's why I'm here.
And I know it's why every member of this conference is here to make this a better country.
We want American families to feel more confident in their lot in life.
We want the next generation to know that, yes, the best days of this country are still ahead of us.
I'm really proud of the bill that we produced.
It would make a dramatic improvement in our health care system and provide relief by people hurting under Obamacare.
And what's probably most troubling is the worst is yet to come with Obamacare.
I'm also proud of the long, inclusive, member-driven process that we had.
Any member who wanted to engage constructively, to offer ideas, to improve this bill, they could.
And I want to thank so many members who helped make this bill better.
A lot of our members put a lot of hard work into this.
I also want to thank the President.
I want to thank the Vice President.
I want to thank Tom Price, Mick Mulvaney, and the entire White House team.
The President gave his all in this effort.
He did everything he possibly could to help people see the opportunity that we have with this bill.
He's really been fantastic.
Still, we've got to do better and we will.
I absolutely believe that.
This is a setback, no two ways about it.
But it is not the end of the story because I know that every man and woman in this conference is now motivated more than ever to step up our game, to deliver on our promises.
I know that everyone is committed to seizing this incredible opportunity that we have, and I sure am.
Mr. Speaker, two questions on health crisis.
One is, talk about real people.
Now you've got a law in the book, the former character that you guys don't like, the White House doesn't like, but it's going to be the law for the mercy of the future.
Do you plan to try to help it along and prop it up, or do you plan to just let it whither it is?
This is the problem.
I worry, the question is, is we kind of prop it along and try and prop it up.
It is so fundamentally flawed, I don't know that it's possible.
What we're really worried about is, and you've heard me say this all along, is the coming premium increases that are coming with a death-spiraling health care system.
That is my big concern.
We just didn't quite get consensus today.
What we have is a member-driven process to try and get consensus.
We came very close, but we did not get that consensus.
That's why I thought the wise thing to do is not proceed with a vote, but to pull the bill and see what we can do.
But I don't think the law, as it is fashioned or anything close to it, is really going to be able to survive.
Work on legislation now to try to cut it.
We'll see.
We're going to go back and figure out what the next steps are.
Yeah.
Can you explain if it is the conservatives of the Freedom Caucus who effectively drove out your predecessor, John Voehner?
Are they responsible for the defeat here today?
Well, I don't want to cast blame.
There is a block of no votes that we had that is why this didn't pass.
There were a sufficient number of votes that prevented it from passing, and they didn't change their votes.
We were close.
Some of the members of that caucus were voting with us, but not enough were.
And therefore, and I met with their chairman earlier today, and he made it clear to me that the votes weren't going to be there from their team, and that was sufficient to provide the vote, the balance to not have this bill passed.
Mr. Speaker, you all swept the House, won the majority with a promise to repeal Obamacare.
The majority in the Senate with a promise to repeal Obamacare.
The White House with the promise to repeal Obamacare.
How do you go home to your constituents and send all of your members home to their constituents saying, you know what?
It's not even 100 days into the administration.
Sorry, folks.
We just can't figure it out.
Danny, it's a really good question.
I wish I had a better answer for you.
I really believe that Obamacare is a law that is collapsing.
It's hurting families.
It's not working.
It was designed in a fundamentally flawed way.
We believe this bill is the best way to go, but we just didn't quite get the consensus to get there.
Two questions for you if you don't mind.
The bottom line is Obamacare right now remains the law of the land.
Is that going to change in 2017?
Yeah, I don't know what else to say other than Obamacare is the law of the land.
It's going to remain the law of the land until it's replaced.
We did not have quite the votes to replace this law.
And so, yeah, we're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.
I don't know how long it's going to take us to replace this law.
My worry is Obamacare is going to be getting even worse.
Actually, I think we were probably doing the Democrats a favor.
I think we were doing the architects of Obama a favor by passing this law before it gets even worse.
Well, I guess that favor is not going to be given to them, and it's going to get worse.
And so I don't think the architects of Obamacare, I'm sure they may be pleased right now, but when they see how bad this thing gets, based on all the projections we're being told by the plans that are participating in Obamacare, I don't think they're going to like that either.
Look, five states, you got one plan left, one choice.
Over a third of the counties in America, one plan left.
And the kinds of projections we're being told from the people providing health insurance to these people and plans, it's going to get even worse.
And so I don't think the architects of Obamacare envision this future.
It's certainly not one we want for the American people.
And I wish we had the kind of consensus we needed to bring a bill to the floor to pass and replace it, but we just don't have that right now.
Mr. Speaker, you'll have to do it.
Thank you.
What about the political capital that was burned here?
We do have to keep the government open.
On the Sean Hannity Show Network, this is an optional break here.
We're going to continue our coverage and blow the first break and continue with Speaker Ryan.
We also expect to hear from the President any moment when that happens.
We'll bring that to you as well.
We did everything we could to get consensus.
This is how governing works when you're in the majority.
We need to get 216 people to agree with each other to write legislation.
Not 210, not 215.
We need 216 people in the House to agree with each other on how to write a piece of legislation.
We didn't have 216 people.
We were close, but we did not have 216 people.
And that's how legislating works.
And so now we're going to move on with the rest of our agenda because we have big, ambitious plans to improve people's lives in this country.
We want to secure the border.
We want to rebuild our military.
We want to get the deficit under control.
We want infrastructure and we want tax reform.
To the last question you asked me about tax reform, Chad, yes, this does make tax reform more difficult, but it does not in any way make it impossible.
