Posted on 10/20/2013 11:18:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
So, a band of tea-party Republicans led by Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Mike Lee (UT) – and backed by groups like FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, and Club for Growth – pushed a risky strategy to defund ObamaCare that led to a partial government shutdown. As a logical matter, President Obama and Senate Democrats were equally culpable for the shutdown; they could have avoided it by approving one of the House-passed bills that funded the government while amending the president’s health care law. But that was unlikely. The media and public saw the GOP as more culpable, and the GOP caved. ObamaCare glided away unscathed.
Then came the inevitable recriminations between “defunders” and their detractors. If I may paraphrase and/or embellish: The shutdown was a failure! No it wasn’t! You’re stupid! You voted for ObamaCare! Each camp blames the other for the outcome, and for not being sufficiently devoted to fighting ObamaCare.
To put my cards on the table, as a median-voter-theorem enthusiast who opposed the defund strategy before I supported it, I think it’s too soon to judge whether it was a failure. As of today, it has produced no gains, and ObamaCare opponents saw their poll numbers slip.
On the other hand, ObamaCare justifies drastic measures. Opponents spent political capital taking a principled stand against a law whose roll-out has been a two-week-long train wreck. Even die-hard supporters like Ezra Klein have called it a “disaster.” Former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs has said heads should roll, and nobody knows whether the administration can get its act together before the health insurance “Exchanges” crater. If it can’t, the defund strategy will make all ObamaCare opponents appear prescient.
Finally, no one has focused on an undeniable success of the shutdown: for one brief, shining moment, my paycheck was larger than my wife’s.
In the end, the defund strategy may prove to be a disaster. Or helpful. As the Zen master said, we’ll see. Here’s the video
What’s clear is that the recriminations are unwisely distracting ObamaCare opponents from adding momentum to strategies that are already defunding the law. Here are four things opponents would be better off doing than fighting among themselves:
1. Stop Medicaid expansion in the states.
As envisioned by the ObamaCare’s authors, the Medicaid expansion would account for roughly half of the law’s $2 trillion of new entitlement spending over the first 10 years. After the Supreme Court blocked Congress’ attempt to coerce states into implementing it, however, 25 states refused to do so.
As a result, those states have already defunded almost a quarter of ObamaCare’s new entitlement spending. They are also helping to increase dissatisfaction with the law among hospitals and other providers, who now won’t be receiving the subsidies they were promised in return for their support.
If Cruz, Lee, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Club for Growth and the rest really want to defund ObamaCare, they should be fighting to block the Medicaid expansion in the 25 states that have already authorized it. Wanna squash Republicans who are soft on ObamaCare? Come visit Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich (R) has all but claimed that Godwants Ohio to expand Medicaid, and is literally trying to do it without the support, and over the objections, of the legislature.
2. Get states, employers, and citizens to challenge the IRS’s illegal ObamaCare taxes.
ObamaCare authorizes Exchange subsidies only through state-established Exchanges, not the 34 Exchanges created by the federal government. As a result, those 34 states that refused to establish Exchanges by law have defunded a further one-third of that $2 trillion dollars. Since those subsidies trigger penalties under both the employer mandate and individual mandate, those states have by law also exempted all of their employers and about 8 million individual residents from those penalties.
Unbelievably, contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional intent, the IRS is trying impose those taxes and issue those subsidies in those 34 states anyway. The IRS is literally trying to tax, borrow, and spend more than $700 billion without congressional authorization — a more egregious example of taxation without representation than the Stamp Act.
State attorneys general, employers, and individual taxpayers have so far filed four lawsuits challenging those illegal taxes. A federal judge has rejected the Obama administration’s attempt to dismiss the challenge filed by Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt. More than a dozen Indiana school districts filed suit alongside that state’s attorney general Greg Zoeller. A federal court in Washington, D.C., will hear oral arguments on another challenge on Monday.
As National Review editorializes:
may not have a great deal of power in Washington, where they control, in John Boehner’s words, one half of one third of the federal government; but we have 50 states for a reason, and Republican governors lead 30 of them. Republican governors, attorneys general, and state legislators looking to use their offices to the significant benefit of the nation as a whole should be lining up to create a 30-state united front with Oklahoma. Scott Pruitt is fighting for the rule of law, and Republican governors might trouble themselves to give him a hand.
If anti-ObamaCare groups really want to defund the law, they should get governors, attorneys general, employers, and their own members to file additional challenges.
3. Educate states about how to block the IRS’s illegal taxes legislatively.
The 34 states that have refused to establish Exchanges can actually block the IRS’s illegal ObamaCare taxes legislatively by suspending the licenses of insurers that accept the illegal subsidies. Since no insurer would then accept one, not a single employer in the state could be hit with the employer-mandate penalties those subsidies trigger.
Legislators in Ohio and Missouri have already introduced legislation based on draft language I offered in my Cato study “50 Vetoes.” The American Legislative Exchange Council has given this “Health Care Freedom Act 2.0” its seal of approval and offers its own model legislation.
