The Daily Caller:
What precisely is your strategy to defund Obamacare and what’s your best argument for employing this method?
Cruz: Now is the best time: There is bipartisan agreement that Obamacare isn’t working. It’s killing jobs, causing more and more Americans to be driven into part-time employment, causing employers to drop health insurance and dramatically increasing health insurance premiums. Even the unions — President Obama’s most reliable allies — are jumping ship.
The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, the most important check we have on an overreaching executive. Now is the best chance we have to exercise this power in order to defund Obamacare. It can be done as part of passing the Continuing Resolution (CR) — a piece of legislation that funds the government and must be renewed by September 30th.
The Continuing Resolution gives us real leverage to defund Obamacare. Fighting this fight won’t be easy, but it’s now or never. President Obama’s strategy is simple: on January 1, the subsidies kick in. President Obama wants to get as many Americans addicted to the subsidies because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound. That’s why the administration announced that it won’t enforce eligibility requirements–essentially encouraging fraud and “liar loans”–because that way the most people possible will get addicted to the sugar.
To stop that from happening, the House should pass a new Continuing Resolution to fund the entire federal government except Obamacare. The House should include a rider in that bill that explicitly prohibits any federal dollars – discretionary and mandatory – from being spent on it. Republicans control the House, and have already voted some 40 times to repeal Obamacare, so if we stand together, we can do this.
Then the bill comes to the Senate. Republicans need just 41 votes to prevent Democrats from passing legislation that funds Obamacare – 45 Republicans in the Senate have already voted to repeal Obamacare, so if we stand together, we can do this also.
At that point, we simply have to continue to stand together and not blink. If Republicans are truly against Obamacare, they will not vote to fund it.
While the ultimate goal is to repeal the law in its entirety, defunding is a crucial step so we can stop the law from being implemented before Americans get hooked on the subsidies. We cannot just wait for Republicans to take back the Senate to repeal the law. We owe it to Americans to prevent as much of it from being implemented as possible right now.
If we hold 41 Republicans in the Senate or 218 Republicans in the House, we can win the fight because no Continuing Resolution can pass without our support.
And, for any Republicans who disagree, the following question is revealing: what is your alternative? All the various suggestions (delaying the individual mandate, removing the IRS from Obamacare) are fine and good — but none of them can happen before January 1. The House can have a symbolic vote on all of them, but Harry Reid will kill every one.
The only way to force passage is to condition the CR on defunding Obamacare. Otherwise, the so-called alternatives don’t stop the subsidies on January 1; and, if it’s correct that, once implemented, it will never be unwound (and no Republican has effectively refuted that premise), then not fighting on the CR is effectively saying we surrender and will allow Obamacare to become a permanent feature of our economy, hurting jobs and growth in perpetuity.
Explain specifically how your strategy actually has a realistic chance of being successful?
Cruz: Republicans have the votes to make this possible. Moreover, the American public is increasingly behind the effort — winning this fight is dependent on Americans standing up and holding their elected officials accountable to doing what’s in the people’s best interests.
Americans realize that Obamacare hurts jobs and economic growth, by penalizing full-time employment and raising taxes. They realize that it won’t bring down costs, that it will create longer wait times and scarcity of health services. They recognize it for the disaster it is and they don’t want it.
We can get the votes we need to defund Obamacare if the grassroots rise up in huge numbers to force their elected officials to do the right thing before late September. If this happens and if Republicans have the political will to stand firm for their principles, we can succeed. That is why I am spending the next 50 days reaching out to conservatives, activists, and citizens to get them involved.
President Obama wants to grant a waiver from Obamacare for big corporations and for Members of Congress — but not for hard-working American families. That position is indefensible.
If the American people get mobilized by the millions, Congress will listen. Republicans will stand their ground. And Democrats will succumb to the pressure and agree to grant American families the same waiver President Obama has already granted giant corporations and Members of Congress. That’s how we win.
Your opponents argue your strategy won’t work because Republicans, without control of the White House or the Senate, do not have the votes. They say it’s simply dishonest to lead conservatives across the country to think it would. Opponents also say that Republicans will take the blame for any shutdown, thus harming your midterm chances. Your response?
Cruz: One thing is for sure: we lose 100 percent of the battles we don’t fight.