We will proceed with tax reform.
We will continue with tax reform.
That's an issue I know quite a bit about.
I used to run that committee.
I spoke with the President, the Treasury Secretary, and his economic advisors earlier today about tax reform.
So we are going to proceed with tax reform.
This makes it clearly more difficult.
You know how the numbers work.
It's about a trillion dollars.
But that just means the Obamacare taxes stay with Obamacare.
We're going to go fix the rest of the tax code.
You don't think what is passed with pro-law here that this portends bad things with?
I don't think so.
I don't think this is prologue for other future things because members realize there are other parts of our agenda that people have even more agreement on on what to achieve.
We have even more agreement on the need and the nature of tax reform on funding the government, on rebuilding the military, on securing the border.
This issue had a big difference of opinion, not whether we should repeal and replace Obamacare, but just how we should replace it.
And that is the growing pains of governing.
We were a 10-year opposition party where being against things was easy to do.
You just had to be against it.
And now, in three months' time, we try to go to a governing party where we actually have to get 216 people to agree with each other on how we do things.
And we weren't just quite there today.
We will get there, but we weren't there today.
I was wondering if you're going to move ahead with phase two and three, HHS phase two, and here with phase three legislation.
And also, you can just talk about how the conference is feeling right now.
The conference is let down.
The conference is disappointed.
The conference, we are on the cusp of fulfilling a promise that we made.
We were on the cusp of achieving an ambition that we've all had for seven years, and we came a little short.
We were close, but not quite there.
On your other issues, this bill would have made what we call phase two much, much better.
Nevertheless, I think there are some things that the Secretary of HHS can do to try and sort of stabilize things, but really we needed this bill to make it better.
For instance, risk pools.
We believe the smarter way to help people with pre-existing conditions get affordable coverage while bringing down the health care costs for everybody else is through reinsurance, risk, or risk-sharing pools, which this bill supplied for the states.
That's not now going to happen, and therefore he won't be able to deploy that policy tool that we think is better than Obamacare.
So we do lose a lot of the tools we wanted to help improve people's lives and bring down health care costs in this country.
Thank you very much for that.
All right, that's the Speaker of the House.
He's wrapping things up.
He's saying goodbye there.
If you are just joining us, they didn't have it.
He says they were very close to building consensus.
It was not about whether to repeal, but how to repeal.
He said and predicted we will get there.
Also said that phases two and three, certain aspects of that will be done by the Health and Human Services Secretary Price.
He said that the caucus, the conference overall, is disappointed.
He mentioned that Obamacare is collapsing of its own weight and will at some point have to be fixed in some way, shape, matter, or form.
Where are we with time there, Lynda?
Are we going to keep?
Okay.
So, you know, listen, there's not much more to say.
When he mentioned that we need consensus, he's right.
And this is where, I guess, my frustration comes in: the consensus wasn't built before the rollout of the bill.
And I think that maybe these are growing pains.
And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that you have people that are standing on their principles.
Rand Paul had predicted this was going to happen because he had been working closely with groups like the Freedom Caucus.
The Freedom Caucus is not the enemy of those in the House.
They have principles, as do the more moderate members.
They have their principles.
And unfortunately, it's a coalition party, and you just can't say, ah, to vote for this.
You know, every single member has a responsibility to their own district.
Did mention, too, that there is a big difference being the opposition, which is at times a little bit more easy because you just throw rocks and say, this isn't working.
This sucks.
This isn't working.
There's some truth about this.
But, you know, I think that this is beyond growing pains.
You know, what's really going to be the test is going to be, all right, where do they go from here?
As they move forward with issues involving spending and spending cuts and they move towards energy independence and education and building up the military and immigration and certainly the budget and certainly some type of tax reform.
You know, maybe they will change the process and before they unveil all of what unveil a bill that nobody saw, maybe they'll bring people into the process so that it won't be this difficult.
Work out those problems behind closed doors, which is what I've been saying for before.
Louis Gomert's still with us.
And Louis, what'd you think of this speaker's comments?
Well, I mean, I thought they were good comments.
But in all the discussion over the last few days, one of the things that had been brought up was happened before I got here, and that was Medicare Part D and how they left the vote open for a record three hours, never been done, left open that long in congressional history.
And there was some thought that maybe they ought to do that again, and they continued to make promises.
But what it comes back to is every time there is a problem with health care, even among any Republicans, they think the answer is if we can just get more control to the federal government, it will all work out.
And this was going to give great control to somebody I fully trust, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, you know him, you trust him, Tom Price.
But we're supposed to hope that we can pull the power back by the time the next Democratic Kathleen civilians comes along.
That was just not a gamble worth taking.
So anyway, the answer is not more federal control.
We were told, well, no, but this will give him power also to create a high-risk federal pool, billions of dollars, because the states can't do it quite yet.
And then maybe within five years, we can devolve that back to the states.
I mean, it has never worked that we take over something and then we send it back without having massive strings that keep it a bad program.
So I still don't want us to give up on fixing health care.
It is a disaster.
We know Obamacare is in a death spiral, we're told.
We passed a very good bill with over 400 votes this week that eliminated from the House side, it eliminated the exemption for health insurance companies under the antitrust laws.
That, once it passed the Senate, and I bet it will, and be bipartisan down there, it'll go to the president.
He'll sign it, and that will help stop monopolistic practices in the health care law.
That's a good start.
But there are so many things that we can all agree on.
And I know that this speaker, like the last speaker, says, no, we've had listening sessions.
