http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/25/obamacare-repeal-republicans-budget-243125
The supposedly hard deadline at the end of the month to repeal Obamacare might not be so hard after all.
With their latest attempt to dismantle the health law on track to fail this week, GOP senators are already raising the prospect of going after it again with the same powerful tools that currently let them pass legislation with just 50 votes.
There is nothing to suggest Obamacare repeal would get any easier in the coming months and doing so may significantly hobble the Republican majority's other chief legislative priority: tax reform. But facing a floundering repeal push, wrath from the base and a frustrated President Donald Trump, Republicans may have no other choice but to keep pushing to uproot the law.
”We've got to do both," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said of tackling both Obamacare repeal and tax reform next year. "They're complicated by necessity. So I don't think that takes away the complications. But I think we're supposed to be able to handle complications."
Hatch added, however: "If it's used to screw everything up, I'm not for that."
Here's how it could be done: While the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the repeal push under fiscal 2017 must die after Sept. 30, Republicans could provide reconciliation instructions for both health care and tax reform in the fiscal 2018 budget resolution that Congress must pass to again unlock the fast-track procedural powers. That might entail some procedural hurdles, but one GOP aide said Monday that because the Finance Committee has jurisdiction over about 95 percent of health care policy, ”it's not like we couldn't slip it in anyway."