“Shutting down the federal government would not defund Obamacare, which is an entitlement.”
More hogwash. It wasn’t shutting down the government that would defund Obamacare, it would be not passing any spending bills that included funding for it that would defund it. The government shutting down would just be the inevitable consequence of Obama refusing to sign those spending bills.
There’s already mucho Calvinballo going on. Obama has spent non-authorized sums on Obamacare.
The trick is to spread out the appropriations bills. Pass more or less clean bills for
. . .
Agriculture;
Commerce; Justice, and Science;
Defense;
Energy and Water;
Financial Services;
Homeland Security;
Interior and Environment;
Legislative;
Military and Veterans; and
State and Foreign Operations
. . .
at least ten days before they get to the problematic ones. If Obama vetoes them, he's shutting down the government. If not, they go into effect after ten days, and before the key bills are voted on.
Then it's not the entire bloated and dangerous FedGov at risk, just
. . .
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; and then
Transportation and Housing and Urban Development
. . .
The leverage there is a whole lot more favorable than with all the spending bills at once. Boehner and McConnell don't want to do things that way, but I'm hoping the remaining Tea Party members who haven't been bought out will push for that path. At that point, if we pass a bill that specifically bans all spending for Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, but funds everything else, Obama would be either giving decent Americans what we want by letting it go into law, or betraying his parasitic followers by shutting down the least useful parts of FedGov. I'm okay with either option.