Washington; Congress has opened for battle over the Affordable Care Act as Republicans pushed immediately to repeal the health care law and President Barack Obama made a rare trip to Capitol Hill to defend it.
The bitterness that has long marked the fight intensified as Republicans seized the opportunity to make good on a central campaign promise to get rid of the law, a pledge reinforced on Wednesday by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who met with House Republicans not far from where the president gathered with Democrats.
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Secret voting to gut ethics regulations 'revealing'
The Obama administration says it is "disheartening" that House Republicans planned to gut an independent congressional ethics board just a day after the plan was proposed.
The Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature health care law, has provided coverage to millions of people near the poverty line.
Health policy experts say that system could collapse if Republicans cut off funds for the expanded coverage and end penalties for people who go without health insurance.
"The American people voted decisively for a better future for health care in this country," Pence said, "and we are determined to give them that."
He suggested that President-elect Donald Trump would use his executive authority to help make the transition away from the health care law, but did not offer specifics.
Democrats vowed aggressive resistance and said they would not participate in drawing up a replacement for the law after the swift efforts to unravel it.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new Democratic leader, playing off Trump's campaign slogan, said repealing the law would "make America sick again".
By a vote of 51-48 on Wednesday, the Senate took the first step, agreeing to take up a budget resolution, or blueprint, that would clear the way for legislation repealing major provisions of the law.
But even as they spoke of moving quickly to repeal the law, it remained far less clear how and when they would go about replacing it.
Senate debate on the budget resolution is expected to continue for several days, and the House plans to take up the measure once the Senate has approved it.
Trump weighed in with several Twitter posts. He advised that Republicans needed to "be careful in that the Dems own the failed Obamacare disaster," and added, "Don't let the Schumer clowns out of this web."
Trump predicted that the health care law would "fall of its own weight."
But as Republicans expressed eagerness to repeal the law, they acknowledged that replacing it would take more time.
"There will naturally be a reasonable transition period," said Texan Senator Ted Cruz. "You can't adopt new reforms all at once."
Democrats signalled little interest in helping Republicans determine what to do after repealing major parts of the health care law.
Schumer predicted that in a year, Republicans would "regret that they came out so fast out of the box".
He said Democrats would consider working on a replacement only after Republicans presented their own plan.
"If you are repealing, show us what you'll replace it with first," Schumer said. "Then we'll look at what you have and see what we can do."
Later, Schumer said of Trump, "It's his and their responsibility, plain and simple – name calling isn't going to get anything done."
He added, "They really need to calm things down a little."
Speaker Paul Ryan tried to offer assurance that no change in coverage would be abrupt.
"The point is, in 2017, we don't want people to be caught with nothing," he said.
"We want to make sure that there's an orderly transition so that the rug is not pulled out from under the families who are currently struggling under Obamacare while we bring relief."
Obama huddled with congressional Democrats for about 90 minutes in what was billed by the White House as a strategy session to forge a unified Democratic response to the Republicans' rollback effort.
In reality, the session was essentially a going-away party for a man who passed his signature legislative accomplishment under long-extinct majorities.
The gathering, which could be Obama's last trip to the halls of Congress that have been the site of alternating triumph and defeat, had a two-weeks-before-graduation air, with numerous Democratic lawmakers sneaking out to attend to business more pressing than hearing the president's words.
New York Times