poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/1681/1155968404_5371823017001_5371796654001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Congress Republicans yank Obamacare repeal bill It's a staggering setback for President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan. 
 
 Facing a growing rebellion within his own ranks, Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the Republican Obamacare replacement plan from the House floor on Friday just before a scheduled vote. 
 
 The decision is a staggering defeat for Ryan and President Donald Trump in their first attempt to partner on major legislation and fulfill a seven-year Republican promise to repeal Obamacare. And it comes a day after Trump issued an ultimatum to House Republicans to vote for the bill or live with Obamacare. 
 
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 GOP lawmakers decided they can, in fact, live with Obamacare, at least for now. 
 
 A Republican leadership aide said Trump and Ryan spoke by phone at 3 p.m. and that the president asked the speaker to pull the bill. Ryan told reporters that his advice to Trump was to cancel the vote. 
 
 But the reality is that Ryan and his leadership team had been bleeding votes all day and were not close to passing the American Health Care Act. The speaker went to the White House and told Trump as much just an hour earlier. 
 
 Republicans were begging Ryan and party leaders to pull the bill to save them from having to vote on an unpopular measure. But Trump badly wanted to move ahead so he would "know who my friends are," he said, according to a Republican lawmaker who met with him. Democrats were unwavering in their opposition, and conservative outside groups despised the bill from the start. 
 
 And while GOP leaders had called Trump "the ulimate closer," he wasn't able to move many votes, especially among hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus. Trump admitted after the bill was pulled that he was "10 to 15 votes" shy of victory, a stunning margin considering how much effort he and Ryan had put into their lobbying campaign during the last week. 
 
 Ryan also knew, though, that if the bill had come up for a vote, it would have failed by a much larger margin than the whip counts. Once rank-and-file members knew it would fail, they'd reverse course and vote "no" in order to protect themselves politically, which their leaders would bless. That much larger margin of defeat would be an even bigger setback for Trump. In a sense, Ryan protected Trump from his own combative instincts, said GOP insiders. 
 
 "I will not sugarcoat this, this is a disappointing day for us," Ryan said at a press conference following the stunning announcement. "This is a setback, no two ways about it." 
 
 Ryan admitted that the Affordable Care Act, enacted seven years earlier almost to the day, "remains the law of the land... We're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." 
 
 Ryan insisted Trump was not at fault for the failure. 
 
 "The president gave his all in this effort," Ryan added. "He's been fantastic." 
 
 The Freedom Caucus — the group that took down Speaker John Boehner — remained unwilling to compromise with Trump and Ryan, believing that their bill didn't do nearly enough to unwind Obamacare. 
 
 "Some of the members of that caucus were voting with us, but not enough were," Ryan said. "I met with their chairman today, and he made it clear that the votes weren't going to be there from their team. And that was sufficient to provide the balance of votes to have this not pass." 
 
 Democrats, for their part, were doing cartwheels in the Capitol. They've bloodied Trump, bashed Ryan, and showed that even in a GOP-run Washington, they still matter big time. 
 
 “Today is a great day for our country," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "It's a victory. What happened on the floor is a victory for the American people — for our seniors, for people with disabilities, for our children, for our veterans." 
 
 On the other side of the aisle, the internal GOP finger-pointing has already begun, showing the long-term damage inside the Republican Conference from this fight. 
 
 Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who helped craft the Republican health care legislation, was livid after the decision to pull the bill. 
 
 "The architects of Obamacare, they own this damn thing," the Texas Republican said. "There were people who were not interested in solving the problem. They win today." 
 
 Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a member of the Freedom Caucus, said the bill's demise was a "good day for America." 
 
 Despite Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows' central role in defeating the bill and thus leaving Obamacare as the law of the land, the North Carolina Republican insisted he still wanted to repeal the Democratic health care law. 
 
 "I remain wholeheartedly committed to following through on this promise," Meadows said in a statement. "President Trump is committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a system that works for American families, and I look forward to working with him to do just that." 
 
