Trumpdates

What’s been happening on Capitol Hill?

March 30, 2017

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has sunk to 36 percent, the lowest it has been since he took office Jan. 20, according to Gallup.

This drop in Trump’s approval rating came after House Republicans pulled a bill from the floor March 24 that would repeal Obamacare.

This new rating is two points below Barack Obama’s lowest of 38 percent recorded in 2011 and 2014, and one point below Bill Clinton’s lowest of 37 percent recorded in 1993, his first year in office, according to Gallup.

However, Trump’s most recent approval rating is not the lowest of any president in American history.

Gallup reported that George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman all had approval ratings lower than 36 percent at some point during their presidencies.

Gallup states that presidential approval ratings are fluid; Clinton, for example, had an approval rating of 36 percent in June 1993, but saw his rating recover by September of that same year when it increased to 56 percent.

Trump’s lowest approval rating before this point was 37 percent, recorded between March 16-18.

 

Health care reform sparks chaos in D.C., divides GOP

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives decided to pull a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act March 24, fearing that it did not have enough votes to pass, according to a New York Times article.

“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” House Speaker Paul Ryan R-Wis. said at a March 24 news conference.

President Trump took to Twitter the morning before the repeal vote.

 

 

 

This tweet came before Ryan went to to the White House to inform Trump that the repeal bill, called the American Health Care Act, did not have enough votes.

Ryan and Trump decided they would rather pull the bill than see it fail on the House floor, according to the New York Times.

After the bill was pulled,Trump waited until the next morning to tweet about health care again.

 

 

According to a report by the Washington Post, Ryan got down on one knee to plead with the longest-serving Republican in Congress, Don Young, R-Calif., to get him to support the bill.

Ryan’s pleading came to no avail, however, as the bill never saw the light of day in the House.

A report by the Congressional Budget Office published March 13 stated that the proposed bill would leave an additional 24 million Americans uninsured by 2026.