Six days after he was sworn in as America’s 45th president, Donald J. Trump traveled to Philadelphia to address Republican lawmakers at their annual retreat. Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the presidential seal, Trump predicted, “This Congress is going to be the busiest Congress we’ve had in decades.” Being Trump, he could not resist ad-libbing a superlative: “Maybe ever. Maybe ever. Think of that.”
The legislators responded with a curious silence — perhaps awed by the thought, perhaps also a bit unnerved. After years mired in do-nothingness, the Republican-controlled Congress had both the means and, Trump believed, the mandate to roll back Barack Obama’s liberal legacy.
At the top of their hit list was Obama’s monumental health care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. During the six and a half years since its passage, Republicans maintained a striking unanimity in their hatred of what they derisively called Obamacare. And over that same period, they became thoroughly united in the conviction that Trump expressed from the outset of his candidacy — namely, that he “would repeal and replace” the health care law “with something far better.”
– New York Times