He says Republicans know that they 'have to' stop Obamacare before 2014. | REUTERS Needham: Obamacare repeal in '17

The CEO of conservative advocacy group Heritage Action said Wednesday that “everybody understands” that repealing Obamacare won’t happen until 2017.

“Well everybody understands that we’re not going be able to repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and we have to win the White House,” Michael Needham said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”


However, Needham said he admired the House Republicans for their strategy to defund Obamacare and hit the Senate for hindering those efforts.

“I admire what the House has done for the last couple of weeks. It’s unfortunate that the Senate hasn’t been responsive to the American people, hasn’t listened to all the harms that are happening because of Obamacare and really has undercut the House throughout the last two weeks,” Needham said.

Despite Needham’s own sentiment that repeal wouldn’t happen unless the GOP gains control of both the Senate and the White House, he said Republicans know that they “have to” stop Obamacare before 2014.

“I think that almost every member of the House Republican conference, if not all of them, is deeply concerned about Obamacare and knows that we have to do something before Jan. 1 to stop it,” Needham said.

“I have full confidence that House Republicans understand what’s at stake and I admire the fight that they’ve been fighting over last couple of weeks and months,” he added.

Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) echoed the need for electoral gains before attempting to defund Obamacare Wednesday.

“What we should do is do what we can to repeal it, we do that by electing more Republicans and a Republican president and also by taking targeted shots at Obamacare, but the whole thought of defunding it made no sense because the votes aren’t there. The votes are not there in the Senate,” King said on Fox News’s “America’s News HQ.”

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