further consideration of hr 1628 is postponed. according to cause 12 a of rule one, the chair to close -- declares the house in recess. [booing] -- said that obamacare was the law of the land for the perceivable future. this is 10 minutes. >> he will explain what went that was atomething the central core of the , trying tocampaign

repeal the health law known as obamacare. mr. ryan: you've all heard me say this before. moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains. and, well, we're feeling those growing pains today. we came really close today. but we came up short. i spoke to the president just a little while ago, i told him that the best thing i think to do is pull this bill and he agreed with the decision. i will not sugar coat this. this is a disappointing day for us. doing big things is hard. all of us, all of us, myself included, we will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better. but ultimately, this all kind of comes down to a choice. are all of us willing to give a little to get something done? are we willing to say yes to the good, to the very good, even if

it's not the perfect? if we're willing to do that, we because -- because if we're willing to do that, we still have such an incredible opportunity in front of us. there remains so much that we can do to help improve people's lives and we will. because that's -- i've got to tell you, that's why i'm here. i know it's why every member of this conference is here to make this a better country. we want american families to feel more confident in their lot in life. we want the next generation to know that yes, the best days of this country are still ahead of us. i'm proud of the bill we produced. it would make a dramatic improvement in the health care system and provide relief by people hurting under obamacare. what's probably most troubling is the worst is yet to come with obamacare. i'm also proud of the long, inclusive, member-driven process that we had. any member who wanted to engage constructively, to offer ideas, to improve this bill, they could. and i want to thank so many members who worked to make this better.

a lot of members put hard work into this. i want to thank the president. i want to thank the vice president. i want to thank tom price, mick mulvaney and the entire white , house team. the president gave his all in this effort. he did everything he possibly could to help people see the opportunity that we have with this bill. he has really been fantastic. still, we got to do better and we will. i absolutely believe that. this is a setback, no two ways about it. but it is not the end of the story. i know that every man and woman in this conference is now motivated more than ever to step up our game. to deliver on our promises. i know that everyone is committed to seizing this incredible opportunity that we have and i sure am. >> talk about real people, now you've gotten a plan you guys don't like, the white house doesn't like, it's the law for the foreseeable future. do you intend to help it along? prop it up? or do you plan on letting it

her -- wither? mr. ryan: we kind of prop it along, try to prop it up, it is so fundamentally flawed that i don't know that that's possible. what we're really worried about and you've heard me say this all along, the coming premium increase that are coming with a death spiraling health care system. that's my big concern. we just didn't quite get consensus today. what we have is a member-driven process to try to get consensus. we came very close but did not get the consensus. that's why i thought the wise thing to do is not proceed with a vote but to pull the bill and see what we can do. i don't think the law as it is fashioned or anything close to it is really going to survive. >> have you worked on legislation? mr. ryan: we're going to go back and figure out what the next steps are. >> is it the conservatives of the freedom caucus who effectively drove out your predecessor, john boehner, are they responsible for the defeat today? mr. ryan: i don't want to cast blame. there's a block of no votes,

that is why this did not pass. there were a sufficient number of votes that prevented it from passing and they didn't change their votes. we were close, some of the members of that caucus were voting with us but not enough were, and therefore -- i met with their chairman earlier today. he made it clear to me that the votes weren't going to be there from their team. that was sufficient to provide the balance to not have this bill pass. >> you all swept the house, won the majority with a promise to repeal obamacare. the majority in the senate with a promise to repeal obamacare. the white house with the promise to repeal obamacare. how do you go home to your constituents, send all your members home to their constituents, say, you know what, it's not even 100 days into the administration, sorry, we can't figure this out. mr. ryan: that's a really good question. i wish i had a better answer for you. i really believe that obamacare is a law that is collapsing, hurting families, not working. it was designed in a fundamentally flawed way. we believe this bill is the best

way to go, but we didn't get the consensus to get there. >> right now obamacare remain s the law of the land. is that going to change in 2017? mr. ryan: i don't know what else to say other than obamacare is going to remain the law of the land until it's replaced. we did not have quite the votes to replace this law. we're going to be living with obamacare for the foreseeable future. i don't know how long it's going to take us to replace this law. my worry is obamacare is going to be getting even worse. actually, i think we were probably doing the democrats a favor. i think we were doing the architects of obama a favor by passing this law before it gets even worse. well i guess that favor is not , going to be given to them and it's going to get worse. i don't think the architects of obamacare -- they may be pleased right now but when they see how bad this gets based on the told byons we have been the plans participating in obamacare. five states, you've got one plan left. one choice.

other a third of the counties in america, one plan left. and the kind of projections we're being told from the people providing health insurance to these people and plans, it's going to get even worse. so i don't think the architects of obamacare envisioned this future. it's not one we want for the american people. i wish we had the kind of consensus we needed to bring a bill to the floor to pass and replace it but we don't have , that right now. reporter: what about those, you have to keep the government open in about five weeks, debt ceiling, tax reform, how much capital did you burn on this and how does that potentially injure those other bills? mr. ryan: i think our members know we did everything we could to get consensus. this is how governing works when you're in the majority. we need to get 216 people to agree with each other to write legislation. not 210, not 215, we need 16 -- we need 216 people in the house to agree with each on how

-- other on how to write a piece of legislation. we didn't have 216 people. we were close but didn't have 216 people. that's how legislating works. so now we're going to move on with the rest of our agenda. because we have big, ambitious plans to improve people's lives in this country. we want to secure the border. we want to rebuild our military. we want to get the deficit under control. we want infrastructure and we want tax reform. the last question you asked about tax reform, yes, this does make tax reform more difficult but it does not in any way make it impossible. we'll proceed with tax reform, we'll continue with tax reform, that's an issue i know quite a bit about, i used to run that committee. i spoke with the president, the treasury secretary, and his economic advisors earlier today about tax reform. we are going to proceed with tax reform. this makes it clearly more difficult. you know how the numbers work, it's about $1 trillion. that just means the obamacare taxes stay with obamacare. we're going to fix the rest of the tax code.

reporter: does this portend other bad things? mr. ryan: i don't think so. i do not think it is prologue brother future things because there are parts of our agenda where people have more agreement. we have more agreement on the need and nature of tax reform, on fund thinking government, on -- funding the government, rebuilding the military, securing the border. -- this issue had a big difference of opinion, not whether we should repeal and replace obamacare but just how we should replace it. and that is the growing pains of governing. we were a 110-year opposition party. where being against things was easy to do. you just had to be against it. now in three months' time we try to go to a governing party where we actually have to get 216 people to agree with each other on how we do things. we just weren't quite there today. we will get there, but we were not there today. reporter: are you going to move ahead with stage two and three legislation? also, you can just talk about

how the conference is feeling right now? mr. ryan: the conference is let down feeling disappointed. , we were on the cusp of the filling a promise that we made, on the cusp of achieving an ambition we had for seven years and we came a little short. we were close but not quite there. on your other issues this bill -- issues come of this bill would have made what we call phase 2 much, much better. nevertheless, i think there are some things that the secretary of h.h.s. can do to try to sort of stabilize things. but really, we needed this bill to make it better. for instance, risk pools. we believe the smarter way to help people with pre-existing conditions get affordable coverage while bringing down the health care costs for everybody else is through reinsurance risk or risk sharing pools which this bill supplied for the states. that's not now going to happen and therefore he won't be able to deploy that policy tool that we think is better than obamacare. we do lose a lot of tools we wanted to help improve people's lives and bring down health care costs in this country. thank you very much, everybody.

reporter: do you have confidence in your whip? mr. ryan: i do.