4. Urge House investigators to subpoena all materials related to the IRS’s illegal taxes.
The House Committees on Oversight & Government Reform and Ways & Means have been investigating the IRS’s illegal taxes for more than a year. This August, House Oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked an IRS witness:
Where the hell is the paper on that?…Where’s the analysis? Congress doesn’t agree with you, at least the House of Representatives, that your rule is consistent with the law. We asked for the analysis. You’ve stonewalled us…Where are the notes, recommendations, [and] analysis that we asked for?
Issa called the IRS representative “pretty close to a useless witness” and threatened that if the agency is not forthcoming, “Not only will I issue a subpoena, but I’m going to have to do a lot more.” Here’s the video:
Yet the Treasury department has still refused to hand over many emails and other communications that, according to my source, show the IRS did almost no analysis of the law before deciding to tax, borrow, and spend $700 billion without congressional authorization. If ObamaCare opponents want to defund the law, they should urge Issa to follow through on his threat to issue a subpoena, and “do a lot more.”
A good test of whether defunders or detractors are more committed to stopping ObamaCare will be which side is the first to put away the knives and get to work.
might better be phrased:
"The public saw the GOP as more culpable because that's what the media told them."
FRANKS: Repealing Obamacare by defending the Constitution
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/26/franks-repealing-obamacare-by-defending-the-consti/
Obamacares Unconstitutional Origins - A. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360460/obamacares-unconstitutional-origins-andrew-c-mccarthy
(excerpt)
Representative Franks has introduced a resolution (H.R. 153) expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Obamacare legislation clearly violated the Origination Clause. The measure is gaining momentum. As it rapidly picks up co-signers, the resolution should materially advance the cases filed against Obamacare, including one to be argued this fall in the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court. After all, if a statute violates the Origination Clause, it is a nullity — invalid from the moment of enactment.
Nevertheless, Republicans should not make the same mistake they made during prior legal challenges to Obamacare. This is not a time for leaders once again to sit idly by with fingers crossed, praying that judges do the heavy lifting for them. The legerdemain that characterized Obamacare’s passage, coupled with its patent lack of constitutional legitimacy, should stiffen the resolve of the House to refuse funding — as it is the House’s prerogative to do.
Once again, the president is not telling the truth about Obamacare. The Supreme Court did not endorse it. The Supreme Court said it could only conceivably be sustained as a tax. It still had to pass the Constitution’s tests for valid taxation. It failed.
Asking if voters saw the GOP as more culpable is an unfair question. The RINOs never let a GOP strategy evolve. Instead, they seem to be saving Obama care because their paymasters have found ways to profit from it.
This is not about getting rod of Obamacare, but the machinery concocting this kind of stuff behind it.
We can run but we cannot hide.
We had a chance to call Obama’s bluff on default and we did not.
Makes sense.
Thank you for referencing that article Kaslin. Please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at Townhall.com in general and not you.
I gave up with Townhall.com a long time ago. This is because some of its commentators are “conservative” celebrities who have kept their mouths shut about the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers.
Regarding ways to defund Obamacare, since we cannot wait for the Townhall crowd to acknowledge the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers, here is one more way to defund Obamacare which i have mentioned in related posts.
If patriots can rouse themselves to elect a non-RINO 2/3 conservative majority to each house of Congress in the 2014 elections, and I don’t know if that’s possible in this election cycle, then Congress will have the power to do the following. Congress will have the constitutonal authority, under Clause 2 of Section 7 of Article I, to override presidential vetoes. This means that Congress will be able to repeal / defund Obamacare without Obama’s signature.
And because the public is mostly stupid.
What really gripes me is pundits like Bill O’Reilly who can’t say enough about how bad Obamacare is and how much “it’s going to hurt the folks”. But then turn right around and eviscerate Ted Cruz, who is trying to do something about it!
The issue of course is “strategery”. They don’t like Cruz’s approach and think the wiser heads like Rove, Jeb, McLame, and Lindy have a better idea.
So that’s the real battle. Obamacare is important but in many ways it’s just the symbol for the greater battle that’s being fought over control of the GOP.
What O’Reilly et al could do that might help is to lay off Cruz, and let the players on the field decide the outcome. No help needed from the cheering section.
The Nazi’s in the pic look like misfits. I’m guessing this group were Hitler’s useful idiots in the early years and met some sort of ill fated demise as Hitler assumed full power. Ernst Röhm comes to mind.
The useful idiots that voted obama in the second time are meeting their demise via obamacare and who knows what else the obama regime has in the works.
Unfortunately socialism does it’s best to spread misery to all and we will be suffering right along side his useful idiots.
I have nothing further to discuss with anyone on that subject.
5. all the youths who thought they were going to get a free ride on Obamacare just refuse to participate.
5. Get rid of Boehner.
It violates the 14th.
HAHAHA!
"...It was an immediate, flat-out, unequivocal no.”
very thoughtful article.
obamacare is way more complicated than anyone can imagine.
Fast & Furious, IRS, Benghazi, Libya, Syria, the border, amnesty for illegal invaders, Americorps.
Every one of these actions were impeachable and criminal and all the Republicans do is bluster and make noise while the GOPe leadership curl up in the fetal position and suck their thumbs.
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