With divided government, either side can stop legislation. As a result, whoever is in the stronger position with no action has the advantage at the bargaining table. That’s why Republicans got such a lousy deal with the fiscal cliff — if nothing happened, the result was a massive tax increase on every American taxpayer…a result that President Obama was perfectly happy with. So he had all the leverage. With the continuing resolution, if Republicans stand together, we have the leverage.
President Obama may well choose to force a temporary partial government shutdown, rather than pass a CR that defunds Obamacare. But, if that happens, what happens next? One side or the other has to blink.
Why do people assume that President Obama and Democrats will never ever ever blink, and so Republicans must do so instead? If 41 Republicans stand together in the Senate and 218 in the House, we can insist that any Continuing Resolution does not fund Obamacare. We win by sticking to our principles longer than the Democrats stick to theirs.
If Congress defunds Obamacare, they had better have some alternative plan for dealing with the 15 million formerly uninsured Americans who now have coverage because of it. That number would have been far higher without all the resistance to implementation, but it’s still a very significant number.
They’ll also have to figure out what to do about the beneficial provisions that people already take for granted: a provision that prevents health insurance companies from dropping coverage if an insured person’s medical costs become too expensive, for example, and another that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to applicants that otherwise qualify, owing to preexisting conditions. Both of those situations were fairly common before Obamacare, with the result that serious illness of a family member was one of the most common reasons for personal bankruptcy.
The previous situation was essentially heavily subsidizing the private health insurance industry with billions of taxpayer dollars on a never-ending basis, by allowing them to place bets most likely to provide the best returns, while unloading the biggest cost risks onto public insurance and public healthcare programs. That’s the sort of corporate welfare private interests really love.
What has never been offered by critics is a detailed plan to effectively remedy the many serious problems that Obamacare addresses. The free market isn’t going to do it, because the free market is about making profits—not about providing an acceptable level of healthcare services to all Americans. Private industry isn’t about controlling costs, either, unless those controls have to do with increasing their own profit margin. They much prefer being able to raise healthcare prices continuously, with an assurance that the government will use public tax dollars to make certain those who lack the personal means to pay will still be able to buy.
Ted Cruz apparently thinks it’s enough to become a wrecking ball. It isn’t. He also has to know what needs to be done after demolishing Obamacare. He hasn’t said a word about that. I don’t think he has a clue what would need to be done next. Nor do any of the republicans who advocate defunding. They don’t seem to think that far ahead. They’re thinking as far ahead as the next election.
Obamacare is a complete trainwreck. It can’t even operate as the debacle it was designed to be, because the necessary formulas that proscribed the operating parameters of the law have already been torpedoed by Obama’s own crony wavers and unilateral (unconstitutional,) changes. He just recently removed the out of pocket expense limits to those signed on to the exchanges, which means it will cost the poor even more assuming the still undefined exchanges open for “business”. We also know now that the dishonestly hidden plan was to destroy the health insurance industry and eventually transform it into a single payer system.
The most humane and sensible thing to do is shoot this bloated, diseased and festering pig and start over, with a new plan that can actually work. It’s also far past time for the Republicans to grow a set of balls. De-fund Obamacare with an unconditional demand that the Senate and President take the whole thing back to a joint drawing board commishion. Pass a government funding budget based on past budgets, that stops all this illegal continual resolution nonsense and de-funds Obamacare. Once the House passes it’s bill, it will have done it’s job to fund the government. Senate Republicans can then go on the Sunday shows telling the public that they want the House budget plan to go to the floor for a vote, but Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership are obstructionists. If the Senate and President refuse to pass the House Bill or go to conference, it will be them who will be “the party of no!” holding the government hostage. The blame for not funding the government will be on their heads.
STAND WITH CRUZ AND HE’S NOT ALONE,
HE HAS MANY SUPPORTER,
Greg
one step at the time,
don’t worry about what come next, the CONSERVATIVES ARE SMART ENOUGH TO HAVE FIGURED IT AS WE SPEAK, BUT THEY HAVE TO DEFOUND THAT MONSTER AND STARVE IT FIRST,
Solution is simple. Get the government COMPLETELY out of the healthcare financing business. Let people buy catastrophic medical insurance just like car insurance, then pay cash for routine medical care just like you pay for routine maintenance on your car. Doctors would be freed from the assinine and irrelevent government overregulation that greatly increases a physician’s overhead expenses. Next, outlaw the practice of contingency fee law and enact ‘loser pays’ in our court system.