The trouble with the listening sessions are that we go in, everybody tells them what they think, and then they go in and somebody privately writes the bill, and we don't see it until it's all done.
And then we were told, okay, here's the bill.
It's going through committee, and they got everybody to vote against any amendment that the Democrats have.
Louis, I have to hump on the constraints of time here, and I've got to let you go, but you've been great, and there's an opportunity here.
I would go behind closed doors with all these factions and build the bill.
I think that's the simple way to do it.
All right, we appreciate it.
Newt Gingrich weighs in when we get back.
800-941-SHAWN.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
You've all heard me say this before.
Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains.
And well, we're feeling those growing pains today.
We came really close today, but we came up short.
I will not sugarcoat this.
This is a disappointing day for us.
Doing big things is hard.
All of us, all of us, myself included.
We will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.
All right, there's the Speaker of the House talking about pulling the health care bill.
I guess, in some ways, back to the drawing board, joining us now with Reaction, former Speaker of the House Newt Kingrich.
I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing in this sense.
That, all right, so they released the bill.
Nobody had seen the bill.
And now they have an opportunity to get it right.
And that is bring in all the different varying coalitions that make up the Republican Party in the House and build the consensus bill, write it, and then it will pass.
What's so hard about that?
Look, I think that this was the right decision, and I think this is the legislative process.
People forget that when Nancy Pelosi introduced the Obamacare, it was July of 2009.
And when Obama signed it, it was March of 2010.
It took them eight months, and they were doing something easy.
They were giving stuff away.
We're doing something much, much harder, which is reforming a system that's financially unsustainable and putting together a totally different approach.
And I think that it is significant that they did everything they could.
They worked as hard as they could.
They argued as hard as they could.
In the end, they were short.
And I thought that it was very important that they pulled the bill rather than hit a major defeat.
And I think this gives them a chance for the president to say, look, I'm going to assign Dr. Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, to work with the House and Senate to develop a bill that is popular, that does meet the key needs, and that is in a position to keep his own campaign pledges.
And when that's done, I'll be glad to look at it.
But until then, you know, Trump ought to focus on jobs, on tax reform, on infrastructure, and on a range of things that keep us moving forward.
I loved his message today about the company that is going to be creating 25,000 more American jobs.
I mean, you know, he has a lot of good things going on, and he has no reason to get himself tied into some kind of single fight that seems to go on without end.
So they made a good run at it.
They did everything they could.
Now it's the time to.
I want to talk about the process, though.
Look, maybe I'm just, and you and I, you got a little testy with me, by the way, on TV one night over this very topic.
And I'm sure you remember.
And I was saying to you, well, maybe I'm just an outsider, but it seems to me that they're writing the contract before they agreed to the terms of what the contract was going to be.
And I think they had it backwards.
In other words, there was no consensus built on this bill.
Nobody had seen the bill before they rolled out the bill.
There was a lot of suspicion that there were going to be things in there that nobody liked.
And then, you know, in the two weeks leading up to it, I had one congressman after another, one senator after another saying, well, I hear this is in there, and that's not going to be good if this is in there, and that this might be in there, and that's not going to be good.
Then the bill gets released, and it ends up all of the rumors turn out to be true.
And then you have this intramural civil war break out on national TV and radio.
And to me, I think the better way to have built it would have been to get all the varying factions, which means the moderates, which means the Freedom Caucus, the study group, the Tuesday group, the Saturday group, the Sunday group, whatever group it is, and get a deal hammered out and build off that deal the principal points that you all agree on and a bill that's going to pass.
It seems that they got it asked backwards to me, and you think I'm nuts.
No, I did not say you were nuts.
Well, you rolled your eyes on national TV and basically you were acting like I was nuts.
Well, no, I said that.
By the way, don't you hate when I give it back?
No, I don't mind if you give it back.
I just want you to be accurate.
What I said was— You just called me Obama and Clinton.
I can't believe it.
Go ahead.
No.
I said there are several ways to do this.
And if they, when you and I talked, if you go back and look at that date, if they had been sitting down every day from then until today and listening, and I think you have it exactly right.
It's not just listening to the Freedom Caucus.
You had centrist conservatives who were going to vote no.
You had moderates who were going to vote no.
And you had the Freedom Caucus conservatives who are going to vote no.
Now, when you're losing people on all three fronts, maybe the bill needs to be done.
You know, maybe you've got to really rethink it.
And I think that what I was saying the other night was it's not, it wasn't necessarily how I would have done it, but one way to go forward is you put in something as a placeholder, and then you start improving it and you start working on it and you get everybody to react to it.
That's a totally legitimate way to do it.
Their challenge was that they tried to rush the system.
They tried to get everything done before they had serious vote counts.
And they weren't listening not just to the conservatives, but also the moderates.
But the other point I want to make for everybody in our audience to really understand, this is the hardest single legislative thing President Trump will try to do in his first term.
Margaret Thatcher would never touch.
Hey, Mr. Speaker, I would never do this.
Hang on, the president is speaking right here.
I want you to hear this and react to this.
Hang on.
It was a very, very tight margin.
We had no Democrat support.
We had no votes from the Democrats.
They weren't going to give us a single vote, so it's a very difficult thing to do.
I've been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode.
It is exploding right now.
Many states have big problems.
Almost all states have big problems.
I was in Tennessee the other day, and they'd lost half of their state in terms of an insurer.
They had no insurer.
And that's happening to many other places.
I was in Kentucky the other day and similar things are happening.
