At The Intersection Of Money And Politics

Now is the time to force repeal of Obamacare.

In April or May 2011, the federal government will bump up against its statutory authority to borrow more money. The current debt ceiling is $14.294 trillion, and when you borrow $4 billion every day you tend to reach your credit card limit in a hurry.

House Republicans should demand that President Barack Hussein Obama and Senate Democrats agree to repeal Obamacare and cut other federal spending as the price for an agreement to raise the national debt ceiling and for passing a continuing resolution (CR).

The March 14, 2011 Rasmussen Poll shows that 62% of likely voters favor repeal of Obamacare, 61% believe Obamacare will cause healthcare costs to rise, 59% believe it will increase the federal deficit, and 54% think it will be bad for the country.

The American people elected eighty-seven freshmen Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2010 to give the G.O.P. majority control for two purposes: 1) To repeal Obamacare, and 2) To cut federal spending.

The house passed a bill to repeal Obamacare, but the Democrat-controlled Senate refuses to go along. House Republicans can force them to go along by refusing to raise the debt ceiling if they don’t.

There is no other way to repeal Obamacare.

The back-up plan is to hope Obama gets defeated in 2012 so that the new president would sign a repeal bill. That’s a foolish strategy.

First, the chances of defeating Obama are 50-50 at best. Second, even if he’s defeated and the Republicans retain majority control of the House, they would still have to get sixty votes in the Senate to pass a repeal bill. They now hold only 47 seats in the Senate.

What are the odds that they’ll have a net gain of 13 seats in November 2012? Answer: 20% at most.

Waiting for the Supreme Court to rule Obamacare unconstitutional is also foolish. It’s never possible to predict with certainty how the Supremes will rule. This is a complex law and there are complex constitutional issues to consider. Additionally, it could take the Court two years from now to issue a final ruling.

The Republican plan to defund Obamacare can’t work either.

The Heritage Foundation recently discovered that when Obamacare was passed, the Democrats snuck into it a provision that provides $105 billion in taxpayer funds to keep it going for the next seven years, whether or not Congress votes to cancel the money. Normally, Congress would authorize spending and then pass separate appropriations bills each year so that new Congresses could reflect the will of the people as to ongoing government spending.

In this case, however, Obama, Pelosi and Reid knew that Democrats were likely to lose their majority because 60% of the American people were opposed to Obamacare from the start, so they rigged the system with advanced appropriations to keep Obamacare funded forever.

In other words, it’s a self-propelled Frankenstein which Congress is powerless to stop, unless Obamacare is completely repealed.

Guess what the $105 billion is being used for. Section 4002 gives late-term abortion lover H.H.S. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius $15 billion to use at her discretion through fiscal year 2019, and then $2 billion per year thereafter in perpetuity. Under the clever guise of “sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs”, she can use it to fund Planned Parenthood, homosexual indoctrination of your kindergarten children in “health class”, end-of-life “counseling” to convince your grandmother to commit suicide, or to make contributions to the public employees’ pension funds in Wisconsin.

To make sure the kids are indoctrinated early into believing that healthcare should be provided to them from cradle to grave at public expense, the Secretary of HHS is authorized to spend over $200 million from 2010-2014 to establish “school-based health clinics” for “underserved populations”.

That’s Obamacare at work with your tax dollars.

The debt ceiling will be reached at some point in April or May, and Mr. Obama and the Democrats want the Republicans to agree to raise it.

Forget it.

The House freshmen should refuse the Democrats’ bullying and the Republican leaders’ “appeals to reason” and simply do that for which they were elected: repeal Obamacare and cut federal spending.

Mr. Obama says that Republicans should not use the budgetary process to achieve policy objectives, but that’s exactly what he and the Democrats did when they used advanced appropriations to make it impossible to defund Obamacare.

The Democrats and Wall Street claim that failure to raise the debt ceiling would have serious, negative long-term consequences for the country. They’re absolutely right, which is why Obama will cave if the House Republicans hold firm.

If he shuts down the government, they should refuse to budge until he agrees to repeal the healthcare law.

As the Rasmussen Poll indicates, 54% of likely voters think that Obamacare will be bad for the country. It is an unconstitutional, unworkable monstrosity. To date, over 1,000 waivers of its onerous provisions have been granted to Mr. Obama’s union thugs and to the corporations that sent him campaign contributions and give him political cover. The rest of us have to live with it.

The G.O.P. freshmen claimed that they were going to Washington not to start careers, but to represent their constituents and do the right thing.

Now is their chance to prove it.

This is one of those rare times in Washington when the power and the opportunity to do the right thing coincide.

If the Republicans refuse to use their power to force repeal of Obamacare by holding the national debt ceiling and the CR hostage, then they are of no use whatsoever and should go back home.

Repeal Obamacare now or shut down the government.