Trump: I’m ‘so confident’ health care bill will pass the Senate

President Donald Trump claimed victory Thursday after the House passed legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. And he predicted more wins will follow.

“We won, and we’re gonna finish it off, and we’re gonna go on to a lot of other things,” Trump said Thursday in an address inside the White House Rose Garden.


Trump took a victory lap at the White House, celebrating the most significant legislative win to date of his administration and predicting similar success in the Senate as he spoke with a contingent of administration officials and House Republicans behind him — both literally and figuratively.

“We’re gonna get this passed through the Senate,” Trump said. “I feel so confident.”

The American Health Care Act passed the House on Thursday afternoon on a 217-213 vote and now heads to the Senate, where its fate is far less certain than Trump suggests.

Trump hailed the “great group” of people behind him who supported the legislation and credited the health care bill for uniting the party, although 20 House Republicans voted “no” against the bill.

“We have a lot of groups, but they all came together,” Trump said, shouting out the far-right House Freedom Caucus and moderate Tuesday Group. “We have just developed a bond. This has really brought the Republican Party together.”

Trump declared Obamacare is dead and made big promises for the future of health care. He offered broad praise of the bill — using vague descriptors such as “great” and “very, very incredibly well crafted” — but called on Republican leaders to “brag” about the bill in more detail.

“Yes, premiums will be coming down. Yes, deductibles will be coming down,” Trump pledged. “But very importantly, it’s a great plan, and ultimately that’s what it’s all about.”

“We knew that wasn’t going to work,” Trump said of Obamacare. “I predicted it a long time ago. I said it’s failing, and now it’s obvious that it’s failing. It’s dead. It’s essentially dead. If we don’t pay lots of ransom money over to the insurance companies it would die immediately. So what we have is something very, very incredibly well crafted.”

When Trump invited Republican leaders to tout the plan, he encouraged them “say how good this plan is.”

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“We don’t have to talk about this unbelievable victory — wasn’t it unbelievable? — so we don’t have to say it again,” he advised. “But it’s gonna be an unbelievable victory, actually, when we get it through the Senate, and there’s so much spirit there.”

Despite Trump's celebratory declarations, Thursday's vote was not without controversy. House Republicans are under fire for voting on a new version of the bill that hadn’t been scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, whose projection of an earlier version of the bill estimated 24 million fewer Americans would be insured over the next decade.

But Trump looked back to his Republican allies for reassurance.

“Coming from a different world and only being a politician for a short period of time, how am I doing? Am I doing OK?” he asked. “I’m president. Hey, I’m president. Can you believe it? Right. I thought you need a little bit more time, they always told me, more time. But we didn’t.”

“And we are going to have a tremendous four years and, maybe even more importantly, we’re gonna have a tremendous eight years,” Trump added. “But we’re gonna start off with just a great first year.”