So Obamacare is exploding with no Democrat support.
We couldn't quite get there.
We're just a very small number of votes short in terms of getting our bill passed.
A lot of people don't realize how good our bill was because they were viewing phase one.
But when you add phase two, which was mostly the signings of Secretary Price, who's behind them, and you add phase three, which I think we would have gotten, it became a great bill.
Premiums would have gone down and it would have been very stable, it would have been very strong.
But that's okay.
But we're very, very close.
And again, I think what will happen is Obamacare unfortunately will explode.
It's going to have a very bad year.
Last year you had over 100% increases in various places.
In Arizona, I understand it's going up very rapidly again, like it did last year.
Last year was 116%.
Many places, 50%, 60%, 70%.
I guess it averaged whatever the average was, very, very high.
And this year should be much worse for Obamacare.
So what would be really good with no Democrat support if the Democrats, when it explodes, which it will soon, if they got together with us and got a real health care bill, I'd be totally open to it.
And I think that's going to happen.
I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, because now they own Obamacare.
They own it, 100% own it.
And this is not a Republican health care.
This is not anything but a Democrat health care.
And they have Obamacare for a little while longer until it ceases to exist, which it will at some point in the near future.
And just remember, this is not our bill.
This is their bill.
Now, when they all become civilized and get together and try and work out a great health care bill for the people of this country, we're open to it.
We're totally open to it.
I want to thank the Republican Party.
I want to thank Paul Ryan.
He worked very, very hard.
I will tell you that.
He worked very, very hard.
Tom Price and Mike Pence, who's right here, our vice president, our great vice president, everybody worked hard.
I worked as a team player and would have loved to have seen it passed.
But again, I think you know I was very clear because I think there wasn't a speech I made or very few where I didn't mention that perhaps the best thing that could happen is exactly what happened today because we'll end up with a truly great health care bill in the future after this mess known as Obamacare explodes.
So I want to thank everybody for being here.
It will go very smoothly, I really believe.
I think this is something that certainly was an interesting period of time.
We all learned a lot.
We learned a lot about royalty.
We learned a lot about the vote-getting process.
We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in, obviously, both the Senate and in the House.
So it's been, certainly for me, it's been a very interesting experience.
But in the end, I think it's going to be an experience that leads to an even better health care plan.
So thank you all very much, and I'll see you soon.
Thank you.
The President giving his statement in the Oval Office.
Mr. Speaker, your reaction.
I thought it was a very good statement.
I thought it was very clear.
And I think he's taking this in the right spirit.
I mean, one of the things for people to remember is this is a guy everybody was afraid was going to be a dictator, but he's not.
He's just turned out to be the best legislative negotiator we had.
He listened to everybody.
He worked very hard to try to get this thing done.
And I think that President Trump probably has a better sense of how complicated legislative processes are today.
But he, I think, can hold his head up and say, look, you know, he tackled a really, really, really hard thing.
And I think that he is going to come back with other bills that are going to be easy to pass.
And ultimately, I'm convinced Dr. Price is going to be capable of bringing together the House and Senate and getting a bill that will actually be very popular and have a lot of support.
So this is a tough series of lessons to learn.
I actually thought Speaker Ryan's comments were right exactly the right tone.
This is a hard thing to do.
There are some tough lessons to learn.
If they will keep that attitude and really spend a week or two thinking about the lessons to learn, this could be one of the real turning points that strengthens this administration and actually gives it a better future.
You know, I got to be honest.
I think the same thing.
And, you know, I think, look, there are certain things that are now going to unfold.
I think at the end of the day, we're going to look back, and this is going to probably be just a minor hiccup.
My big criticism is that the bill was kept secret.
Nobody shared in it.
Two weeks before it's released, they started saying, well, I think this is in it.
If that's in it, that's not good.
And criticism began to mount.
Then it was released, and people hadn't been consulted.
And I think this has got to be far more transparent and, frankly, done behind the scenes because the coalitions within both parties have to find agreement.
Nobody's going to get everything they want at the end of the day.
But, you know, to have this dropped on you and then, all right, now we start playing horse trading games here.
I think all of that should have been done behind the scenes, behind closed doors, with every faction negotiating in good faith.
Is that a better way to proceed?
Well, actually, what I would hope they do now, because, you know, look, this is life and death.
This is almost a fifth of the economy.
I'd rather see them go in the opposite direction.
Let's get it out in the open.
Let's go home and talk about it.
And let's not just talk in terms of anti-Obamacare.
What's the health system we need that gives every American a chance to live the longest life at the lowest cost with the greatest convenience?
How do we invent that system?
It's clearly not the current system, but frankly, it wasn't the system that led us to Obamacare.
I mean, the objective reality is that that system doesn't have to be a problem.
Well, what I'm talking about is when you're actually getting to the bill part, like, for example, we put on this program, Dr. Umber.
This is the guy in Wichita.
I told you about this guy.
I think you even wanted his number.
You know, he built a concierge service for the average individual, 50 bucks a month.
It covers everything.
You know, directly negotiates with the pharmaceutical companies.
You get an x-ray for 48 cents.
You get an MRI for pennies on the dollar.
And then you couple that with a catastrophic plan, and you're covered for everything.
But my point to you is, so why not have that guy in for an open public hearing?
Why not have somebody design the amendment that would implement that, have it all out in the open, have everybody be able to look at it, talk about it, feel it, ask tough questions about it?
These things don't need to be done in secret.