Leftists blather on and on about how evil insurance companies are because they work for “profit”. Yet these progressives refuse to understand that if the government becomes the only medical insurance entity, the only result will be much lower available resources, much lower standards of service,
All the emotional ploys and arglebargle are detestible hypocrisy from obama and his minions. They know it won’t work, and are counting on the stupidity of the masses and the magical thinking of progressive acolytes to pull thia diseased carcass across the 2014 election line.
It ain’t charity when the thugs cram a gun in your face and clean out your wallet, no matter what glittering obfuscations they spew.
how about take some money out of the welfare funding to cover their healthcare for them only them,
who said they cannot feel the pain as the TAXPAYER DO,
THEY WILL DO LIKE THE PEOPLE DO, ADAPT TO A LOWER STANDARD,
AND STOP THE STAMP SCAM, CUT THE WHITE HOUSE SPENDING,
AND THE PUBLIC UNIONIZE EMPLOYEES EARNINGS,
EVERYBODY ELSE HAS DONE IT SINCE THE 2008 ELECTION,
EVEN THE WARRIORS WHERE CUT OF BUT NOT THE WELFARE RECIPIENTS WHO HAVE LESS COST THAN THE OTHER BECAUSE THEY DON’T WORK, THEIR COST IS MINUS ON MANY LEVEL,
WHEN THINGS ARE HARD IT SHOULD REFLECT ON ALL PEOPLE,
DON’T KID YOURSELF, THE RICH GET THERE DOWN TOO,
@Pete: I’m willing to bet that costs for a routine visit would go down significantly if there was NO insurance to jack it up. Heck if the Dr. doesn’t have to pay for someone to do the billing, wait for the fraction of a percent of the claim then send a bill to the patient, there is a huge savings right there. I’d guess, and it’s only a guess but 40% of the bill is overhead of a insurance claim. We’re now down into the range of a co-pay. I should ask one of my medical clients how much insurance costs them.
@Ditto, #2:
Republicans didn’t address any of the problems that the Affordable Health Care Act attempts to deal with when they previously had control of Congress for over a decade. Why should anyone expect they’d do so now?
The only thing they came up with was Medicare Part D—a program with a totally inadequate funding mechanism, which accelerated the accumulation of debt while simultaneously funneling billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of private interests. It even included a provision that specifically precluded the government from bargaining with private industry for lower cost drugs. Any budget-conscious observer could have told you what the results would be.
If their intention is to deep-six Obamacare in some fashion, they should first be required to construct a detailed alternative to replace it. If they don’t beforehand, they’ll never get around to it later.
Why the incessant need for the government to provide evertyhing for people? People need food and housing and clothing more than they need medical care. Are we supposed to look to Uncle Sam as our nanny to tax us at 90% to ensure everyone has everything provided to them? That fails everytime it is tried. Human nature is such that people expect a reward for work. Inherent to that is that harder working people will make more than those who choose not to work as hard. Of course it doesn’t seem fair that actors and athletes make millions for playing, while a cop or fireman makes less than 100k per year. But there are far fewer people with the skills to do what athletes and actors, or CEOs for that matter have to do. Leftism is nothing but envy and jealousy masquerading as concern for the poor. When an athlete plays his game professionally, all kinds of people are able to make a living doing supporting tasks, like cameramen, groundskeepers, stadium janitors, the people who make the sports uniforms…anything tied to that athelete’s game. Same for all the people involved in making the movie the actor is in…and all the people working for the CEO. All those people have JOBS so they can put food on the table because a wealthy person is running a business of some kind. Excessive taxation and overregulation by government takes money and resources away, which would be far better spent on creating new productive jobs than flushing down the government bureaucracy toilet.
Obamacare was propagandized as LOWERING medical costs while covering the 30 million uninsured. We have not seen anything but increased costs, and we are now being told there will still be 30 million uninsured by 2022 under obamacare. No one has ever explained how adding layers and layers of nonmedical government bureaucrats can possibly lower medical costs. No one has explained how forcing everyone into socialist “insurance” without increasing the number of doctors will be able to increase access to medical care. Obamacare is a disgusting sham designed to do nothing but give the government more power over our lives. It will never be able to do what its proponents claim, and they knew it when they crammed it down our throats. All the feelgoodism propaganda is nothing but sugar trying to hide the taste of this leftist poison.