“Tax reform is numerically more difficult if health care doesn’t pass. Tax reform is procedurally more difficult if health care doesn’t pass. A lot of other things become easier if health care passes,” Mulvaney. “So, not only is it sort of a procedural linchpin, but it’s a numeric linchpin.”

“Things we want to accomplish get easier to do if health care is reformed first,” the former congressman added.

Like Trump and Ryan, Mulvaney insisted immediately after the American Health Care Act stalled that the administration had “moved on to other things” and would not revisit the issue until the existing law failed of its own accord.

This week, however, Mulvaney was among the posse of senior administration officials shuttling between the White House and Capitol Hill, hoping to pull a miracle compromise out of thin air.