And in fact, in a healthy, free society where everybody's worried about their health care and everybody's worried about their pocketbook, these really big decisions need to be done out in the open.
I don't have a problem with those negotiations because then I think the public gets educated.
I think what I'm saying is before you release a bill, there's got to be that consensus.
There's an instinct.
Absolutely.
And I think, but I think you may want to grow the bill so that by the time you get to turning it into the formal last bill, you've been through four, five, six different iterations.
Different committees and subcommittees have marked it up.
People have really thought about it at length.
You know, the legislative process works best when the American people get to be part of it.
That's a great idea.
You know what?
You convinced me.
We'll have more on this tonight on Hannity.
You're going to join us tonight, Mr. Speaker.
And thank you as always for being with us.
We appreciate it.
It's going to be very exciting.
All right, 800-941, Sean Tolfrey telephone number.
Does Roundup Information Overload is next?
We have a new report from my colleague at Fox News, Jim Rosen, talking about, yeah, there was surveillance against Donald Trump.
We'll have an update on that when we get back.
Sarah Daniel Horowitz will join us, and Chris Jacobs will join us on that, the latest on healthcare as well.
All right, when we come back, we've got a lot to get to today, including, yes, Jim Rosen, Fox News, another source to him confirming, collaborating what we've been telling you, that, yes, Donald Trump was surveilled in Trump Tower while being the president-elect and including his staff.
We'll get to all of that and your calls and comments in the final hour.
And yes, our Friday concert series continues.
We've been promising the American people that we will repeal and
replace this broken law because it's collapsing and it's failing families.
And tomorrow we're proceeding.
Do you have the vote?
Do you have the vote?
What is it about this, Mr. Speaker, that you don't understand?
You are wrong on this.
Don't let your base push you over the cliff on this bill.
Holding them accountable.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
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Sean Hannity.
Welcome to the new Sean Hannity Show.
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Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour here on the Sean Hannity show.
All right, so big breaking news day, a lot on the healthcare.
Last hour we heard from the president and Paul Ryan.
Let's play a little bit in case you're just getting in your car and headed home.
Let's get you up to speed.
You've all heard me say this before.
Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains.
And well, we're feeling those growing pains today.
We came really close today, but we came up short.
I will not sugarcoat this.
This is a disappointing day for us.
Doing big things is hard.
All of us.
All of us, myself included.
We will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.
Obamacare is the law of the land.
It's going to remain the law of the land until it's replaced.
We did not have quite the votes to replace this law.
And so, yeah, we're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.
I don't know how long it's going to take us to replace this law.
We were a 10-year opposition party where being against things was easy to do.
You just had to be against it.
And now, in three months' time, we try to go to a governing party where we actually have to get 216 people to agree with each other on how we do things.
And we weren't just quite there today.
We will get there, but we weren't there today.
Is it now your intention to go for tax reform or what's next on your?
We'll probably be going right now for tax reform, which we could have done earlier, but this really would have worked out better if we could have had some Democrat support.
Remember this, we had no Democrat support.
So now we're going to go for tax reform, which I've always liked.
You're confident in Speaker Ryan's leadership and his ability to get things done.
Yes, I am.
I like Speaker Ryan.
He worked very, very hard.
A lot of different groups.
He's got a lot of factions, and there's been a long history of liking and disliking, even within the Republican Party, long before I got here.
But I've had a great relationship with the Republican Party.
It seems that both sides like Trump, and that's good.
And you see that, I guess, more clearly than anybody.
But we've had a great, I'm not going to speak badly about anybody within the party, but certainly there's a big history.
I think Paul really worked hard.
And I would say that we will probably start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform that'll be next.
Mr. President, is it fair for Americans to let Obamacare explode?
Well, it's going to happen.
There's not much you can do about it.
It's going to bad things are going to happen to Obamacare.
There's not much you can do to help it.
I've been saying that for a year and a half.
I said, look, eventually, it's not sustainable.
The insurance companies are leaving.
You know that.
They're leaving one by one as quick as you can leave.
And you have states, in some cases, soon will not be covered.
So there's no way out of that.
But the one thing that was happening as we got closer and closer, everybody was talking about how wonderful it was.
And now it will go back to real life.
People will see how bad it is.
And it's getting much worse.
You know, I said the other day when President Obama left, 17, he knew he wasn't going to be here.
17 is going to be a very, very bad year for Obamacare.
Very, very bad.
You're going to have explosive premium increases.
And your deductibles are so high people don't even get to use it.
So they'll go with that for a little while.
And I honestly believe, I know some of the Democrats and they're good people.
I honestly believe the Democrats will come to us and say, look, let's get together and get a great health care bill or plan that's really great for the people of our country.
And I think that's going to happen.
You could have passed the bill in the House without any Democratic support.
Why do you think you weren't able to craft a deal among the Republican Party?
Well, we were very close.
We were just probably anywhere from 10 to 15 votes short.
Could have even been closer than that.
You'll never know because you never know how they vote.
But in the end, I think we would have been 10 votes, maybe closer.
The president, his comments from earlier today, Paul Ryan's comments earlier today.
You know, I take the position this is an opportunity to now begin the process of starting over and getting it right.
Anyway, news roundup, information overload hour.
Sarah Carter from Circa News at the bottom of the hour.
Joining us first, though, Daniel Horowitz, our friend from the Conservative Review, the senior editor, Chris Jacobs, senior healthcare policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
And welcome both of you.
And by the way, Chris was a former health care advisor to then Congressman Mike Pence, both health care experts, completely against this particular bill.
