Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Starve the Beast: The Republican Plan to De-Fund the Health Care Law

It's funny, in a way, that there are portions of the obamacare legislation that both republicans and democrats think are bad. If only someone had READ the bill before signing on to it, but that isn't how things are done in washington. We have to pass this shit to see what's in it.

No matter what republicans do it's too late to stop the massive increases many of have seen in the cost of our insurance. The company I work for had to find new insurance for everyone because the rates went up around 40%. Even the new insurance is around 15% higher than we were paying last year.

One thing in this article that really caught my attention was this quote, "The law probably creates... 15 or 20 thousand new IRS jobs," he said, "It doesn't create a single new doctor job." This tells the whole story, obamacare is nothing but a power grab, that's it.

Republicans need to not only defund this monster, they need to reverse all of the damage that has been done so far. But is that even possible? They should start with several investigations of obama and his gang of thugs. The tactics used to gain votes for obamacare were at least against the rules and maybe even illegal. The bribes and kickbacks should all be explored. The exemptions that have been passed out since the passage of obamacare should all be undone. Can you imagine how unpopular this mess will be when obama's friends actually have to participate in it? The very people who supported the passage are now exempt!


The republicans have a huge hill to climb, especially when there are so many rinos involved. It would be a little easier if they could count on everyone with an "R" beside their name, unfortunantly even some of them can be bought...

*Update*

Go check out the thoughts of Under5Cents


by Jim Angle - FoxNews

Republicans have made absolutely clear what they intend to do to block the new health care law -- starve it.

Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently told Fox that "We can dent this, kick it, slow it down to make sure it never happens. And trust me," he emphasized, "I'm going to make sure this health care bill never ever, ever is implemented."

Brad Blakeman, who worked in the Bush White House agrees, saying, "They are going to be looking at the budget items that affect healthcare. They are going to be dissecting that 2000-page bill and picking apart those parts of the bill that can be defunded now."

Jim Kessler, the vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, offers this analogy for the Republican strategy: "You have a car -- that's the health care bill. And they're doing enough things to mess up the engine, to make it only drive at 45 miles and hour, not 65 miles an hour. But it's still a car, it's still driving and it's still going to get there."

It'll just take longer, he says, but stopping the funding won't stop the law, only complicate it, according to Kessler. "The law is not contingent on funding. Just how effectively it will be implemented is contingent on funding."

Republicans have already succeeded in blocking the first billion dollars in money to implement the health care law. It was part of the omnibus spending bill with six thousand earmarks that was killed in the Senate.

It was replaced by a temporary spending measure to keep the government running until March 4, 2011. The next budget bill is likely to bring the first big battle over funding the health care law.

There is one point of bipartisan agreement -- repealing a provision that requires a small business to file an IRS 1099 form for every person to whom they pay more than $600 in a year. Lawmakers in both parties agree that is an unreasonable burden on small business.

Don Holler of advocacy group Heritage Action says, "That's very costly, the burden ads up very quickly and makes hiring for small businesses very difficult."

Which is why it has bipartisan support. The measure was only added to the health care bill to bring down the price tag on the theory that new tax collections would raise money.

But Steve Hyde, an independent health expert, doesn't think much of it. "The law probably creates... 15 or 20 thousand new IRS jobs," he said, "It doesn't create a single new doctor job."

So the Republican strategy seems clear.

They say their hope is to defund and stall the health law's implementation, at least until they have more power to stop it.

Brad Blakeman says Republicans are taking the long view, "Hopefully we'll be able to defund and stall enough of the implementation that we'll make it into 2012, hopefully with a new president and perhaps take the majority in the Senate."

Which would be well ahead of 2014, when the health care law would take full effect. Many Republicans, of course, would like to repeal it right now, but the Senate could block that and even if it didn't, the President would veto it.

So conservatives are using the only tool at their disposal -- trying to stop or slow the law's implementation