 Trump has staked his early presidency on repealing and replacing Obamacare, embracing his image as a dealmaker and closer throughout the process. House leaders were happy to oblige as well, referring to Trump as “the ultimate closer” as he met with reluctant House members. 
 
 “He’s left everything on the field when it comes to this bill,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon, describing Trump as working tirelessly to get the bill across the finish line. He added, “You can’t force someone to vote a certain way.” 
 
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 As Ryan and his allies scrambled to convince wary colleagues to back their health care plan, they watched as conservative and moderates in their caucus began to declare their opposition. As defections mounted, Ryan traveled to the White House to reveal to Trump his faltering whip count – and to discuss whether to pull the bill. But the administration seemed intent on proceeding as planned. 
 
 “We want the vote," a senior administration official said as Ryan made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue. "If they want to go against the president, they should do it on live TV." 
 
 Ultimately, though, Ryan prevailed. Moderate Republicans such as Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock and Ohio Rep. David Joyce disclosed their opposition even as Ryan was meeting with Trump. It became clear early Friday afternoon that the bill was poised for defeat, as members on the fence broke against it. 
 
 The bill met sharp resistance from both ends of the Republican caucus, as hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus contended it failed to do away with Obamacare’s core components and moderates argued that its curbs on Medicaid could harm vulnerable constituents. Ultimately, those competing pressures proved irreconcilable. 
 
 Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a moderate who came out against the bill two days ago, insisted that Friday's debacle was actually not a big deal and said it’s time to “move on." 
 
 "There are a lot of people in this building who talk and say everything is catastrophic and cataclysmic, well we know that’s not the case," Dent said. "If you want to do health care reform, do it on a bipartisan basis…. We have to sit down and regroup.” 
 
 Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) warned it wasn’t the end of Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. 
 
 “The game is not over, so it’s not a win or loss," he said. ”We’re gonna get back together after we get a weekend’s rest, we’re going to assess where we are. The votes were razor thin, from what I understand, so we’re close to where we need to be." ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump warned House Republican lawmakers that he will leave Obamacare in place and move on to tax reform if they do not get behind new healthcare legislation and support it in a vote on Friday. 
 
 It was not clear late on Thursday evening that Trump and the Republican leaders who crafted the bill had enough support to pass it, meaning they now risk defeat in their first attempt at major legislation and may fail to deliver on a key campaign pledge. 
 
 “We have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families, and tomorrow we’re proceeding,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after an evening all-hands meeting. He ignored reporters who asked if he had secured the votes to pass the bill. 
 
 Ryan and leaders in the House of Representatives were forced to postpone a vote on their healthcare bill, formally called the American Health Care Act, earlier on Thursday, dealing Trump an embarrassing setback. 
 
 The vote had been symbolically planned for the anniversary of former Democratic President Barack Obama signing his namesake healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, in 2010. It was supposed to have been Trump’s first legislative victory. 
 
 Trump and his fellow Republicans had pledged to replace Obamacare, which they view as too intrusive and too expensive. 
 
 But, after a week of calling Republican lawmakers and bringing them into the Oval Office for meetings, Trump failed to close the deal with two different factions within his party on time for the planned Thursday vote. 
 
 Conservatives felt the bill did not go far enough to repeal Obamacare and moderates felt the plan could hurt their constituents. House Republican leaders had signaled they were ready to work through the weekend to figure out a way to reconcile their differences. 
 
 As the healthcare drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, Trump played it cool, taking a break from negotiations to hang out with some truckers, climbing into the cab of a long-haul transport truck parked on the back driveway of the White House, and blowing the horn a few times. 
 
 He told reporters the vote would be close but he remained optimistic. “I think we’re doing well. We’ll find out in about three hours,” he said, just as reports began to surface that the vote had been postponed. 
 
 By evening, Trump sent his top lieutenants to a dramatic meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night with an ultimatum: he was done talking. According to Representative Chris Collins of New York, a top Trump ally, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told House Republicans that Trump wanted a vote. 
 