All right, so I assume both of you are actually probably happy that now there's an opportunity to hit the reset button and start over.
Daniel.
No, absolutely.
Look, many of us were prepared for years to immediately repeal Obamacare.
The pledge to the country was full repeal.
The fifth sentence of Paul Ryan's better way document declared that Obamacare must be fully repealed so we could, quote, start over and take a new approach.
They chose not to do that.
They chose to keep Obamacare in the most insolvent way.
So if we are going to do something that is not repeal of Obamacare, which by the way is not the pledge, so then we have to, A, admit that and be honest about it, but B, ensure that it has some solvency.
And it was quite evident that you can't do that late at night in the 11th hour on a bill that's already polling at 17%.
So let's start new.
I like what the speaker just told you a half an hour ago, that we need to have a public debate, relitigate the case against Obamacare so people know exactly what's going wrong and give a vision.
And I think Trump should use the bully pulpit to give a series of policy speeches about what free market health care should look like.
And what's your take on it, Chris?
And at any point, did you talk to the vice president during this process?
Well, yes, Sean.
We did meet with the vice president, I, and several conservative health care leaders a couple of weeks ago and made the same points that conservatives have been raising publicly over the last week, that we need to actually repeal the regulations that have been raising premiums.
That was one of the major disputes between the conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and the administration and the House leadership, because we actually want a full repeal of Obamacare because only full repeal of Obamacare is actually going to be a good idea.
Well, let me ask you about that because as everybody now knows, it's not as easy because of all the procedural hurdles that exist in the Senate, reconciliation, the bird rule, all this nonsense, getting to cloture, et cetera.
And even the 2015 bill that everybody voted for and agreed on was not a full repeal.
It did repeal more, but it was not a full repeal.
Well, that's correct, Sean.
But actually, having worked in the Senate and gone through some of these issues on budget reconciliation, you can actually repeal a lot of these regulations through reconciliation.
And the House bill that was just pulled repealed some of the regulations, but it didn't repeal all of them.
So there was no rhyme or reasoning to the argument, well, we can repeal this one, but we can't repeal that one.
Well, if you can repeal one, you should be able to repeal all of them.
That's what we've been arguing.
Well, I agree with that.
What about the flexibility?
See, one of the dangers, and I had Secretary Price on the program, and I know, Daniel, you wrote about it because I had your article in front of me as I was interviewing him yesterday on the program.
And there are 1,442 examples inside the Obamacare bill where the Secretary shall or the Secretary may, which offers probably the broadest amount of opportunity or discretion that any Secretary of any Cabinet position has.
The danger to me is, okay, you don't repeal that provision.
That's great for Secretary Price because I believe he'll do the right thing, but it's not going to be good if Kathleen Sebelius has a return to her position one day or somebody like her.
No, absolutely, Sean.
And the thing is, you need market certainty.
The insurers need to know that we're not going to regulate you, but we're not going to subsidize you.
So you have to compete for the share of the consumer business rather than for a narrowly tailored path of government regs and subsidies.
Also, a lot of this is written into statute.
Yes, there is some flexibility, but you're really limited.
And by the way, interestingly enough, the Democrats hold an 11 to 0 majority on the D.C. district court and an insurmountable majority on the appellate level.
So any litigation, we will lose on this issue.
And frankly, the Democrats will have statute for once on their side.
But moreover, the question is, do Republicans really want to get rid of it?
We're hearing a lot of excuses, a lot of process excuses that are kind of dubious.
But do they actually want to?
And I think this is what was being litigated behind closed doors with the Tuesday group.
They all say they don't like Obamacare and they ran against it, but then they say they want to keep the key element that drove up prices.
Until that issue is resolved, we will not wind up repealing Obamacare.
Well, if you're telling me that there are Republicans that secretly want to keep this bill, then, you know, that is beyond any comprehension that I have.
And if that's true, they're going to be outed at some point in as much as they're not going to be able to hide.
I know for a fact, everybody that I know that is a Republican, I don't think there was much disagreement about repealing it.
I just think it's a solution.
What I never understood about this is nobody saw the bill before they released it.
There was no consensus built before it was released.
And I concede, I understand there are different factions, moderates, more liberal Republicans in the House that make up a coalition.
But then you got the conservatives, you know, the Republican study group, the Tuesday group, the Saturday group, the Sunday group, the Freedom Caucus.
You know, two weeks before the rollout, they still didn't have consensus.
Everybody's speculating, well, I'm hearing this is in it, and that doesn't sound good.
And then they release it, and immediately, once people get to see it for the first time, they're tearing it apart, and they have this big civil war on TV and on radio, you know, amongst their own party.
And to me, I just think that was a stupid way to do it.
And I can't blame anybody other than the House leadership.
I don't know why they did it that way.
Thoughts?
Chris?
Yeah, I'd agree that we didn't see legislation.
The first thing we saw was a leaked draft, and it was probably leaked from some K-Street lobbyist that was in there helping to write the bill.
But I think it was a very rushed process.
And we spent the last seven years as conservatives, as Republicans, talking about Nancy Pelosi.
We had to pass the bill so that you could find out what's in it.
And this rush process and the secret backroom deals.
And what did we do?
When we're given the opportunity, we did the same thing except on steroids with a much more rushed process.
And then you saw kind of this last-minute horse trading.
And at a certain point, it just looks absurd.
Yeah.
So where would we start here?
I mean, if I gave both of you a clean slate, first thing I would do is I'd bring all the varying factions within the Republican coalition into a room and I'd create the square that Newt Gingrich often talks about.
