Here's to that!
Posted on 06/29/2012 8:28:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans from Mitt Romney to Speaker John Boehner have pledged to repeal the ACA, which is set for full implementation by 2015. Until the decision was announced, it seemed almost unthinkable that the Supreme Court and its constructionist majority would deem a law giving Congress the power to mandate commerce a valid exercise of its constitutional powers. Four justices felt that the individual mandate, which requires every American to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, fell within the ability of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. Five justices did not. Of those five, however, one—Chief Justice John Roberts—agreed with the Obama administration’s argument that the fine actually constitutes a tax, thus giving Congress cover to enact the mandate (and the law as a whole) under its power to tax. And so, in the end this otherwise conservative court affirmed the legality of President Obama's signature piece of legislation.
From here, Republicans have virtually no viable options (at least in the near term) to prevent or stall the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But that hardly means they aren’t going to try, or at least exploit it for political gain.
Within moments of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the ACA, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R – VA) announced that during the week of July 9, the House of Representatives will hold a vote to repeal the ACA. This will be the 30th attempt by the House to repeal either part or all of the ACA. While the House will undoubtedly vote to repeal the ACA, from there the measure will go nowhere. The Democratic-controlled senate will certainly not vote to repeal. Furthermore, Obama would have to sign the legislation repealing his biggest legislative achievement. Thus, in order to realize the two and a half year old conservative dream of fully repealing the ACA, the Republicans would have to garner sweeping electoral victories this November.
That would mean that in addition to holding the House and Mitt Romney defeating Obama in the race for the White House, Republicans would have to take the senate and by a filibuster-proof majority. This is because for many major pieces of legislation, a simple majority vote no longer suffices for passage in the senate. According to the rules of the chamber, before a vote takes place on a bill, the senate has to vote on whether to have a vote. This is called cloture, and it requires 60 votes out of 100 (or three-fifths) to invoke. With the GOP controlling only 47 seats at the moment, Republicans would have to gain a virtually unprecedented 13 senate seats in November to secure a filibuster proof majority. Polls on these races indicate nothing of the sort will happen.
None of this is to say that conservatives won’t try their damnedest to accomplish this Herculean political feat, or make a good show of it, anyway. Brother energy tycoons Charles and David Koch have thrown themselves at the forefront of the battle. Americans for Prosperity, which they fund, has already launched a $9 million television ad campaign specifically attacking the ruling. On July 8, David Koch will hold a $50,000 per plate fundraiser at his Long Island mansion for Romney, who has also pledged to repeal “Obamacare,” the model for which was the health care plan Romney signed into law as governor of Massachusetts. And it was recently announced that casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who had inexplicably poured tens of millions of dollars into the ridiculous presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, has pledged $10 million to the Kochs’ efforts to defeat Democratic candidates. Even still, the Democrats have their own well-oiled fundraising operations, as Obama has raised more money than Romney.
While it’s conceivable the Democrats could lose the White House, the senate, and fail to take back the House, they will certainly not lose the 13 senate seats that would be required for a GOP filibuster-proof majority. That is, barring a party-wide collapse of epic proportions.
Hasn’t Romney already asserted that, if elected, he would grant
a BOcare waver to all states?
If one vote was enough to get ObamaCare then why wouldn’t one be enough to repeal it? here’s a recap of how we got where we are today...
March 21, 2010: “Should Republican Scott Brown win Tuesday’s Senate race in Massachusetts and break the Democrats’ supermajority in the Senate, Congressional Dems could pass a final health care reform bill before Brown is seated, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters at his weekly press briefing Tuesday.
And if that means the House h...as to rubber-stamp the weaker reform bill that came out of the Senate, he said, “the Senate bill clearly is better than nothing.”
Under procedural statutes, Massachusetts officials could buy some time for Congress to pass health care by delaying the certification of a Brown victory. If everything drags out as long as possible, Democrats would have about two weeks to get the final bill to President Obama’s desk.
Holder Refuses to Provide Testimony on Kagan’s Involvement in Obamacare
http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=22121&pst=1594668
Klayman To Seek Indictment Of Justices Roberts and Kagan Before Citizens Grand Jury
http://news.yahoo.com/klayman-seek-indictment-justices-roberts-kagan-citizens-grand-174411247.html
Here's to that!
The guy is an idiot. Obamacare was passed in the Senate using reconciliation, a simple majority is required. Do not need a filibuster proof Senate.
It can be repealed using the same procedure...
That would mean that in addition to holding the House and Mitt Romney defeating Obama in the race for the White House, Republicans would have to take the senate and by a filibuster-proof majority.
Thank you, Whenifhow.
I think I heard Michelle Bachman on FOX saying that the repeal doesn't need 60 votes in the Senate. She repeated by saying to tell the people that, the 60 Senate votes are NOT needed and that 51 votes to pass the House repeal bill will repeal 0b0z0CommieCare.
Well, this would be a great incentive for us to capture the Senate.
I think the lower threshold for repeal will come back to haunt proponents of the legislation. In theory, a repeal of the ACA could be on the president’s desk before November’s election — there are quite a few Senate Democrats up for re-election this year. The 51-vote threshold for repeal is not an impossibility.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/still_a_bfd_obama_loses.html#ixzz1zILFO01x
Roberts just upheld a law that creates 159 agencies, hires 16,000 IRS agents and has in it this little blurb: “...whatever the Secretary deems appropriate.”
We are serfs to liege lords now.
Live by reconcilliation, die by reconcilliation.
Remember, regardless of what Obama’s thugs say, Obamacareless is now a tax. That means 60 votes are not needed.
“We are serfs to liege lords now.”
Never. I’m not giving in. I am seriously considering canceling my insurance, despite the fact that it’s really good and relatively cheap.
Catch me if you can, Barry......
What a great article, send it on to everyone in email lists and face book it, tweet it, print it out, hand it out, get it out there.
Ping and bump to post #28
The author also argues that reconciliation would not be applicable.
I have no idea how accurate this argument is, but it's apparent that it's being tossed around.
Many Republicans, especially in the blog and talk-radio swamps, would cry, “Use reconciliation!” Readers familiar with the congressional debates of 2009-2010 will remember that this procedure allows certain budgetary measures to pass through the Senate with a simple majority. (After Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by the Republican Scott Brown, Obama and congressional Democrats used the reconciliation process to make some final, crucial changes to the health-care law.) But reconciliation wouldn’t work here—the process can only be used for policies that have budgetary effects and a C.B.O. score. Much of the A.C.A., such as the insurance exchanges and subsidies, would fall under these categories. But a lot of it, including the hated individual mandate, does not. Repealing the exchanges and subsides without repealing the mandate and the other regulations and cost controls in the law would create a health-care Frankenstein that a President Romney would be rather nuts to support.
If the Supreme Court had gutted the law today by throwing out the mandate and the regulations and several of the other “non-scoreable” items, a President Romney with a G.O.P. Congress might have had a relatively easy time finishing the job of killing Obama’s law, even without sixty votes in the Senate. But today the Court did two things that make repeal of the A.C.A. nearly impossible now: it has given its not-inconsequential stamp of legitimacy to the law, and it has made the parliamentary path of repeal through Congress highly unlikely and probably impossible, at least in the near future.
Far-sighted conservatives always thought that their great hope for toppling Obama’s most important legislative achievement was through the courts. They were correct.
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