Update: In a surprise move, Republicans pulled the legislation from the floor shortly before 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon. The House Republican source quoted below was not immediately available for comment. Cantor was seen having a heated exchange with Rep. Raul Labrador (R., Idaho) on the House floor shortly before Republicans pulled the bill. Labrador was publicly undecided on the legislation. Cantor said Republicans will bring up the bill when the House returns from recess next month.
House Republicans on Wednesday signaled that despite some opposition from more conservative members they will move forward with a vote on legislation designed to insure Americans with preexisting conditions.
The bill drew a veto threat from the White House because it pays for a high-risk insurance pool using money from a preventive care fund contained in the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Some Republicans have dubbed the preventive care money a "slush fund."
"We are still having conversations with our Members and are proceeding as scheduled," a Republican leadership aide told the Washington Free Beacon Wednesday afternoon.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) considered pulling the legislation from Wednesday’s floor schedule after some said leadership could not muster the 218 votes necessary for passage.
However, Cantor said Wednesday that he was "forging ahead" with the legislation.
The bill, titled the Helping Sick Americans Now Act, would fully fund the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a stopgap measure designed to insure Americans with preexisting conditions until Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges come online.
The exchanges are scheduled to be up and running in October but implementation of key portions of the law has already been delayed.
Republicans said they see a three-fold opportunity with the legislation: improve health coverage for the most grievously ill Americans, ding the administration for failing to insure those Americans while working through Obamacare’s bureaucratic morass, and draw funds from an Obamacare program Republicans say is wasteful and unaccountable.
Rep. Joe Pitts (R. Pa.), the legislation’s sponsor, says the Prevention and Public Health Fund, from which the bill finances the PCIP, "has no Congressional oversight and has directed funding to programs at the Centers for Disease Control that have little or nothing to do with public health."
"My bill takes money from a wasteful, duplicative fund, moves it into a program that has bipartisan support and helps pay down the debt," Pitts said in a news release on the legislation.
The administration announced in February that it would stop admitting applications for PCIP coverage. It cited a lack of funding for the program.
Pitts’ bill is part of a slate of legislation that Cantor touted at a Republican conference meeting this week as examples of "putting our conservative principles first to help people first."
But some House conservatives are loath to increase funding for any Obamacare program even if it means taking funds from other, less appealing programs.
"It’s pretty simple. We’re shifting money from one part of Obamacare we don’t support to another part of Obamacare we don’t support," said Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.). "That’s a nonstarter for me."
Some conservative groups, including Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, oppose the bill while others, including Americans for Tax Reform and FreedomWorks, support it.