With polls showing the GOP is to blame, many are moving away from ACA. GOP quietly backs off Obamacare

A fight over Obamacare? That’s so last week.

With the government shutdown firmly in its second week, and the debt limit projected to be reached next Thursday, top House and Senate Republicans are publicly moving away from gutting the health care law — a practical move that could help resolve the stalemate and appear more reasonable in the eyes of frustrated voters.


In a private meeting among Senate Republicans, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed openness to a plan by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that includes a repeal of Obamacare’s medical device tax but nothing else related to the health care law.

( PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes)

With polls showing their party is suffering the brunt of the blame for the shutdown, many top Republicans are quietly moving past the Obamacare debate. Many Senate Republicans’ demands do not include changes to Obamacare, but rather cuts to Medicare, Social Security and changes to the Tax Code. House Republicans are also considering a short-term debt hike, but no one expects that it will be accompanied by changes to Obamacare.

“I’d like to get rid of Obamacare, no question about that, but I think that effort has failed,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the veteran member of the Senate Finance Committee. “And we’re going to have to take it on in other ways.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said bluntly: “We took an unpopular law and chose a more unpopular tactic to deal with the law.”

“Why don’t we focus on entitlement reform, Tax Code reform, regarding the debt ceiling and continue to fight on Obamacare [separately], because there’s not a consensus there,” Graham said.

( Also on POLITICO: Full health care policy coverage)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote an opinion piece that appeared on The Washington Post’s website Wednesday that simply urged President Barack Obama to negotiate with Republicans.

In the House, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s Wall Street Journal column — which sucked up much oxygen in the Capitol — conceded that changes to health care policy are not achievable in the short term. In a meeting with House conservatives Wednesday, Ryan proposed raising the debt ceiling for a short period, accompanied by spending cuts, and then working for four to eight weeks to reform entitlements and the Tax Code.

Conservatives are saying flatly that they are willing to think beyond Obamacare to solve this impasse.

( PHOTOS: Debt ceiling fight: 20 great quotes)

“Obamacare is a component part of a bigger picture,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, a conservative Republican from Alabama. “The bigger picture is a growing risk of bankruptcy and insolvency brought about by too many financially irresponsible politicians in Washington.”

He added, “Something has to be done. I’m flexible on how we do it with respect to cutting spending to conform our revenues to our taxes. We have to be more aggressive than we have been.”

Rep. Tom McClintock, a conservative California Republican, dodged questions on where the party is heading on Obamacare, and instead said it should be decided by a bipartisan negotiating conference.

“The whole nature of negotiations unfolds as it unfolds,” McClintock said.

( WATCH: 10 great quotes on debt ceiling fight)

In fact, much of the closed negotiations within House GOP leadership is centering on a temporary lift of the debt ceiling to allow negotiations on tax and entitlement reform. One option that has gained some steam is to allow a four- to eight-week debt ceiling increase to permit negotiations, with another increase contingent upon a budget agreement. With this process moving through the regular channels of Congress, major changes to Obamacare would be next to impossible to achieve.

The pickle on Obamacare is playing out behind closed doors, as well. In a private meeting Wednesday between Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Cantor, Pelosi expressed discontent with having to accept sequester-level spending in a government funding bill. Boehner shot back that it was the “law of the land.”

“So is Obamacare,” Hoyer responded.

But the bickering among Hill leaders doesn’t help resolve the stalemate. Obama says no negotiations will happen until Republicans reopen government and lift the debt ceiling. That, Republicans say, gives up their only leverage.

There’s also some resistance to this new line of thinking, and that’s mostly rooted in the conservative Republican Study Committee. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) is trying to keep the debt ceiling and government funding talks separate, in order to keep up the assault on the health care law. Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas, an RSC member and physician, said Obamacare is the “most logical of entitlements to approach right now because no one is getting it.”

“The health care law is a bad deal; it’s going to continue to be a bad deal,” Burgess told POLITICO.

Some in House Republican leadership have urged lawmakers to make Obamacare just a piece of their talking points, while talking more about structural budget changes.

This is all playing out against the backdrop of a government shutdown that’s lasted longer than a week, and a debt ceiling that needs to be lifted by next Thursday. The impasse doesn’t appear to be easing. In the private meeting of House leaders Wednesday, Boehner said that he would not reopen government until he gets concessions from Democrats — but he didn’t say what those concessions were, according to sources familiar with the meeting. The speaker did express interest in cutting a deal between the four leaders, but that didn’t gain any traction, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Pelosi said that Boehner must reopen government, and then the two parties can talk about anything, including mandatory spending cuts and revenue, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Boehner drew a hard line against revenue increases. Cantor said nothing the entire meeting, according to multiple sources.

From the rough-and-tumble House to the more genteel Senate, there does appear to be an increasing openness to moving beyond Obamacare. It’s a striking shift that acknowledges that Republicans are losing political ground in pursuing changes to Obama’s signature domestic achievement. But by shifting messages, it’s also unclear what Republicans want as a condition for ending the impasse.

“We have to have a plan, right now we don’t have a plan. Maybe you’ve heard of one?” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain also said: “We’re not going to defund Obamacare, I’ve told you that 50 times.”

Many Republicans have concluded that whatever plan they offer to the White House should be largely silent on gutting Obamacare, instead focusing on more achievable goals. That’s why Ryan’s plan is piquing the interest of so many on both sides of the Capitol, because it expands scope beyond the health care law.

“We already had that debate and we lost that debate,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said of the anti-Obamacare push. “The president’s already made proposals in his budget that will in fact lower the cost of Medicare — why not tie that to the debt ceiling and have a fundamental structural change?”

The president’s 2014 budget would slash Medicare payments by more than $300 billion to health care providers, and it would also raise nearly $60 billion by requiring Medicare beneficiaries to make higher payments. In addition to slashing $19 billion out of Medicaid, Obama has also proposed a change that would slow the rate of benefit payments to Social Security recipients, known as “chained CPI.”

But there’s a catch: For Obama to go that route, he is demanding higher revenues from new taxes, something that nearly every Republican rejects.

Republicans ague that if they focus on spending cuts — rather than Obamacare — they can win the battle of public opinion.

In another striking shift, the senators that started this fight — including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah — have been relatively quiet on the issue in the past several days.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who signed a Lee letter urging a ‘no’ vote on a government-funding bill that would fund Obamacare, said the debate needed to be “broader in scope” now that the debt ceiling was likely to be tied to the government funding bill.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a tea party favorite who sided with Cruz and Lee, refused to say Wednesday whether the party should continue to push the anti-Obamcare platform in the current fight.

“The better question is, ‘Should the president continue to say he won’t negotiate or compromise?’ The question really is on his shoulders,” Paul said.

In a Louisville radio interview Wednesday, McConnell said it was “unclear” what the party can get as an Obamacare concession in the current fight, other than perhaps a repeal of the medical device tax.

“The debate over Obamacare is not over,” he said.

John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.