What do you need to pass this bill?
What are your wants?
What's on your wish list?
I'd start there.
Where would you start, Daniel?
Well, you have to start more philosophically rather than a specific bill.
What do we believe in terms of health care?
Do we believe in government-run health care for everyone, even those under 65?
Or do we want to preserve some sort of market of people that maybe are at least above the Medicaid level, that they are not eligible for Medicare, that want free market health insurance and then eventually health care?
If the answer to that is yes, which is the Republican platform, then everyone needs to get on the same page about actually repealing Title I of Obamacare.
You can negotiate about some subsidies.
can negotiate about Medicare, Medicaid structure.
But if you don't get rid of the regulations, the market will never be healed.
I think if we're going to talk about philosophy, Daniel, at the start of this, then there shouldn't be disagreement among the Republican Party.
Because there is.
Because I know, but there shouldn't be in this sense.
Do we believe in limited government?
Do we believe in greater freedom?
Do we believe in free market solutions?
Do we believe in competition?
All right, stay right there.
We'll continue this on the other side.
Sarah Carter at the bottom of the hour.
Now that Uncle Joe has left the building, maybe we can get back to bringing jobs home.
That's jobs, J-O-B-S.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
I guess I'm just taking a very different position than everybody.
It didn't have to be done immediately.
And I think now this is going to be an opportunity to get this thing right when we continue on the program.
Glad you're with us.
Sean Hannity show on a Friday.
Daniel Horowitz, senior editor, Conservative Review, Chris Jacobs, senior healthcare policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
They've done some great work on this.
All right.
So I think if we all agree in principle, Daniel, that we got to start with free markets, competition, and build in the healthcare savings accounts, health cooperatives, which I have talked at length about, I think you got yourself an opportunity for a great bill.
No, absolutely.
And I think if you want to fuse tax reform and healthcare reform, he could actually kill two birds with one stone.
Obviously, we do have to get rid of Obamacare, but one of the original sins of healthcare before Obamacare was this notion that your health insurance is tethered to your job.
And that's government-sponsored because the government gives a tax exemption only to employers.
So by having some form of tax equity, and again, the details are important, but that needs to be worked out.
And HSAs, that's something that can be done in a tax bill.
So that's definitely one thing.
One other thing I'd mention, Trump is really good at the bully pulpit.
And I think he needs to travel around the country and convince governors to enact supply-side health care reforms.
But the one thing I would say in his defense here, I mean, he's not the legislative branch.
You know, the bills should have had consensus before they ever brought it to him.
You agree with that, right?
No, for sure.
But the swamp is the swamp, and you've got to drink.
That's a good point.
All right, let's get to Chris.
So if we agree on free market principles and capitalism as the means of fixing this, then what?
I think the other important principle is to let the states decide.
Frankly, if California wants to do a single-payer system or heavy regulations, that's their prerogative.
They should be allowed to do that.
But the idea that we should be managing all of health care from Washington doesn't work.
Washington is the last place you want managing everyone's health care across the country.
And I say that as somebody who's lived here for far too long.
We need to go back to respecting state authority.
And that's why we want to repeal all the regulations to go back to the old system where we had states regulating health care and health insurance.
All right, guys.
Really appreciate you being with us.
Daniel Horowitz, thank you.
And Chris Jacobs, thank you.
When we come back, it's Friday, our Florida, Georgia line Friday fun concert series.
When we get back, and then Sarah Carter, we're going to get back into the deep state issue.
Now we have Fox reporters confirming that, yeah, surveillance on Trump Tower and the president-elect did in fact happen.
That and more as we continue.
Holding them accountable.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour on a Friday.
All right, so we have new news.
We're going to get to in a minute.
James Rose in Fox News, he also has been able to corroborate and confirm that the president, Trump Tower, and the president's transition team were surveilled.
So, it's all true.
Everything Sarah Carter has been saying, John Solomon's been saying, we've been reporting.
It's all true.
As a matter of fact, Sarah Carter will join us next.
But it's a rough week.
For some of you, this is a tough day.
It's not tough for me because this is an opportunity, and I'm looking at it that way, period, end of sentence.
All right, so we have some new news that we uncovered last night.
Fox News, James Rosen, reporting that House investigators are on the verge of uncovering a smoking gun in the wiretapping scandal.
And also, they confirmed that, in fact, surveillance had taken place again.
We've been following this now for a number of weeks.
Sarah Carter joins us from Circa News.
What did you think of James Rosen's report?
Well, you know, James Rosen is a stellar reporter.
He's amazing, and his sources are fantastic.
And I do think he has something there.
You know, I've been talking to my sources as well.
And what that smoking gun is, we obviously don't have it yet in our hands.
We have ideas of what it may be.
And like I've told you, Sean.
So I don't want to let's just separate reporting now.
What are the ideas you think it is?
Well, I think what we need, you're really narrowing it down, aren't you?
Yeah, I'm really relentless, by the way, which is my job.
So this is now where you think it's going.
This is not what you can confirm.
How's that?
Correct, correct.
It's not what I can confirm.
I think there's some questions that need to be answered.
One, was there ever any authorization given and by whom to unmask the names of people within the Trump campaign and the Trump team?
How many names were unmasked?
Were these names unmasked foreign to foreign conversations?
Because that's also in violation.
And I don't want to say in violation because I know that they're coming across as that it was legally done, but it could be very unethical.
And it goes right into that gray area where everybody's talked about political espionage.
