House passes PPACA mandate repeal package

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and two of Lee’s Senate Republican colleagues who are running for president, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, issued a statement Thursday calling for Republicans to withhold support for H.R. 3762.

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of the House Rules Committee, said in a statement of his own about the PPACA-related provisions in H.R. 3762 that, “Today’s reconciliation package is the best chance we have to repeal the most destructive parts of the law.”

“I will continue to do all I can to gut this historically bad law that has made something that should be simple, accessing quality care, far too difficult and too expensive,” Sessions said.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House Ways and Means chairman and a candidate to take over for John Boehner as House speaker, is also supporting H.R. 3762.

“With this bill, we can finally confront the president with the reality confronting working families every day: higher costs and lower quality,” Ryan said. “We can put on the president’s desk a bill that will dismantle Obamacare and lay the foundation for a patient-centered system.”

Because the House wrote H.R. 3762 under the rules governing budget reconciliation legislation, not under the rules governing ordinary bills, Republicans can get the measure through Congress with just 51 votes in the Senate, without facing the need to come up with 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.