There are many naive fools who think Obamacare will crumble under its own weight.
History shows us that government entitlements never crumble under their own weight. Rather, countries crumble under the weight of those entitlements.
Democrats were willing to lose their congressional majority to pass Obamacare. They lost the House. They came close to losing the Senate. Republicans have shown no such willingness to correct the Democrats’ wrong.
As more and more Americans come to learn the costs of Obamacare, the unpopularity of the law is growing again. It is one of the few issues that have shown consistent majority opposition.
But Republicans have been unwilling to fight to kill it.
Many Republicans have said they’d wait until the next debt ceiling fight to focus on defunding Obamacare. But in case these Republicans missed it, just yesterday Speaker John Boehner said he would not risk the full faith and credit of the United States to defund Obamacare.
The continuing resolution must be the fight. The continuing resolution must be the vehicle by which Republicans draw a line in the sand. They must be willing to shut down the government until the Democrats consent to defunding Obamacare.
Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and the rest try to obfuscate on what they can and cannot do with the present fight. They seem to think Obamacare, despite all of history showing us otherwise, will simply collapse under its own weight.
Ted Cruz managed to get 45 Republicans in the Senate to unite to defund Obamacare. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin refused to go to the Senate floor to even take a position, only to show up a couple hours laters to vote on the procedural vote. It is a strong signal that the Democrats in states who both Barack Obama and John Kerry lost could be in a very tough position on this fight.
We have the votes, but not the will, to fight this fight, filibuster the continuing resolution, and shut down the government unless the Democrats, at the least, delay implementation of Obamacare. If it gets back to the House, House conservatives must unite to kill the rule with it.
But Paul Ryan’s own budget is premised on Obamacare’s taxes and the McConnell tax increase from earlier this year. Paul Ryan claims the revenue will be the basis for tax reform that will keep the revenue levels of Obamacare plus the McConnell tax increase while actually repealing Obamacare.
I’m sure the wonky him believes it. But the truth is neither he nor his leadership have the will or desire to fight to really repeal Obamacare.
They’ll do what they did in 2012 and, as the law remained unpopular, tell the American people to just wait for the next Republican President and Republican Congress. But they cannot wait. They are beginning to hurt now. They need fighters in Congress now.
The men and women of the GOP love to put on a show. They just don’t want to actually get anything meaningful accomplished for freedom. They speak against Obamacare building rhetorical Maginot lines that they themselves intend to go around.
Now is the time to have the fight. Now is the time to shut down the government. Now is the time to defund Obamacare. It will not collapse under its own weight. But the country will collapse under the weight of Obamacare.
Republicans will have to share the blame for failing to fight while cowardly hiding behind excuses. And conservatives in Congress will have to share the blame for enabling the cover behind which those Republicans hide.
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