Posted on 10/24/2015 4:31:46 PM PDT by FourPeas
Yesterday morning in our article “Establishment Republicans Walking Away From Full Obamacare Repeal” we told you about the Capitol Hill Republican leadership’s plan to maintain key parts of Obamacare while it indulges in another show vote to claim it has repealed the hated health care takeover.
Ted CruzYesterday afternoon principled limited government constitutional conservative Senator Ted Cruz joined us in demanding that Republican congressional leaders keep their promise to repeal Obamacare “root and branch” by passing a simple one sentence repeal through a process known as reconciliation.
Senator Cruz tweeted, “It's not complicated: We promised the voters full repeal of #Obamacare on reconciliation. We should do exactly that.”
And of course Cruz is right.
As Michael F. Cannon and Paul Winfree noted in their recent op-ed for The Hill, “King v. Burwell helps repeal ObamaCare”:
Public opposition to ObamaCare has lasted far longer than its authors imagined. Unsubsidized consumers avoid ObamaCare coverage. Twenty states have rejected its Medicaid expansion. Congress wants to repeal it. President Obama and the Supreme Court have repeatedly amended and expanded it, transforming the statute Congress enacted into an illegitimate law that no Congress ever had the votes to pass, and making repeal not just an economic imperative but necessary to restore the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.*
And Congress appears to have the 51 votes in the Senate and the majority in the House necessary to pass full repeal on a reconciliation bill, so what’s the hold up?
Cannon and Winfree say House leaders shied away from full repeal partially out of fear that the Senate cannot deliver.
And they too are right.
To excuse their inaction Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican Senate “leadership” are hiding behind a whole lot of double talk about complicated Senate Rules and procedures that no one in the general public fully understands – but they instinctively know double-talk when they hear it.
And as we noted yesterday, the idea that the Senate must defer to an unelected staff member (the Senate Parliamentarian) who has signaled concerns about using the procedure Ted Cruz has proposed is complete nonsense.
And as Michael F. Cannon and Paul Winfree so cogently argued in their op-ed the concerns the Senate Parliamentarian has expressed are belied by the facts of the passage and subsequent litigation that has left this unconstitutional monstrosity intact.
Ted Cruz is right, and he has proven once again that he is the one guy on Capitol Hill conservatives can trust to always keep his word because passing a full repeal of Obamacare and sending the bill to the President’s desk as Republicans promised during the 2014 midterm election isn’t complicated.
A one sentence repeal of Obamacare through the budget reconciliation bill should be an easy call for Republicans. They have the majority, they can ignore the recommendation of the Senate Parliamentarian if it goes against them, let the Senate vote on a favorable interpretation of the rules and forge forward – but that requires a credible argument and a spine, both of which are in short supply among establishment Republican “leaders” in Congress.
Forgot to take your meds again?
I agree. And although the corrupt, RINO-controlled Congress has the constitutional authority to override a presidential veto (1.7.2), they’re not going to use it.
Remember in November ’16.
“Ted is johnny-come-lately on the topic.”
Paraphrasing William Buckley, “I’m not going to insult your intelligence by suggesting that you believe what you just wrote.”
Yesterday Romney took “credit” for Obamacare...said that we wouldn’t have it if not for Romneycare.
I voted for that slime in 2012. Never again. From now on, I will not waste my vote...I’ll only cast it for a conservative.
Don’t you know that all of our thoughts, plans, words, and actions were originally thought, planned, spoken, and done by Trump? ;)
I agree wholeheartedly. I’m done with the lesser of two evils.
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