GOP Swiftly Rejects Obama's 'One-Sentence Fix' to Obamacare if Supreme Court Voids SubsidiesThe GOP has five plans for dealing with the end of subsidies. All of them effectively destroy Obamacare. Only three of them even exist in bill form. Republicans don't feel any urgency about solving this problem, or even about being seen as trying to solve it. In this situation, they're not interested in being liked, or in being perceived as "caring about people like you," as the pollsters like to put it.
... At the G7 conference in Germany on Monday, the president said if the justices strip subsidies from millions of Americans, "Congress could fix this whole thing with a one-sentence provision" making clear that Healthcare.gov subsidies are available in all 50 states. Republicans quickly fired off a rebuttal.
"Let's be clear: if the Supreme Court rules against the Administration, Congress will not pass a so called ‘one-sentence’ fake fix," Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who is leading Republican efforts to craft a contingency plan, said in a statement.
What Republicans want is to create a situation in which, a year from now, we don't even remember what real Obamacare was like -- we don't remember how it functioned when it functioned properly. They want us to become acclimated to a world in what we have now is seen as simply unattainable -- it will be, of course, because of Republican intransigence -- and our choices are the chaotic status quo or whatever Republicans propose as an alternative (which will essentially be what we had before Obamacare, either as it was or with the addition of the usual Republican snake oil -- bad insurance policies sold across state lines, malpractice awards curbed under "tort reform").
The thing is, we won't remember. Conservative voters remember every political grievance, but the rest of us don't. Did we remember the government shutdown of 2013 when we went to the polls in 2014? No -- Republicans made huge gains in the House and Senate, and in state and local races. We always forget the awful things Republicans do. Two years after George W. Bush left office, we gave Congress back to his party; two years after Republicans impeached Bill Clinton, we said "meh" to Clinton's vice president and allowed the GOP back into the White House.
We won't continue to fight for the one-sentence fix. We won't punish the party that refused to sign off on it. We'll accept that Republicans have the power to limit our choices and meekly ask them to treat the wound they inflicted, because we never respond to Republicans with the sustained outrage they deserve.
Please, America, prove me wrong on this.
Today's GOP:
ReplyDeleteParty over people!
Party over country!!
PARTY UBER ALLES!!!
Republicans are very good at getting the voting public to buy into the phony alternative history they create. Whether it's "Bush kept us safe from terrorists" or "Reagan won the Cold War" or "trickle-down economics fixed the economy," they just keep saying it until people start to believe it. And our lapdog media with its slavish devotion to "both sides" narratives just enables them by refusing to ever call a lie a lie.
ReplyDelete""Let's be clear: if the Supreme Court rules against the Administration, Congress will not pass a so called ‘one-sentence’ fake fix," Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who is leading Republican efforts to craft a contingency plan, said in a statement."
ReplyDeleteBARRASSO is the POSTER BOY for REPUBLICAN DUPLICITY!
Back in 2009, Barraso was one of the Republicans saying he was "trying"(??) to get the ACA passed. I remember thinking that most of, if not all, the Republican Senators were from what I cal "MIDGET STATES": Lots of land, few residents for very good reasons!
BARRASSO is still full of it, and there are TOOO many Barrassos currently infecting Congress today!
The securing of guaranteed national healthcare in America will have nothing to do with fairness, blame, or shame. It will be about strategy and power. Period. Prepare to lose the ACA and instead of whining about it, start laying the groundwork for universal Medicare. Start whipping minority Dems for it now. Make it the campaign issue for the next ten years. It's the next New Deal and Civil Rights Act rolled into one. When we take back congress with a Democrat in the White House next year or ten years from now, it can be the cornerstone of politics left and right for the next 50 years, just as the New Deal was and still is in many respects. Only this time, no Jim Crow and maybe even fewer Killer Bee Dems to deal with. ACA was a decent try, but the Moops have the upper hand.
ReplyDeleteFor now.
People forget because the media lets them. For instance, right after the government shutdown of 2013, the only thing the media wanted to talk about was the "broken" Obamacare website - to the complete exclusion of every other topic.
ReplyDelete