Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced an “Obamacare Repeal Act” that would repeal the Affordable Care Act “as if such Act had not been enacted.”

The text of Cruz’s bill to repeal the 2,700-page law — which spawned another 10,000 pages of regulations — barely runs onto the third page. It comes as Republicans have debated whether to use a procedural tactic that circumvents filibusters known as reconciliation to repeal the legislation.


“This repeal bill is pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-liberty,” Cruz says in a statement on the bill. “It provides time for Congress to start over, to pass true market-based reforms that will allow the purchase of insurance across state lines, expand health savings accounts, and make health insurance, personal, portable, and affordable.”

The bill is co-sponsored by 44 Senate Republicans, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and several leading members of the Obamacare working group that is mulling the GOP’s possible response to a major anti-Obamacare lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court. If the Court rules against the administration, Americans who enrolled in Obamacare through the federal exchanges would not qualify for subsidies.

“We must send this bill to the president’s desk,” Cruz adds. “If he vetoes it, the GOP Congress should pass bill after bill to stop Obamacare. Each will have broad support among the American people, and Democrats in both chambers will be hard-pressed not to support them. The President will be faced with a clear choice: either listen to the American people, who have never supported this law, or ignore them, and ignore the disastrous harms to millions of families, young people, and the most vulnerable among us.”


If Republicans could get around a Democratic filibuster, Cruz would be the only prospective presidential candidate who could claim to have authored the first Obamacare repeal that passed through Congress.