The House voted to repeal ObamaCare today, well….they voted to move forward to the final vote on Wednesday, but vote they did and it passed.
Confronting President Obama, the new Republican-led House took a first step Friday toward a symbolic vote to repeal his landmark health care overhaul law, which would provide coverage to more than 30 million Americans without health insurance.
But the 236-181 largely party-line vote is unlikely to amount to more than a political message, since Democrats who still run the Senate have promised to block efforts to scrap the law and Obama has veto power.
Four Democrats voted alongside Republicans, less then the vote in March, and Allah does an excellent job explaining why:
…remember, most of that herd of 34 was culled by voters in November, leaving just 13 survivors to vote on this bill. (There’s one “achievement” you won’t hear Pelosi boast about.) And of those 13, most are now in a position where they have more to fear from angry liberals challenging them in a primary than from conservatives coming after them in the general.
~~~Ross and Boren were two of the four Dems who voted yes today; the others were Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre. All four voted no back in March, and all four had a surprisingly easy time against the GOP in the general election last November notwithstanding the big red wave breaking across the country. Boren won by 13 points, Ross by 17, Kissell by nine, and McIntyre by eight. The thinking here, I assume, is that liberals won’t risk challenging southern Democrats who seem to have a lock on their seats; they’re too rare and valuable these days. If they’re going to go after someone, better to go after a Jason Altmire who won with only 51 percent in November and could have another tough run ahead in 2012. Liberals could knock him out in the primary and then, with Obama base voters turning out in the general, win back the seat with a more liberal Democratic nominee. No wonder, then, that Altmire voted no today after voting no on O-Care back in March whereas Boren et al. felt comfortable sticking it to the left by voting yes on repeal.
Either way it will get blocked by the Senate so, as the Washington Times noted above, it’s largely symbolic. What isn’t symbolic is the money that would be saved if the monstrosity was repealed:
The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the Spectator, has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021. That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It’s the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction.
That 540 billion is actually low-balling it.
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Curt–
I’m so glad you got the headline right. A number of usually-accurate sites like Instapundit and Gateway Pundit incorrectly announced that the Healthcare Bill itself had been repealed. They still have the bogus information up there, too. Instapundit:
Sheesh…
Just silly and only for show. For example, there are a few parts of the bill that are unpopular — like the 1099 and the individual insurance mandate. Why not work on those? Instead, to prove some idiotic point, they vote to overturn the whole thing knowing that they will get NO Dems supporting such stupidity and it will NEVER pass the Senate and even if it did, Obama would veto it, giggling hysterically. And way to go not even bothering to discuss how the $230 billion deficit hole would be patched. Instead, GOPer cons just want to pretend that the bill does not lower costs and fix problems, like the donut hole in Medicare D, or the ridiculously expensive Medicare Advantage program.
I won’t even get into the elimination of the small business insurance subsidies, or the extra 30 million uninsured we would have if the GOPer cons had their way. What is the GOPer con plan to deal with those problems? Nothing . . . why? Because the cons are just not serious about the health insurance and health care problems. The proof that they are not serious? Well, they did nothing to solve the problem when they were in power before and they have offered no solutions now.
How can the GOP push for an early vote to repeal the health care reform bill possibly be taken seriously when they’re not even bothering to put something forward to replace it?
Obviously they wouldn’t be doing this if they thought the vote would be anything more than the opening act of a dog and pony show. They’d get full credit for reinstating lifetime limits, for knocking dependent young adults off of their parents’ policies, for restoring denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, and–as B-Rob mentions–for putting some 30 million back in the ranks of the uninsured.
Hey, go ahead! We’ll quickly find out if all of that was actually part of their 2010 mandate from the voters.
@Greg:
Because Greg,
Nothing should replace it, it is none of the federal government’s business. Maybe you should read the Constitution again.
Greg said:
“How can the GOP push for an early vote to repeal the law that sets off nuclear demolition charges in our cities possibly be taken seriously when they’re not even bothering to put something forward to replace it?”
