Ryan promises vote next month to roll back ObamaCare

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that House members will vote on a rollback of ObamaCare as one of their first acts of 2016.

“When we return in January, the House will put an ObamaCare repeal bill on the floor and pass it and put it on the president’s desk,” Ryan told reporters Thursday. “We are going to keep working to give families relief from this law while we work to dismantle and replace it altogether.”

{mosads}The vote on the legislation, which has already passed the Senate, will set up a veto battle with the White House just ahead of the State of the Union address.

After its passage, President Obama would have 10 days to veto the bill. Lawmakers’ vote to override Obama’s veto is doomed to fail and would take place on Jan. 26, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The bill is the product of months of work by GOP chairmen in both chambers to repeal as much of ObamaCare as possible through an obscure budget process known as reconciliation.

Reconciliation, which can only be done when one party controls both chambers, allows Republicans to send a bill intended to dismantle ObamaCare to the president’s desk for the first time. Unlike other legislation, a reconciliation bill can be passed with just 51 votes in the Senate.

While the bill does not fully repeal the law, it would eliminate the most significant pieces, including requirements for everyone to buy health insurance and most businesses to offer it.

The bill would also defund Planned Parenthood, a measure that has been long sought by anti-abortion advocates after a string of viral videos targeting the organization surfaced this summer.

When asked Thursday why the government spending bill does not defund Planned Parenthood, Ryan said the only way to get the bill to the president’s desk is through reconciliation, which limits what types of provisions can be included in the bill.

“It’s the vehicle we chose long ago. We knew we couldn’t get it to the Senate any other way,” he said.