Since the Supreme Court ignored the Constitution by upholding Obamacare, we have no choice but to use every legislative and executive tool at our disposal to kill this socialist monstrosity.  One opportunity we will have to disrupt and impede its implementation will be through the appropriations process.

Last December, we incurred the ‘great spending betrayal’ under Republican leadership in the House. Sixty percent of House Republicans and 34% of Senate Republicans voted for a 1,200-page omnibus bill to fund the government for fiscal year 2012.  Despite the pledge to cut spending, the omnibus actually appropriated $10 billion more than the previous year.  The bill also violated the GOP pledge against bundled appropriations bills and the rule that all legislation be posted 72 hours before the vote.  Moreover, the bill contained funding for all the unsavory things they pledged to defund; most prominently, Obamacare.

Back in 2011, many members figured that the Obamacare problem would easily disappear once the Supreme Court gets involved.  Now with John Roberts’s betrayal behind us, we must take a more aggressive posture against funding Obamacare.  Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Tea Party Caucus Chairman Michele Bachmann took up the call and spearheaded a letter to John Boehner and Eric Cantor urging them not to bring any spending bill to the floor that funds Obamacare.

Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an appropriations bill for HHS that defunds Obamacare.  Now we have 127 commitments, a majority of the GOP Conference, to hold them to their word and preclude the mistakes from last year.  Last year, only 86 members opposed the omnibus.  We would hope that the additional 41 members are serious about their commitment to vote against any omnibus that fails to defund Obamacare.

Here is a breakdown of the members who signed the letter (download here).  The full copy of the letter is below the fold.

Dear Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor,

We are outraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to rewrite and largely uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”), as we know you are as well.  And we know that our sentiments are in line with the vast majority of Americans who believe that healthcare should be controlled by patients and doctors, not by the government.

We appreciate your willingness to schedule a vote on the full repeal of ObamaCare.  We should continue efforts to repeal the law in its entirety this year, next year, and until we are successful.  However, in the meantime, there is more we can do in Congress.

Since much of the implementation of ObamaCare is a function of the discretionary appropriations process, and since most of the citizens we represent believe that ObamaCare should never go into effect, we urge you not to bring to the House floor in the 112^th Congress any legislation that provides or allows funds to implement ObamaCare through the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, or any other federal entity.  We also urge you to take legislative steps necessary to immediately rescind all ObamaCare-implementation funds.

In Federalist No. 58, James Madison wrote that the “power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon … for obtaining a redress of every grievance…”  We thank you for your consideration and look forward to working closely with you to address defunding one of the largest grievances in our time and to restore patient-centered healthcare in America