No, the GOP is not going to defund 0hbamacare
Keep this in mind next election day, and the next one, too.
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Posted on 07/26/2013 10:52:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There's a movement among Capitol Hill Republicans to defund Obamacare. With the president's hugely expensive national health care scheme set to take effect Jan. 1, many of the law's opponents view this fall's battles over spending and the debt as the last chance to stop it, specifically by cutting off funds for its implementation.
But Republicans will not stop Obamacare. They won't defund it. Their last chance to put an end to it was the 2012 election. They lost, and the chance is gone.
On Thursday, Republican Sen. Mike Lee made public a letter pledging to "not support any continuing resolution or appropriations legislation that funds further implementation or enforcement of Obamacare." Citing the president's unilateral decision to postpone a major part of the bill, the employer mandate, Lee wrote, "If the administration will not enforce the law as written, then the American people should not be forced to fund it."
Money to fund Obamacare comes from two sources. A relatively small part of it, including some of the funds used to get the program going, comes from Congress' regular yearly appropriations. Congress could raise or lower the amounts without changing Obamacare itself. The defund-Obamacare Republicans in the Senate hope to strip out that discretionary funding from a continuing resolution needed to fund the government that Congress will debate in September.
They know they won't succeed. Democrats, with 54 votes, have enough to pass anything that requires a simple majority, and won't have much trouble getting to a filibuster-proof 60 votes, either. "I could count six or seven Republicans who would vote for full funding of the continuing resolution without breaking a sweat," says one Senate aide who supports defunding. "So they're going to get to 60."
But that's just the discretionary part of Obamacare. The far bigger portions of the program, including the billions and billions of dollars in subsidies that will start going to Americans on Jan. 1, are mandatory spending, an entitlement funded by an automatic appropriation which is written into law and runs without further congressional action. To change that, Congress would have to change Obamacare.
In the Senate, that would take 67 votes -- the amount needed to overcome a guaranteed presidential veto. If the 46 Senate Republicans voted unanimously to end the Obamacare entitlement, they would have to persuade 21 Democrats to go along.
The Senate Republicans advocating defunding know that's not going to happen. And since Senate Republicans are not even united themselves, they also don't have the power to shut down the government.
Of course, Republicans in the House do have the power to shut down the government, but even the most enthusiastic of the defund-Obamacare lawmakers in the Senate have real doubts as to whether Speaker John Boehner would do such a thing.
A shutdown would be "madness," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office who opposes Obamacare. "There is no exit strategy. It'll go on for a while, people will say Republicans shut down the government again, Republicans will cave, fund the government, and go on weakened and divided."
Some senators believe that if they could somehow shut off just the implementation funds, there would be no mechanism for the government to spend the mandatory money and, bingo, all of Obamacare would be effectively defunded. But Democrats thought of that back in 2009. A lot of Obamacare's implementation money comes from mandatory spending. It's going to flow no matter what, unless Republicans find those 67 votes.
So why the push? "We have to try," says the Senate aide. "Having this fight will show the people who sent us here that we are a party of principle. And after we lose this fight, all of our guys are going to have an issue that we can run on and win."
Of course, just 11 Republicans -- Rubio, Cruz, Risch, Paul, Inhofe, Vitter, Thune, Chiesa, Enzi, Fischer, and Grassley -- signed Sen. Lee's defunding pledge. That's about one-quarter of the Senate's Republican caucus. Undaunted, defunders say that big victories -- like the anti-gun control effort -- also started small.
But there's a difference between killing proposed legislation and stopping a law that is already in effect. And Republicans have run out of ways to stop Obamacare. The only way that will happen now is if the law proves to be a disaster that even its supporters abandon. Like everyone else, Republicans will just have to wait to see what happens.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t - the pubbies choose to submit and be viewed as cowards rather than be regarded as meanies.
If they fail on Øbamacare they will hereafter be regarded in the past tense because people will abandon the party and it will be no more.
The spineless republicans will not defund it.
But defiance will.
F U B O !
They simply have to shut down the government until Obama complies. It is all a matter of will power. They don’t have it and Byron York is torn from the same cowardly cloth.
Defunding HHS and zeroing out Kathleen Sebelius’ salary would put a pretty good kind in it.
That’s correct, they will not.
They have shown time after time that they will not stand united on anything at all, and they will show the same here.
They are utterly useless.
The exact moment was when the GOP bosses made Mr. Romenycare himself the candidate. Romney was the Wendell Wilkie of the 2012 election. McCain was the Wendell Wilkie of the 2008 election.
I think they should keep trying to defund it every chance they get. But they’ll probably cave. Ugh.
No, the GOP is not going to defund 0hbamacare
Keep this in mind next election day, and the next one, too.
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RE: They simply have to shut down the government until Obama complies
They’re terrified of doing that simply because -— THEY ALWAYS GET BLAMED for it.
The mainstream press ALWAYS point the finger on them.
It happened under Clinton, it happened when the previous debt ceiling debates were being made.
IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.
A pretty logical argument. The “kill Romney” and “kill the tea party” strategy worked.
Why would the republicans do anything to stop obamacare? They have a vested interest just as much as the democrats to ram obamacare through. Both sides and their business interests stand to make a shitload of money off of forced enrollment and compliance costs. In a free country, obamacare would be called “extortion”, or “racketeering”, or “fascism”. This is just the first step to nationalizing the healthcare system.
Yes, you are right.
Its better to fight smart than just fight a clearly losing battle.
The dems were damn smart to set nobamacare up with auto-funding and require veto proof over-ride. That said, it can eventually be killed and the more citizens actually see the mess the more likely it will be put to sleep whenever common sense take control again.
I’m doing my part to defund the GOP.
Rush was talking about this an hour ago. During the ‘95 shutdown the union teachers had their young skulls o’ mush sending tens of thousands of letters to Congress saying “I can’t learn when I’m hungry! PLEASE don’t cut school lunches and STARVE me!” Says the Pubbies still quake in fear of this.
~ Larry Elder, The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America
Same here. Not one thin dime for the GOP/RNC.
Rove and all the other elites need to get out of the way! ‘14 could be a very sad time for some of the pubbies, especially if they don’t defund Bowbamacare and vote for amnesty! Big effin’ loss for the incumbents!!!!
York is correct about this. Read it and weep. He isn't the only one to say 2012 was our last chance, David Limbaugh agrees. That's why I cried for our dying country in November, because we're officially past the "tipping point" now.
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