House Republican Leader: CR Will Permit Funding of Obamacare

CNSNews.com ^ | March 14, 2011 | Matt Cover

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

(CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Monday that the new continuing resolution (CR) the House will consider this week to keep the federal government funded will permit the Obama administration to spend money on the implementation of Obamacare.

Last Thursday, Reps. Steve King (R.-Iowa) and Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) sent a letter to Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers asking them to include language in any future CR that would prohibit the administration from spending any money to implement Obamacare. King and Bachmann vowed not to vote for any CR that permitted funding of Obamacare and called on other House members to take the same pledge.

The language that King and Bachmann are calling for would not only prohibit normal appropriations from funding Obamacare but would also prohibit the administration from carrying out $105.5 billion in spending that, according to the Congressional Research Service, was built into the Obamacare legislation in such a way that it will be automatically spent unless Congress affirmatively prohibits the administration from spending it.

At his Capitol Hill press briefing today, CNSNews.com asked Majority Leader Cantor: “Are you or are you not going to use this CR to cut off that $105.5 billion in Obamacare funding? Representatives Steve King and Michele Bachmann have said that they want you to do that, sent a letter saying please use the CR as an opportunity to cut off that funding. Are you going to do that?”

Cantor said: “What we’ve said earlier is that we are operating consistent with House rules, which in this CR means [limiting the bill to] discretionary funding for this year. What I’ve also said here is that we are in another temporary stop-gap mode and the intention is for this year--and going forward to next year--we intend to starve the agencies of the funding to implement the full force and effect of the Obamacare bill.”

When asked earlier by another reporter about the health care spending, Cantor had said, “We are fully committed to making sure that Obamacare is not implemented.”

“There’s a lot of discussion about $105 billion that was put into the Obamacare bill and let’s look at the record here,” he said. “We have passed in the first bill here a repeal of Obamacare.”

“We did it again when it came to H.R. 1 because we put a limiting amendment in there saying no funds will be used to implement Obamacare and our committees are going about marking up the bills which will repeal the mandatory slush funds in that bill,” he said.

“We are also committed to starving the agencies of funding necessary to implement that bill,” said Cantor. “Our intention is to make sure that we starve the agencies of the money that they need to do so.”

The language amended into the initial CR that the House approved last month--but the Senate did not--would not have touched the $105.5 billion in automatic spending built into the Obamacare legislation. $4.95 billion of that $105.5 billion spending is scheduled to take place in this fiscal year.

When asked about opposition to the short-term CR from some conservatives who want to use the bill to defund things such as Obamacare and organizations like Planned Parenthood, Cantor said there were many policy issues he would like to deal with but that Congress needed to work out a spending plan for the remainder of the fiscal year first.

“There are a lot of other issues that our members want to address in the spending prescription for the [current] fiscal year,” he said. “We’re hopeful that we can come to a resolution with some of those whether it has to do with taxpayer-funding of abortion or else-wise we want to get this thing done.”

“We’re saying let’s clean up this [spending] mess now, let’s get it off the table,” he said. “That’s why you’re seeing frustration around this--yet again--another stop-gap measure.”

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), appearing with Cantor at the briefing, said that the Energy and Commerce Committee and other committees would be “going after” the funding for ObamaCare, stating it was a matter of process.

“You have Energy and Commerce last week holding hearings [and] you’re going to be seeing many committees having hearings and going after this money--a lot of it’s the [legislative] process,” he said.

King and Bachmann want the Republican leadership to defund Obamacare in the CR because it is a bill the Senate and President Obama must eventually approve. If the House approves a CR that defunds Obamacare, and the Democratic majority Senate and President Obama oppose that CR, they would need to be willing to shut down the government to prevent it from becoming law.

“While some have argued that our defunding efforts in the CR should be limited only to those annual funds provided by the CR, we disagree,” King and Bachmann wrote in their letter to the Republican leaders. “If we do not stand our ground on the CR, leverage it as the ‘must pass bill’ that it is, and use it to stop the $105.5 billion in automatically appropriated funds, Obamacare will be implemented on our watch. We will also have conceded a significant amount of ground on this issue and will find it difficult, if not impossible, to regain the strategic advantage in future legislative vehicles.”

“We have to write my language into the CR and take a stand,” King told CNSNews.com in an interview last week. “Stare the president in the eye and say: Mr. President, we are going to make sure that this government has the resources to function, but we’re also are going to make sure that there are no resources to implement or carry out the provisions of Obamacare, and if you should choose to shutdown the government in order to preserve socialized medicine that has your name on it, that is your choice not ours, but we are not going to allow that unconstitutional bill to be enacted on deceptive funding on our watch.”