 “The president has said he wants a vote tomorrow, up or down,” Collins said. 
 
 “If for any reason it is down, we are just going to move forward with additional parts of his agenda” such as tax reform, Collins told reporters after leaving the meeting. 
 
 However, the vote has been seen by financial markets as a crucial test of Trump’s ability to work with Congress to deliver on his other priorities, such as tax cuts and infrastructure spending. 
 
 Even if their replacement plan does eventually get approval from the House, the legislation faces a potentially tough fight in the Republican-controlled Senate. 
 
 The House and Senate had hoped to deliver a new healthcare bill to Trump by April 8, when Congress is scheduled to begin a two-week spring break. 
 
 GETTING TO YES? 
 
 The Republicans have a majority in the House but, because of united Democratic opposition, can afford to lose only 21 Republican votes. By Thursday morning, NBC News said that 30 Republicans had planned to vote “no” or were leaning that way. 
 
 North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, the chairman of the pivotal conservative bloc known as the Freedom Caucus, said he and others were struggling to support the plan. 
 
 “I am desperately trying to get to ‘yes’ and I think the president knows that. I told him that personally,” Meadows said. However, after Thursday night’s meeting, he was still a ‘no’. 
 
 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney arrive for a meeting about the American Health Care Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein 
 
 Obamacare aimed to boost the number of Americans with health insurance through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies. Some 20 million Americans gained insurance coverage through the law. 
 
 The House replacement plan would rescind the taxes created by Obamacare, repeal a penalty against people who do not buy coverage, slash funding for the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, and modify tax subsidies that help individuals buy plans. 
 
 House leaders agreed to four pages of last-minute amendments to the bill, including allowing states to choose which “essential benefits” are required in healthcare insurance plans, and keeping a 0.9 percent surcharge on Medicare for high-income Americans for six years. It was unclear whether that was enough. 
 
 Representative Trent Franks, a Freedom Caucus member who had been “undeclared” on his position on the bill, said he liked the changes. “It’s going in the right direction,” Franks said outside the House. 
 
 The amendments will give states more money for maternal health and mental health, said Representative Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska moderate who still has not said how he will vote. 
 
 MARKETS WATCHING CLOSELY 
 
 Uncertainty over the healthcare bill rattled financial markets this week. The delay in the house vote is likely to extend the ups and downs in the stocks of some hospital groups and health insurers. 
 
 U.S. stock markets rose steadily in recent months on optimism over a pro-business Trump agenda but fell back sharply on Tuesday as investors worried that failure to push through the healthcare bill could postpone other business-friendly Trump priorities. 
 
 “Delay on healthcare equates to delay on tax cuts. That is why the market turned red when the news flow suggested they didn’t have a deal,” said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, a money management firm. 
 
 Others said it was too soon to panic. 
 
 “If this thing gets materially delayed or if we get a ‘no’ vote, we’re going to see a horrific market reaction. But if they vote in the morning and it passes, we’ll have a hell of a rally,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
 
 Slideshow (16 Images) 
 
 Graphic on Obamacare and Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2n0ZMKf) 
 
 Graphic on shifting positions in the U.S. Senate on Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2mUE4Xf) 
 
 Graphic on poll on Americans' views of the Republican healthcare bill ( tmsnrt.rs/2n7f3e4)
– A House vote on the American Health Care Act was canceled just before it was scheduled to happen, avoiding what the AP says would have been a "humiliating defeat" for President Trump and GOP leaders while still being—according to Politico—a "staggering defeat" for Trump and Paul Ryan. On Thursday, Trump had demanded a vote on the Republican replacement for ObamaCare despite it appearing primed to fail. On Friday, CNN reports Trump called Ryan and asked him to pull the bill without a vote. Sean Spicer says Trump "left everything on the field" trying to make a deal to get the AHCA approved. Hospital and insurer stocks saw an immediate improvement with the news there would be no vote, according to Reuters.