House Republicans will keep Obamacare defunding in budget bill
House Republican Leaders on Wednesday confirmed they will move forward with a plan this week to use the debt limit, as well as the looming threat of a government shutdown, as leverage in their attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the House will vote on a bill this week to avoid a government shutdown that includes a provision to defund Obamacare. In addition to extending government spending for about another couple of months and defunding Obamacare, the bill lock in the low spending levels set earlier this year by the sequestration.
If Congress fails to pass a budget bill by Sept. 30, authorized spending will run out and the federal government will partially shut down.
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Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said that the House this week will also unveil a plan to raise the nation's debt limit while delaying the implementation of parts of Obamacare for one year. Congress must raise the nation's debt limit by mid-October or risk letting the nation default on its loans.
House Republicans were divided earlier this month over using the current fiscal fights to attack Obamacare. Boehner said he was taking this approach because the health care law is a "trainwreck."
"It's time to protect families from this unworkable law," he said.
The spending bill to keep the government open -- known as a continuing resolution (CR) -- can pass in the GOP-led House, but it will surely fail in the Democratic-led Senate. Lawmakers in both chambers, meanwhile, want to avoid letting the government partially shut down when authorized federal spending expires next month.
"There should be no conversation about shutting the government down," Boehner said. "That's not the goal here. Our goal is to cut spending and to protect the American people from Obamacare, it's as simple as that."
At an event in Washington, D.C. later Wednesday morning, President Obama warned that if Republicans insist on setting the precedent of using negotiations over the debt limit as a political bargaining chip, they may not like it when the tables are turned and Democrats once again control the House of Representatives.
Speaking to the Business Roundtable, Mr. Obama said to "flip the script" and imagine a Democratic majority that refused to increase the debt limit -- threatening to "default on the debt and cause a worldwide financial crisis," the president said -- unless corporate taxes were increased by 20 percent.
"That can't be a recipe for government," Mr. Obama said. "It would fundamentally change how government functions."
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president's remarks to the Business Roundtable were directed at "highly influential, card carrying Republican Party members who have the ear of Republican lawmakers." Besides reaching out to influential businessmen, Carney said Mr. Obama has done all he can to work with Republicans on budget issues.
"He has used the powers that are available to him to try to convince, persuade, cajole Republicans into doing the sensible thing, which is not threatening to shut the government down, not threatening to default, but working with him on a compromise," he said. "And what they said they wanted, when it came to some of their demands on entitlement reforms, he gave. And then they walked away, and didn't come back."