The continuing resolution, which likely will be voted on this Wednesday, would fund the government for three weeks starting on March 19, and would cut $6 billion in federal spending.

[originalbuckeye]

All they have to say is ‘the Constitutionality of Obamacare is in question. Therefore we will not fund it until a declaration is finally made on it's Constitutionality’. Period.

[A CA Guy]

If Republicans fail their history as a party.

Where the F is any of this money we don't have coming from?

Why not put a balanced budget amendment forward and let people vote on that for the record.

[maggief]

Just sayin’

I’ll keep posting these lists ‘til the cows come home ...

The Rove connection ...

http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=4542

Who’s Funding the Stealth PACs?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7007901.html

(Rove) is also working with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie to build a network of conservative groups rivaling the Republican National Committee in influence.

Insiders, outsiders

Inside the White House, where Rove once roamed, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, a former Dallas mayor and Texas secretary of state, is the solitary Cabinet-level Texan.

On Democrat-dominated Capitol Hill, Texas’ lopsided Republican delegation is at a disadvantage. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, the only House Appropriations Subcommittee chair from the state, has become a bipartisan champion for Texas projects, from military construction to medical research.

Edwards has worked closely with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Dallas, who managed to help Texas win $1.2 billion in federal earmarks last year despite serving in the minority party. The senior senator says her goal is to “work behind the scenes and put together coalitions and alliances to get things done in a very tough legislative atmosphere.”

Two other Texas lawmakers have become influential players because of their national, not state, portfolios. Sen. John Cornyn of San Antonio heads up the GOP’s Senate campaign committee, while Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions directs the House Republicans’ committee.

“Sen. Cornyn is building a power base that will likely serve Texas in the long run,” said George Edwards, a political scientist at Texas A&M.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2621407/posts

A partial list of the GOP ‘elite.’

http://republicanwhip.house.gov/newsroom/2009/04/national-council-for-a-new-america-formed.html

Our National Panel of Experts:

Governor Haley Barbour
Governor Jeb Bush
Governor Bobby Jindal
Senator John McCain
Governor Mitt Romney

(snip)

Sincerely,

John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John Carter, Pete Sessions, David Dreier, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Blunt

Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander, John Ensign, John Cornyn, John Thune, Kay Bailey Hutchison

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/republican-party/gingrich-to-be-a-public-face-of-cantors-effort-to-remake-gop/

Gingrich Joins Cantor’s Effort To Remake GOP

[Gaffer]

I'll tell everyone here this makes a piss poor bout of departure from sanity. These quislings speak "We're gonna deny them every opportunity to implement Obamacare" Yet the other side of their twisted RINO mouths say "Aye" to a bill to give them the fricking funding?

This economy is in shambles. In my town, all three car dealers (even the Ford dealer) are down over 50% stock, even 90% for the "Government Motors" ones. The local big tractor sales place closed (all the inventory sold at auction). Gas is up, Walmart has more EBT card users than cash and credit card combined. Food prices are skyrocketing, housing starts everywhere are at historical lows and on and on and on-fricking-on. And these quisling motherf@ckers are telling us this?

I was born in 1950, probably at the height of America's power and standing. The country I had then is no more, nor will ever be again. It is lost. It is lost to benefit-seeking immigrants, illegals, communinists, liberals, Muslims, the truly slothful and lazy among us, and every other section of the world that wants to stomp it dead forever. Folks, we are about to enter the American Era of the Weimar Republic of the 30s, and our President is doing everything he can to hasten it along with the willing help of what our own representatives call themselves -Conservatives.....BE You DOUBLE EL SHIT!

[peeps36]

Why would they fund a program that a judge said is unconstitutional? The republicans should be using this ruling to beat the democrats over the head. I bet over half the country doesn't know the judge ruled obamacare unconstitutional.

[combat_boots]

I C.

[SierraWasp]

I second what you said, but I just wish you could be a little more emphatic when you say it.

Now come back here and tell me what you REALLY think about it, in NO uncertain terms!!!

[Evil Slayer]

This article is dated Monday, March 14, 2011.

What is the status NOW?

[Amerigomag]

I’ve called Boehner and Cantor but not McCarthy yet.

Wasting your time.

McCarthy is an absolute RINO. He was part of the liberal cabal that shut Republicans out of the the budgeting process in the California legislature. He and Schwarzeenegger, in cooperation with Democrat, legislative leaders, ramped up spending until the state of California is now technically bankrupt.

