Congressman Mark Amodei offers his views on Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump Thursday at the Nevada Appeal office in Carson City.
Less than a day after Rep. Mark Amodei told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki he still was “undecided” whether to vote for the Republican version of the healthcare plan, he came out on Twitter as a firm no.
“We’ve done our homework. We’ve closed on the issue in preparation for a vote tonight. I’m a no on the #AHCA,” Amodei tweeted.
With solid opposition from the tea party Freedom Caucus and a growing number of other House Republicans wavering, Speaker Paul Ryan canceled Thursday’s vote.
For his constituents, Amodei said, the question is whether they’re going to feel things will be better under that plan.
“Most people, I think, when they’re on the kitchen table with the checkbook out, if premiums don’t go down, if deductibles don’t go down, if choices don’t go up, then I think people will consider that a broken promise in the same way they did — you can keep your doctor if you want to, you can keep your plan if you want to and premiums will go down — under the previous try seven years ago,” he told Kornacki.
He said he thinks leadership made “a fundamental mistake” in not having hearings on the bill.
He said there should have been hearings with everybody weighing in: “The broader the foundation, I think, the stronger the product in the end,” he said. “If you’re going to build consensus, if you’re going to try to pull it all from the Republican side of the House, you need to build consensus before you go to mark up the bill, not after.”
Amodei dismissed President Trump’s warning to opponents if they don’t support Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill, they could lose their seat in 2018 – a thinly veiled threat to campaign against them.
“If you get fired for trying to do the right thing on the issues instead of the right political thing, then I’ll accept that,” he said.