Yeah, those 19 votes in the Senate really turned this, forget that the Republican majority House defunded it in the first place
Have you been asleep for a few months?
Senator Mike Lee put forward this plan. Defund Obamacare while funding everything else. The first step in his plan of course - DUH - was for the HOuse to get the ball rolling, then, the Senate GOP would be asked to hold firm on what the House had done, and that included, don’t vote for cloture on the bill.
Enter Ted Cruz, who immediately endorsed the plan, promoted it and ran with it. Also Heritage Action under Jim DeMint, and some other conservative orgs.
The website http://www.dontfundobamacare.com was Lee’s and Cruz’s centerpiece. Along with ads and public speeches urging citizens to sign the petition and to contact their reps and senators.
A member of the House took up the challenge there and crafted a bill and started getting colleagues on board. Enough House members banded together and stopped Boehner/Cantor from passing anything that funded obamacare. Boehner didn’t have the votes for anything he might have wanted to cave on. But he had to do something so he did this.
The Senate GOP responded horribly. That is not the fault of Lee or Cruz. They hated the young turks who were standing up and putting pressure on them. They hated that the HOuse was sending them a defund bill. They attacked the good guys, never the Dems. You saw it and heard it, unless you were sleeping the whole time.
Enough of the history of this.
You are just wrong.