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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (399861)	12/22/2010 4:38:24 PM
From: gamesmistress	4 Recommendations Respond to of 793991

Defunding ObamaCare wasn't exactly a secret By Jennifer Rubin voices.washingtonpost.com [Jennifer Rubin's Right Turn is a must read, IMHO] Ezra Klein breaks the news gently to the left: The Senate passed the Continuing Resolution 79-16 this afternoon. Another way of saying that: The Senate voted to defund the implementation of both health-care reform and financial-regulation reform.... Republicans had been talking about attacking the health-reform law by defunding it, but few thought they'd succeed without a fight. The assumption was that Democrats would shut down the government before they let Republicans take that money. But as it happened, there was no fight at all. The omnibus spending bill collapsed, and the continuing resolution compromise was reached within a few days. Most senators probably don't even know the implications their vote had for the implementation of bills passed over the past year. He concludes that "this is bad news for the health-care bill and the financial-regulation bill." Well, that is partly true. A key senior aide e-mailed me to caution that it isn't really accurate to say there is no money for ObamaCare in the continuing resolution (CR) that will fund the government until March. As the Hill notes, there is an additional $1.6 billion for funding ObamaCare in the CR, money that was mandated by the statute for implemenation. The aide said that the administration will be able to "tap" this money, but that without any extra funds, it "will have to draw down on that mandatory money sooner, meaning there will be less of it or it will be gone when they really need it as 2014 approaches." Moreover, I don't see how Democrats could have missed the implications of the defeat of the omnibus for ObamaCare. The aide, with obvious relish, dismissed the idea that Democrats in effect missed this one. He told me, "I think senators knew there was funding in the omni. That makes it all the sweeter: [Senate Democrats] would have had to force a fight to spend more and fund a bill that half the country not only hates, but wants to defund." If this was all a secret, it was a poorly kept one. Republican leadership offices blasted out e-mails and press releases to activists and members of Congress warning that the omnibus included a billion dollars to fund ObamaCare. Republicans talked about it on the floor. I don't see how anyone voting, on either side of the aisle, could have missed this. Liberals might not have wanted to highlight it, but that's different than being unaware. How did Democrats wind up in this fix? A GOP operative and former Senate staffer e-mails me that "after the omnibus collapsed, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid didn't have an alternative. If conservatives are feeling bad about START, they should be really happy about this. With the new Congress in January, the GOP will be in a strong position on fighting ObamaCare." In other words, the loss of funding is directly attributable to the slothful behavior of House and Senate leaders who passed no budget or appropriations bills before the lame-duck session. They assumed, I guess, that Republicans would roll over and pass an omnibus spending bill after an election, one that everyone had assumed was going to go badly for the Democrats. Well, that was poor planning. The failure was then compounded by Reid, who dramatically overreached on the omnibus, making it impossible to round up votes for cloture. Defunding ObamaCare is not a new idea that Republicans came up with during the lame duck. It has been the subject of intense discussion by lawmakers, pundits, advisors and activists since the law was passed. The opportunity to defund ObamaCare simply came sooner than expected. And for that, Republicans can only thank Reid and soon-to-be former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.