Predictions that Obamacare would cause private health insurance premiums to soar fueled the 2010 tea partier-fueled landslide mid-term election that returned control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans. Sadly, the GOP had been thwarted in its effort to prevent enactment of the Orwellian-titled “Affordable Care Act” earlier that year, despite the special election that replaced the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) with Republican Scott Brown as the self-described 41st vote against the ACA, when Democrats broke their own congressional rules and used the “reconciliation” budget process to avoid an additional vote in the Senate that would have required 60 votes to invoke cloture.
Since President Barack Obama signed into law the ultimate big government liberal dream authority to control our lives, Americans’ ire at a law that discourages investments to create jobs, coerces existing businesses to reduce the number of their full-time employees to less than 50 even as it raises the cost of private health insurance, has only increased. Meanwhile, as the Election of 2012 loomed, the most onerous arm of government responsible internal revenue collection took aim at tea partier conservative groups seeking tax exempt status. The resulting re-election of President Obama and Democratic Party-controlled Senate ensured that Obamacare could not repealed under regular order.
The IRS, DOJ leak and Benghazi scandal revelations continue to reverberate as elected tea partier Republicans grow increasingly frustrated with GOP congressional leaders unwillingness to use either regular or irregular order to make any significant stand against the super-majority passed Democrat legislation from 2009-2010 that continues to prevented a jobs, GDP or income recovery anywhere but on Wall Street, five years on.
Rumblings are heard that the tea partier conservative Republican minority in Congress are pushing their leaders to use the power of 1/2 of 1/3 of the government they hold (so described by John Bohner (R-OH) when pressed for more significant action in the wake of the 2010 landslide victory that made him speaker) to refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless Obamacare is repealed or its advance severely suspended:
This is one of those moments where the American people expect Republicans in Washington to lay down in front of the metaphorical Obamacare tanks and stop this assault on freedom.
No, the bill will not collapse under its own weight; the country will collapse under the weight of the program. We must make the program collapse.
We have always been circumspect about the use of the debt ceiling for such purposes, given its potential to be used as an excuse for the upset of financial market crises, especially when manipulated by a President Obama who regularly mischaracterizes the availability of funds to pay bondholders, or even air traffic controllers for that matter.
We much prefer that any showdown be made over the budget and a government shutdown and then only on the specific issue of Obamacare. It would not be responsible to shut down the government over ordinary budget funding of programs passed by Congress. But the threat of Obamacare is a sufficient threat to the economic health of the United States that this rooster thinks it justifies a game of chicken, even with a Chief Executive that welcomes crises so long as he can be seen providing food stamps to all that leave the workforce.
The Democrats in power are using the government to consolidate their political power. Their party has no Howard Bakers or Joe Liebermans that will hold it to account. The Executive Branch will not prosecute itself for their own crimes and there is precious little Republicans can do to force them to do so. The best we can do with investigations is to further expose the Dems’ venality in hopes that voters in 2014 and 2016 will repent their irresponsible return of a failed administration to power in 2012.
Meanwhile, more and more Americans lose jobs, income and hope.
Given these circumstances, we favor drastic action on the part of Republicans in Congress to confront Obama and the Democrats before we reach the point of no return with an Obamacare juggernaut bent on destroying the private health care industry and the economy overall. Even if it means playing debt ceiling chicken.
No matter what the GOP does or does not do, We the People will have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if we want to restore any semblance of the exceptional America most of us grew up in. Playing nice with an IRS so brazen that it directly handicaps our election efforts, cries out for a new strategy with the power we currently hold.
We hold the purse strings. We must use them NOW, before the purse is empty. President Obama, you want to borrow more money from China to pay for more golf vacations? Repeal Obamacare or else.
Mike DeVine
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