[RedMDer]

That had better be the last continuing resolution.

Shut it down! That may be the only way to draw the Lying Stream Media into broadcasting the impasse. Four billion here and 6 billion there, they can hide that. The imposter in the white hut can then at election time claim that the 'savings' came from his administration. Shut it down if need be. Point at the rats failure to have a budget when they were required to have one!

[Defend Liberty]

How much longer are Conservatives going to delude themselves into thinking the OP(formerly the GOP) will acquiesce to conservative principles? They never had any intention of doing so! They simply want to string along Tea Partiers in order to hijack the movement. The OP is merely one wing of the socialist Republicrat party. The only effective method to restore the conservative, limited government principles in the Constitution is by forming a second party.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

They already passed the 3-week CR. I heard nothing about defunding the automatic Obamaocare funding in the CR.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Starboard: We must show them otherwise.

Exactly. Screaminsunshine may be right that they're a "bunch of pussys," but it's up to US to show them how to mean business.

If we don't, we're the bunch their bunch represents.

[Peter W. Kessler]

I keep vacillating between thinking that these guys have something else up their sleeves... and that their heads are so far up their butts that those lumps their throats are their noses.

Then it hits me: THEY’RE TOO FREAKIN’ STUPID TO HAVE ANYTHING UP THEIR SLEEVES.

We

Are

Screwed

[calcowgirl]

Read it and weep.

That applies to way too many subjects these days.

Thanks for the ping, waspman. My blood is boilin'

[stockpirate]

Republican leaders in the house and senate are socialists and support the funding of the HC bill just as they aided in it’s passage by not requiring it to be read into the record.
And to get out of committee a bill needs two votes from the minority party. The leadership could have replaced those two members with two who weren’t socialists.

Mark my words, congress even with all republicans and the corrupt SCOTUS will stop this bill.

[BobP]

There's so much to hammer on here with this administration. Time to step up Republicans!

John 'The Clown' Boehner.

Here's a few good guys -- the 54 who voted against the CR.

Todd Akin (Missouri)
Justin Amash (Michigan)
Michele Bachmann (Minnesota)
Roscoe Bartlett (Maryland)
Joe Barton (Texas)
Dan Benishek (Michigan)
Dan Burton (Indiana)
John Campbell (California)
Steve Chabot (Ohio)
Jason Chaffetz (Utah)
Jeff Duncan (South Carolina)
Jeff Flake (Arizona)
John Fleming (Louisiana)
Trent Franks (Arizona)
Scott Garrett (New Jersey)
Phil Gingrey (Georgia)
Louie Gohmert (Texas)
Trey Gowdy (South Carolina)
Tom Graves (Georgia)
Ralph Hall (Texas)
Andy Harris (Maryland)
Dean Heller (Nevada)
Tim Huelskamp (Kansas)
Bill Huizenga (Michigan)
Tim Johnson (Illinois)
Walter Jones (North Carolina)
Jim Jordan (Ohio)
Steve King (Iowa)
Raul Labrador (Idaho)
Doug Lamborn (Colorado)
Jeffrey Landry (Louisiana)
Billy Long (Missouri)
Connie Mack (Florida)
Thaddeus McCotter (Michigan)
Mick Mulvaney (South Carolina)
Ron Paul (Texas)
Steve Pearce (New Mexico)
Mike Pence (Indiana)
Joseph Pitts (Pennsylvania)
Ted Poe (Texas)
Denny Rehberg (Montana)
Scott Rigell (Virginia)
Dennis Ross (Florida)
Jean Schmidt (Ohio)
Christopher Smith (New Jersey)
Steve Southerland (Florida)
Cliff Stearns (Florida)
Marlin Stutzman (Indiana)
John Sullivan (Oklahoma)
Scott Tipton (Colorado)
Tim Walberg (Michigan)
Joe Walsh (Illinois)
Allen West (Florida)
Joe Wilson (South Carolina)

[Monorprise]

Defund or resign.

[EvasiveManuever]

IT SHOULD BECOME ESSENTIAL That we set up a Tea Party challenger to Cantor.

HE MUST GO.

[Peter W. Kessler]

My guy’s not on that list (Frelyinghuysen - R - NJ... “R” stands for RINO).

And to think that, if I’d moved 1/8 of a mile farther north, Garrett (who IS on the list) would be my Congressman.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!

OK. Frelinghuysen isn’t a hard-core RINO, but he is certainly one of the “Go Along to Get Along” bunch.