Posted on 01/10/2016 5:07:51 AM PST by Kaslin
Republicans fulfilled a popular campaign pledge Wednesday when, by a 240-181 vote, the House passed a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act and defunding Planned Parenthood. The bill, already passed by the Senate, now goes to the desk of President Barack Obama, where it surely will be vetoed.
Just when, I have to ask, did my Grand Old Party's idea of victory become passing bills that won't become law? What's so glorious about fecklessness? The GOP House put an awful lot of work -- it has voted to repeal Obamacare 62 times -- into passing something that cannot become law while Obama is president and there are not enough Republicans to override a veto. Yet I see progress.
This was the first time the Senate passed a repeal bill -- thanks to a budget reconciliation rule that allows leadership to bypass cloture rules that require 60 votes. "Every single member of our conference campaigned on repeal of this disastrous law," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's spokesman, Don Stewart, told me. They all delivered.
Republicans did not deliver a bill with an alternative health care plan -- to the glee of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose office posted on a blog about the many times House Republicans have promised an alternative without wrapping the package. It seems there is not a lot of pressure for Republicans to support an alternative bill; the heavy pressure lines up behind gimmicks.
Or maybe that's changing. Last year, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, argued it was the "right thing" for the GOP Congress to risk shutting down the government by passing a spending bill that defunded Planned Parenthood. Cruz didn't care how that same tactic backfired in 2013 or that National Right to Life President Carol Tobias opposed his shutdown gambit. She told supporters that given how congressional rules work, the only way to defund Planned Parenthood is to elect a president who opposes abortion. For once, the lemming caucus didn't herd the whole GOP caucus toward the cliff.
Tobias told me the newly passed measure shows that the Senate can pass a bill to defund Planned Parenthood with a simple majority vote. That's a win. And: "There were a lot of conservatives and Republicans who didn't think Mitt Romney was good enough. So they didn't vote." Obama won re-election. Now "many of these same people are ... upset that Republicans in Congress aren't doing what they consider to be enough. I'm sorry; elections have consequences."
Here's what bugs me: The House Freedom Caucus withholds votes -- which sends House Speaker Paul Ryan into Pelosi's loving arms. Then the caucus complains that Ryan worked with Democrats. As the House passed the Obamacare repeal, caucus head Raul Labrador of Idaho announced that Ryan's honeymoon is over -- and Ryan "needs to start putting up real conservative reform" to show that he is different from former House Speaker John Boehner.
By the way, Pelosi's post also asserted that Ryan is "no different than John Boehner." Great minds...
Actually, Ryan and McConnell have done something that could not be accomplished without their majorities. With a bill on his desk, Obama will be forced to veto the measure -- and in so doing, he'll remind the public why the Affordable Care Act is so unpopular. But wait; there's more: They sent the Oval Office a spending bill, signed in December, that included a two-year hiatus on the Affordable Care Act's tax on "Cadillac" health plans and the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices. The impure GOP establishment actually passed measures that peeled back Obamacare.
Critics on the far right want to rub away the shine of accomplishment. Talk to Republican voters and many seem unaware of GOP victories. The think tank establishment and radio talk show hosts tell the base that the GOP leadership is good for nothing, when the eggheads are good for getting nothing done.
The notion that the GOP-led Congress doesn't do anything feeds Democrats' claims that this is a "do-nothing" Congress. To the contrary, under Republican control, the Senate passed the first multiyear highway bill since 2005. Obama signed it in December. Since 1997, Congress regularly has had to pass "doc fixes" to avert huge scheduled cuts in payments to physicians that would have chased physicians out of Medicare. This Congress repealed the formula that made those fixes necessary. In April, Obama signed the bill. In November, the president signed a defense bill that raised military pay and impedes his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.
Yes, to their discredit, Republicans didn't pay for these reforms. But these measures represent steps in the right direction. They are improvements. People elect candidates to Congress to improve the country, not fall on their swords.
As he was leaving the speakership, Boehner sagely advised: "Have the courage to do what you can do. It's easy to have the courage to do what you can't do."
I have my own saying: It's hard to dance with a knife in your back.
Don’t buy her analysis and question her credentials. Ryan controls committee seats and he c a n twist arms off at the shoulder to get Democrat votes if he had the balls to do so.
Come from a corn belt state and want to sit on an agriculture committee? How about a committee assignment on Wildlife preservation in Alaska, or something similar? Republicans don’t know how to fight hard ball.
The Republicans are so great that they voted for cloture, knowing that at the vote on the merits they would lose and Obamacare would be enacted, when they easily could have stopped the vote.
They are being dishonest and they know it.
the article dogmatically overlooks the reason for the passage
of the bill certain to be vetoed.
the reason is not as the cliche goes, kabuki theater or feckless quest for glory. the purpose is to show those that dwell perpetually in Rio Linde, that to prevail absolutely, there must be raw political power.
The passage is a cry for help from the people, a call to action
Elect a Republican President
I am certain there will be others to follow to reinforce the message to the strongest of the doubters
For me, it’s no longer about Conservative purity.
I just want the Establishment broken.
Cruz can’t do that. Only Trump.
If Cruz wins the nomination, I would vote for him — he is a great Conservative.
But Trump is the game changer I’m looking for.
Right now most registered republicans if not all hate them more than the rats
They coulda DEFUNDED it all, you know.
........like just NOT PAYING FOR ANYTHING!
Of course, that would actually be doing something. NOT this bunch.
You could call it WellCareFare.
Precisely why the American public voted more Republicans into office in 2010 and 2014, to stop Obama and Congress from doing any more to us. Anything Obama would sign is probably bad for us.
What a poor article full of Lilliputian thought. You are correct. We sent them there to repeal the worst law since prohibition.
“What a poor article full of Lilliputian thought. You are correct. We sent them there to repeal the worst law since prohibition.”
You forgot to send a president to washington who would sign the bill to repeal.
“Cruz didn’t care how that same tactic backfired in 2013”
It ‘backfired’ so much that the Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014 and increased their house majority.
...as if that did any good, though.
I do get that too. The point is that he and his party will be on record supporting an awful and destructive law.
Republicans in Congress are very interested in convincing their constituents that they are fighting for the conservative agenda, but they are much less interesting in actually doing anything. Obamacare and the Omnibus funding bill are making many people very happy and those people are going to be rewarding those who are making them rich.
You have accurately stated the dogma perpetrated by those that have no clue about the exercise of political power.
Politics is the art of the possible
I have argued the art of the possible in politics for 15 years on this forum. The question is: have I abandoned that philosophy, or have I concluded that our representatives have fundamentally changed their behavior and are no longer practicing the art of the possible, but rather embracing a corrupt bargain. Call me cynical if you will, but clueless I am not.
It was possible to vote against cloture, so the vote to enact Obamacare would not have taken place.
The Republicans did not do what was possible.
They wanted this.
Ping
How about we just get Govt OUT of things it is NOT supposed to do. Healthcare is one of them.
ANY Govt program WILL result in control. This was recognized by the writers of the Constitution, which is why it is written as it was.
Our job is NOT to find other ways for the Govt to do things it is NOT supposed to, it is to STOP it and put it back in the box the Constitution built for it.
Here's what bugs me: Ryan had just strong-armed through an omnibus bill that fully funded obamacare and planned parenthood, yet feels he is entitled to force all republicans in the house to swallow that poison pill and then celebrate an inconsequential sleight-of-hand bill that cannot become law because it is a standalone bill with no repercussions if vetoed.
Oh, and Deb Saunders pretending that she speaks for conservatives - the abused wife of the GOPe. That bothers me, too.
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