FeedInsanity and the House Republicans’ Federal Budget and Obamacare Debacle
September 22, 2013 in Obamacare and Federal Budget
Albert Enstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that definition, the U.S. House Republicans in Washington have exhibited insanity. Voting 42 times to repeal Obamacare and repeatedly failing to succeed makes this past week’s vote to defund Obamacare as part of the continuing resolution to fund the federal government beyond October 1st pure political theater.
It is one thing to want to make a public statement on a strongly held political position. Elected officials do that all the time. As I know too well from my years as a state legislator and a Congressional aide in Washington, often the modus operandi for making a policy statement is an effort to attach legislative amendments that have no chance of passage to a pending bill but offer a vehicle for the proponents to make a statement and to force an embarrassing vote by the opposition. But, the House Republicans had already done that 42 times before Friday’s vote on the latest Obamacare repeal measure. The public gets it. The Republican base gets it. There was no need to repeat their statement yet again. It is futile, a waste of legislative time, and risks further reminding voters that Congressional Republicans are extremists and obstructionists.
It is clear that there are insufficient votes in the U.S. Senate to retain the House Obamacare defunding measure in the overall federal budget spending bill. After it is stripped out in the Senate, the House Republicans will be faced with an up or down vote on continuing funding of the federal government through December 15th under the existing Obamacare law or shutting down the federal government on October 1st. Do most House Republicans want to be held accountable for a federal government shutdown and the attendant ramifications for the U.S. economy, the markets, and the recipients of a plethora of critical government benefits? I doubt it.
The House Republicans seem more interested in grandstanding on Obamacare and attempting to embarrass the President than solving legislative problems, including meeting their responsibility to pass a long overdue federal budget. Unfortunately, President Obama’s weakness at attending to “the care and feeding of Members of Congress” and his insistence on delivering stump speeches around the country criticizing House Republicans instead of using his presidential influence to hammer out a negotiated budget agreement only aggravates the Republican leadership in Congress even more and makes a legislative deal more difficult to achieve. Whatever happened to politics as the “art of compromise?”
It is a waste of Congress’ time and energy to continue to debate the essence of Obamacare, especially when so many other pressing national issues need Congressional attention. By doing so, in my view, Republicans will only further alienate moderate and independent voters who are already turned off by the extremist hold of Tea Party and other conservative advocates on the Republican Party in recent years.
I, for one, believe that when all of the “bugs” are worked out – as is required for most new major federal legislation during the early implementation stages – the universal health care law will become a pillar of President Obama’s legacy, as social security was for FDR. In the meantime, Congressional Republicans would be wise to call it a day knowing that they have already made their anti-Obamacare position clear. They should support the prospective Senate continuing budget resolution without an Obamacare defunding provision to keep the federal government operating beyond October 1st and move on to address many other challenges facing Congress, like immigration reform, the debt ceiling, climate control, and the still struggling American economy. After all, they (and their Democratic counterparts) were elected to do “the people’s business,” not to exhibit insanity.
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