Majority Leader Eric Cantor spent 90 percent of a presentation to House Republicans in the Capitol basement this morning explaining and defending his convoluted plan to force the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before eventually allowing the upper chamber to send a “clean” CR to President Obama.The important line in this is the last, "which will mean passing the funding bill under a House “rule” that forces the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before they can pass the CR itself." In other words Cantor wants to hold the economy hostage, it is domestic terrorism an we are the ones who will pay dearly.
Towards the end, however, he dropped a big piece of news about the House Republican strategy heading into the next fiscal fight — over raising the debt ceiling. To increase the debt ceiling, Cantor said, Republicans will demand a one-year delay to Obamacare.
It was the first definitive announcement regarding what, specifically, the House will demand in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, and a big reason that some of the typical conservative hardliners came out of the meeting relatively placid.
“We think that as this thing is implemented there’s going to be an outcry, and that’s when the delay comes in,” said Representative John Fleming of Lousiana, who supports the plan.
That’s not to say that everyone is happy about Cantor’s CR idea, which will mean passing the funding bill under a House “rule” that forces the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before they can pass the CR itself.
How to explain this, or more aptly what I see:
1] The Repugs are beholden to the Tea Party for their "power"
2] This "plan," which quite possibly could (I say will) crash the weakened economy is to appease said TP by looking like they are defunding ObamaCare when they really aren’t, it is a means of getting out of taking responsibility for their votes
3] The big plan is to force the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before allowing them to present a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government to the President. They are basically sending 2 CRs to the Senate, one with ObamaCare attached one without. But in order to get to the CR without they have to vote on the first
4] That is the "rule" that is mentioned above, it is a procedural "trick" that allows the Senate (which is in the hands of the Democrats) to decouple the two aspects of the bill. This decoupling by the Democrats thereby talks the Repugs "off the hook," and as I said above, a means of getting out of taking responsibility for their votes
5] What this all boils down to, the Repugs have embraced the economically damaging tactic of using the economy as a hostage. They threaten to crash the economy for nothing except appeasing their own base and we all end of losing in the long run.
Fight Delayed | National Review Online
See also: Report: House GOP Leadership Plan Procedural Trick to Avoid Obamacare Funding Fight
No comments:
Post a Comment