'I can’t get any traction,' Steve King said of his effort to repeal or defund the health care law. | John Shinkle/POLITICO What became of 'repeal and replace'?

When they took control of the House, Republicans could barely stop talking about their plans to “repeal and replace” the health care reform law.

Six months later, they hardly talk publicly about those plans at all. And they’re nowhere close to "replacing” the law.


House Republicans haven’t held a floor vote on a bill or amendment trying to repeal, defund or even nick the law for six weeks, after a dozen attempts earlier this year. The stream of committee hearings to pick apart the law’s policies — held back-to-back-to-back earlier this year — has slowed to a trickle.

And not a single element of their “replace” agenda has gotten a House floor vote.

Senate Republicans — who made similar pledges to fight the Democratic majority to try to defeat the law — haven’t had much luck either. Republicans haven’t been able to force a vote on any proposal against the health plan since failed attempts to defund the law and Planned Parenthood in mid-April.

For all of their promises to do everything they can to stop the law, the only thing Republicans have been able to get to President Barack Obama’s desk is the bill to eliminate the requirement that businesses file 1099 tax reporting requirements.

So what happened?

Privately, Republicans cite a combination of factors as to why the health activity has slowed down. Other issues have come up, including the debt limit and military activity in Libya. Some question whether holding a vote now on the law’s most unpopular provision — the individual mandate— would undermine the various lawsuits against it, or would be more politically useful closer to the November 2012 election.

But there are also signs that House GOP leadership has grown weary of fighting an uphill battle on the issue. One possible reason for the fatigue factor: All but one of the repeal laws they’ve passed this year have died in the Senate.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of the House’s most ardent supporters of repealing or defunding the law at all costs, says it has become more difficult to get the attention of House leaders.

“I can’t get any traction,” he said of his effort to repeal or defund the law. “You can’t create something in this Congress unless leadership approves it.”

He questioned whether Republican leaders are willing to repeal the whole law if it means also repealing some of its popular provisions.

“There’s a little bit of an undercurrent that I pick up among well-positioned people in this Congress who think there could be some redeeming qualities of Obamacare,” pointing to statements Republican leadership have made in support of a handful of the law’s policies, such as banning insurers from denying patients because of preexisting conditions or allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance through age 26.

There also may be a Paul Ryan factor. Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, says House Republicans’ interest in the health law waned just as the public began to push back on Ryan’s GOP budget — which included substantial changes to Medicare.

“The problem is they gave a health issue to the Democrats,” Blendon said. Now, “the issue for Republicans is to shift away from this Medicare debate and to try to focus back on the health bill, which for their constituencies, they were doing fine on.”

Laena Fallon, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said Republicans haven’t lost focus on repealing the law. “We support the repeal of Obamacare and will continue to work toward that end as the Congress moves forward,” she said.

Still, there’s a lot less activity now than there was at the beginning of the year — and it’s nothing like the promises Republicans made when they came to power in the House.

In November, House Speaker John Boehner told Fox News that Republicans were going to spend “as much” time as it takes to stop the law.

“There’s a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of how we can dent this, kick it, slow it down to make sure it never happens,” he said in November. “And trust me, I’m going to make sure this health care bill never ever, ever is implemented.”

And in January, Cantor vowed that if the Republicans couldn’t get a repeal bill through the Democratic-controlled Senate and to Obama’s desk, “we’ll do everything we can to delay and defund the provisions of the bill so that we can get some discussion going on how we can replace it, and come together on the agreement that we can't accept the status quo.”

House Republicans began the year with a high-profile vote to repeal the law and followed up with a dozen more votes to repeal or defund pieces of it. But the last repeal vote on the House floor was in late May.

Last month, Cantor released a summer legislative floor schedule that didn’t even mention health care or the reform law. The House still hasn’t voted on repeal of some of the law’s largest or most unpopular provisions, such as the employer requirements to provide insurance or the requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance.

To some extent, committee activity has followed a similar pattern.

At the peak of House committee activity in March, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held six hearings on the law, and its health subcommittee approved five bills to cut off some of its funding. Four other committees held their own health care hearings, and one — the Judiciary Committee — produced a bill to cut off federal funding for abortions, a GOP priority.

By contrast, in June, Energy and Commerce subcommittees held four hearings on health care — including just two on the health care law — and the Ways and Means health subcommittee held one hearing on Medicare. None of the committees approved any new health care bills.

Meanwhile, the “replace” agenda never really went anywhere.

Boehner and Cantor in January both said they didn’t want to put an “artificial deadline” on the latter half of their “repeal and replace” campaign promise. But six months later, none of the key items on the Republicans’ replace agenda — such as medical liability reform and selling insurance across state lines — have gotten House floor votes.

The only real movement has been on tort reform. The Energy and Commerce and Judiciary committees have passed a medical liability reform bill that’s waiting for House floor action.

Some Republicans say their party is being responsible by turning to other pressing matters, like the debt limit. John Feehery, president of Quinn Gillespie Communications, who was a top aide to former Speaker Dennis Hastert, said Republicans are doing “the nuts of bolts of governing” that they have to do.

“They’ve done what they could do. The problem with the House is they can’t make the Senate do what they want them to do,” Feehery said.

The GOP is also struggling with a political disadvantage because of the Medicare plan. Last week, Democrats were sent back to their districts with a leadership directive to talk about their attempts to save Medicare from the Republican budget.

“Strategically, [Republicans] had a health issue they were doing reasonably well on,” Harvard’s Blendon said of the GOP. “They created another one that, unless it changes, it’s going to be a real problem for them.”

The Republicans are trying to turn the situation around. Next week, the Energy and Commerce and Budget committees are expected to hold high-profile hearings on an unpopular provision of the law: the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel tasked with controlling Medicare costs.

In the fall, lawmakers will have to do something to prevent a 30-percent cut in doctors’ pay for treating Medicare patients that is slated to go into effect on Jan. 1. Republicans consider the must-pass bill a key opportunity to repeal part of the health law.

Republicans are also insisting that the current negotiations on the debt include efforts to control the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and perhaps full repeal of the outdated Medicare payment formula.

David Nather contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 7:04 p.m. on July 5, 2011.