“I don’t really think it is chaos,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday of the proposal to repeal and replace the ACA. “We spent a year working on the plan.” | Getty Ryan defends bumpy Obamacare repeal rollout

House Speaker Paul Ryan defended what has been a bumpy rollout for House Republicans’ plan to repeal Obamacare on Wednesday night, calling early complaints about the bill "typical growing pains."

Ryan said it reflected months of planning and represented just one step of a three-step plan to fully repeal and replace the law, during an appearance on Fox News' "Tucker."


“I don’t really think it is chaos,” Ryan said, adding, “We spent a year working on the plan.”

He attributed some of the criticism of the bill to some lawmakers not fully understanding the legislative process, particularly what is possible under the process known as reconciliation. Ryan said House Republicans are limited by what they can do and don’t want to run into a situation in which Democrats can filibuster a repeal in the Senate.

“If we put everything in the bill we possibly want, we’d have a filibuster that can’t pass in the Senate,” Ryan said.

Ryan also defended tax cuts in the bill that would primarily benefit wealthy people, arguing that doing so fulfills House Republicans’ promise to repeal all of the taxes in Obamacare.

“This was a tax on capital income that was bad for economic growth to finance Obamacare. We’re undoing Obamacare, so we’re not going to keep that tax in place,” he said.