So what I think needs to be answered, and I believe this is what Chairman Nunez is looking at: who unmasked the names and why, and what names were unmasked, and who were they shared with, and what were they used for?
Because as he said, he said this just didn't have to do with Russia.
And that's what was so concerning.
And that's why he went to the president.
And, you know, he's getting a lot of backlash.
He's getting some backlash a lot from the Democrats who are saying that he's being very partisan here.
And, you know, so he's facing a lot of backlash for this.
So I think that's why today we saw him kind of take a step back and say, okay, look, we need to have a closed door hearing.
I need to have some answers from Director Comey at the FBI and from Admiral Mike Rogers.
I want to know what's going on.
And obviously, he has spoken to sources as well, whistleblowers, who feel so concerned about what happened, they felt the need to go to him.
And he hasn't disclosed who those are, of course.
Those remain secret and probably people with very high-level access, classified access to information.
So now it's a point of it's like a waiting game.
We're waiting to see what is this explosive information.
But those would be some of the questions I would ask.
I would want to know when did they start unmasking these names?
Was it just November to January?
I mean, will Chairman Nunez go all the way back, maybe to June, and just look at the numbers and look at the names who are unmasked and tally those up and see if there was an increase in unmasking names as well?
Because if we look back to last year and there was only the regular normal unmasking of names related to criminal behavior or even counterintelligence information, and then all of a sudden we see a huge upsweep in names and most of those names are focused on Trump and his team, then I think we have a lot more questions, right?
Well, I totally agree, and I agree.
You're asking all the right questions that we do need answers to.
We're told that this intelligence is said to leave no doubt that the Obama administration in their closing days, this is in the Fox report, was using the cover of legitimate surveillance on foreign targets to spy on the president-elect.
Now, the key to this conclusion is what you're talking about, and that is the unmasking of selected U.S. persons whose names appeared in the intelligence, you know, and the sources claiming that the paper trail leaves no other plausible purpose for the unmasking other than to damage the incoming Trump administration.
And, you know, Sean, that's what I've been hearing from my sources as well.
So, and I think that, you know, at this point, we're hearing it from a number of people.
I think you're going to get a Pulitzer Price for this, and I think I'll probably, you know, end up getting fired or, you know, poisoned.
But I hope not.
I'm kidding.
But the FBI now has not been responsive to the House Intelligence Committee's request for documents.
The NSA was expected to produce these documents today.
I don't know if that ever happened.
You know, was the FBI director stone?
Why was he stonewalling the House Intelligence Committee?
Does it have anything to do with the likelihood that maybe he didn't tell the truth when he said on Monday that he had no information to support Trump's wiretapping charge?
Or is he playing word games between wiretapping and surveillance?
I think it's more likely the second.
You know, everybody that I know, and I don't know Director Comey personally, but people who know him, you know, that he gets the nickname he's a Boy Scout.
You know, he's a straight shooter.
But he's been, you know, highly controversial.
I don't think that in the history of the FBI, other than a few, you know, has a name been so prominent that all Americans know Director Comey, head of the FBI.
I mean, it goes all the way back even to the Hillary investigation.
So I think it's more of the latter.
And I think that Director Comey right now is kind of in a conundrum.
You know, he has to provide answers to Nunez and to the committee in this closed-door hearing.
And I'm sure Chairman Nunez is going to say, did you know that these names were unmasked?
Who had access within the FBI?
Why were these names unmasked?
And was it utilized as part of your investigation?
And if you look at Admiral Mike Rogers, I mean, this is the NSA's Pervy, right?
I mean, they have the capabilities, and he mentioned it openly in the committee.
There's 20 people within the NSA that can unmask these names, but they can't just do it willy-nilly.
I mean, they have to get permission from somebody above a very senior level.
Yeah, but then, but then how does that jive with what Devin Nunez said?
And Devin Nunez made the point that it was widely disseminated.
Oh, yes, it was widely disseminated.
But what you have to look at is the narrow scope of people that can approve that.
And then we look at the expansion of the 12333.
And then I believe even prior to the 12333 executive order that allowed for the expansion of the intelligence agencies to view these names unmasked and more people to look at it, you have to look prior to that.
Was there something else?
Was there something that we're not aware of that was apparently legal?
And now we have to ask the question: was this legal use misused for political purposes?
And I think that when Devin Nunez looks at these reports, that's the question that he is asking himself and as well as the whole committee.
I mean, this should be partisan.
It should be, everyone should be concerned about this, including the Democrats.
And this should be something that's taken very seriously because this could be a complete violation of civil liberties that we haven't seen.
And I've said this before in our recent history.
I mean, the access to people's private information, the access to personal emails, private thoughts, you know, conversations on the telephone.
And if that is being misused by the government, those are very, very serious allegations or people within the government.
And that's something that needs to be answered.
All right, we're going to have more on this tonight on Hannity 10 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We'll have the latest on the healthcare bill.
As always, Sarah, I mean, I feel like you're co-hosting with me.
You've been reporting and we've been beating the drum on this and we're getting closer every day.
It's fascinating to watch it unfold.
Thank you for being with us.
And don't forget the latest on the Obama.
I don't think this is as bad as people are saying, the Obama, the replacement bill.
I actually think this is going to end up so much better in the end.
We have Newt Gingrich, Herman Kane tonight.
We'll have Sarah, Jay Seculo, Rick Rennell on the program tonight, and more on the surveillance issue as well.
So that's 10 Eastern Hannity on Fox.
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