Juan Cole has posted a most excellent rant about the GOP, entitled “I lived to See the Day when the Pope and the President of Iran are more doctrinally Flexible than the GOP“. You really should go read the whole thing as it is short and to the point. But if you won’t go read it, here are two quotes (the main purpose of which is to entice you to go read the original):
The House of Representatives has just passed a budget that would keep the government operating until later this fall, as the fiscal year ends, but only if the Senate and President Obama agree to defund the Affordable Health Care Act, which is the law of the land and cannot be defunded.
Note that the GOP House did not actually pass a proper budget. It doesn’t believe enough in government to do that. It just permitted the government not to close down altogether, but only if it can impose its minority views on the rest of the country. President Obama ran twice on health care reform and if the country had wanted to get rid of the AHCA, it could have voted for Mitt Romney but it didn’t. The GOP House has wasted a lot of time attempting to repeal Obamacare, which it cannot do at the moment because the Democrats have the Senate and the presidency. They know this. Governing for them has become like a strange ritual.
The reason the GOP wants to do away with the Affordable Health Care Act is that big business does not want it, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives no longer represent the American people. They represent big business and it alone. Big business deserves to have some representation in the US government. The 2000 biggest corporations are half the US economy. But they don’t deserve to be the only voice that is heard there, and they shouldn’t be able to undo the will of the majority of voters with a whispering campaign on the Hill.
This Congress, and especially the House of GOP Scrooges, represents narrow and mean-spirited interests, not the broad mass of Americans. Indeed, it seems obvious that if only they could find a way to legalize slavery again, the GOP would be perfectly happy to sell us down the river for the sake of our plantation masters.
4 Comments
The first comment under the article has it right: the Congress can choose to not appropriate funding for any number of “laws of the land” through their control of the purse strings just as the Executive Branch to choose to not implement or enforce laws through the setting of executive priorities. This has been going on for a long time.
Interesting that the House is also attempting to set up additional fiscal fights by passing a short-term funding bill. I’m not aware of any significant action on the part of House Republicans to draft, debate, and pass a genuine fiscal year budget. Their move to force another showdown in a couple months is just one more way to try and force their agenda down the nation’s throat.
Do the Republicans actually realize how they appear and sound as they propose and comment on similar things in the article? Who is really in control of the party? John Boehner is like a ventiloquist’s dummy mouthing phrases from Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor. 2014 is around the corner and the choices are narrowing as every day they make bigger fools of themselves.
Don, what I’ve read is that many parts of Obamacare are not dependent on funding, so they would happen regardless of defunding.
Jon, the big problem is that any Republican politician who doesn’t take radical right-wing stands is washed out in the primary. So the Republican party loses all of its moderates — not just candidates but also voters. They are increasingly narrowing their focus. It has worked for a while because they could depend on Fox News and talk radio to push a right-wing agenda, but if (god forbid) the right wingers get their way and do things like decimate Medicare and Social Security, or make abortion illegal, they will be out of office in a second.
IK, you’re absolutely correct – I’m only speaking to the sections that will require funding for next fiscal year.