Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) at Defund Obamacare rally.
The Washington Post reports, “House Republican leaders announced Wednesday morning that they would take a risky double-barreled attack on President Obama’s health-care law, making it the cornerstone fight over government funding due to expire Sept. 30 and the effort to lift the Treasury’s borrowing authority.
Paul Kane, Ed O’Keefe and Zachary A. Goldfarb from the WP state, “Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), flanked by his leadership team, told reporters that the stopgap government funding bill that they will advance Friday would yield to conservative demands of including a rider to block funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare.”
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding the announcement:
“The American people have made clear they want Washington to keep the government open but also need protection from ObamaCare’s harmful effects. Today’s announcement would accomplish what the American people have been asking of Congress.
“A solution is within sight in order to avert another crisis of Washington’s creation. President Obama and his allies in Congress should abandon their threats of shutting down the government and instead work with Republicans to pass this proposal that would keep government open while preventing taxpayer dollars from being used to inflict ObamaCare’s damage on people’s jobs, incomes, current health plans and doctor relationships.”
As previously reported on WDW – FL, this plan has been pushed by conservative groups like Heritage Action. Jim DeMint, President of the Heritage Foundation, said at a defund Obamacare event it Tampa that Republicans took the House of Representatives in 2010 and retained the majority in 2012 on the promise of repealing Obamacare. Either Republicans keep their promise or go home and explain why they lied.
DeMint noted that repealing Obamacare is not enough. The House has had numerous votes to repeal the law, but the chances of statutorily repealing the law decreased once President Obama won a second term. Those who oppose Obamacare, he said, cannot wait another three and a half years to “begin dismantling Obamacare; they need to leverage current opportunities to defund using ‘must-pass’ spending bills.”
DeMint said time and again, it is now or never. Apparently the people’s House is listening.
Rubio noted, “The president’s basically looking for a political win and I guess his political people have told him that this is a political win: shut down the government and blame the Republicans. The problem is that’s not the Republican position.”
EDITORS NOTE: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) can be defunded by attaching a legislative rider to a “must pass” bill (e.g. debt limit, annual spending bill or continuing resolution to fund the government) that:
- Prohibits any funds from being spent on any activities to implement or enforce Obamacare;
- Rescinds any unspent balances that have already been appropriated for implementation; and
- Turns off the exchange subsidy and new Medicaid spending that are on auto-pilot.