Yeah, I see your point. Maybe they could propose a new law that starts large fires everywhere and shuts off the water to all the fire hydrants. It would be almost as good.
You and B-Rob don’t get it.
1. There is nothing good about this law.
2. It was rammed through in a quasi legal manner.
3. The GOP has their orders from a majority of the public: Start fighting from day one.
Supporters of this disastrous law only look at the promises that were made by the politicians who sold it. If you only look at the sales job and refuse to look at the predictable, and increasingly apparent, real-world outcomes, then you are gullible beyond redemption.
Repeal won’t pass the Senate, Obama can veto it anyway, etc. Yeah, we know. We want to see them do that. We want them to be forced to go on the record. The current Congress and President have two more years. If the statists choose to continue disgracing and beclowning themselves, so be it. Let all the poisons seep out of the mud, and we’ll definitely have something to say in response around November 2012 or so.
In the meantime – the GOP is tasked with obstructing and opposing every stupid destructive power grab from this gaggle of statist hacks. Stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. No card check law for unions. Stop the hostility to business. At least try to secure the border. Don’t cede swaths of the Arizona desert to the armed smugglers. No more extraconstitutional end-runs around Congress. Quit the legal warfare against the states. Rein in the idiotic TSA.
The fight against O’Care has to start somewhere, sometime….No better time than right now….
Let those who still support this measure reveal themselves, it allows us the opportunity to see who else needs to be replaced in 2012…
GREG and B-Rob, ah ah, why did the DEMOCRATS didn’t think of fixing it before
they force it on the citizen, they have been told by the CONSERVATIVES,AND THE TEAPARTYERS,
AND MANY OF THE INDEPENDANTS, and now you want the CONSERVATIVES TO FIX IT
WHEN THEY WHERE ELECTED TO REPEAL IT AND SO THEY WILL STAND TO WHAT THE PEOPLE TOLD THEM. AND YOU BETTER GET USED TO IT
@ Wm T Sherman, #5:
So the GOP likes to pretend and proclaim.
Actually, there are a number of health care reform provisions that most voters approve of. Most considered the growing number of Americans without health insurance a serious national problem. Most considered a number of common health insurance company practices eliminated by the bill to have been unjust. (Suddenly dropping people after extended periods of coverage based upon a minor technicality, for example; there were companies that would routinely scrutinize old applications for a way to avoid payment after accepting premiums for years.) Most considered the inability of people with preexisting conditions to obtain affordable health insurance a serious matter. Most thought lifetime payment limits that could end your coverage when it was most desperately needed unjust.
Obama repeatedly stated his intention to undertake sweeping health care reform in the lead-up to the 2008 elections. After his election, it was pushed through with a sense of purpose and a single-minded determination that we seldom see on the part of elected officials. I see nothing quasi-legal about the manner in which that was done.
It appears to me that the GOP is trying to define what that mandate was in terms of their own party agenda. Essentially they got elected by harnessing voter fear and anger, and by studiously avoiding any clear and detailed statement of their own alternative intentions. Their problem now–entirely of their own making–is that they have to come together, agree on specific, genuinely meaningful proposals, and present them to the satisfaction of the people who voted for them.
That includes the health care reform bill. Republicans can’t just undo what was done because that would only get us back to the dysfunctional state we were in previously. Obviously most Americans didn’t find that acceptable. Their anger with it was one of the reasons Barack Obama was elected.
If they’re going to repeal they have to replace. They’ll have to propose something detailed and specific.
GREG, UOU have been here with the conservatives long enough to admit their truthfulness
to the AMERICANS, THEREFOR TO AMERICA FOR AMERICANS.
dont YOU WORRY ND DON’t try to worry the people like your side has been doing all along,
Because you under estimate the intelligence of the newly ELECTED by the people and for the agenda of the people, they already are many steps in front of you so they will tell you of their agenda when time to implement it, after they clean up this mess, let it be one thing done right and the next will be also right