Tag Archives: House

Are House Republicans doing anything wrong by refusing to fund Obamacare?

Economist Thomas Sowell
Economist Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell explains separation of powers.

Excerpt:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going — except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.

As for the House of Representatives’ right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.

Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.

ObamaCare is indeed “the law of the land,” as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.

But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.

[…]When Barack Obama keeps claiming that it is some new outrage for those who control the money to try to change government policy by granting or withholding money, that is simply a bald-faced lie. You can check the history of other examples of “legislation by appropriation” as it used to be called.

Whether legislation by appropriation is a good idea or a bad idea is a matter of opinion. But whether it is both legal and not unprecedented is a matter of fact.

Perhaps the biggest of the big lies is that the government will not be able to pay what it owes on the national debt, creating a danger of default. Tax money keeps coming into the Treasury during the shutdown, and it vastly exceeds the interest that has to be paid on the national debt.

Even if the debt ceiling is not lifted, that only means that government is not allowed to run up new debt. But that does not mean that it is unable to pay the interest on existing debt.

The House Republicans have been passing bill after bill in order to fund essential responsibilities of government. It’s their decision to fund whatever they want, because that’s what the House does. But the Senate has been rejecting most of these bills. If parts of the government are “shut down” it’s the fault of the Senate Democrats. But then again, they are no more obligated to approve whatever the House wants than the House is obligated to approve what the Senate wants. Or what the President wants. That’s why there is a separation of powers: checks and balances.

Woman shoots man who broke into her house and tried to stab her

Oh, here’s a story from the Philadelphia Daily News that won’t get national media attention and crocodile tears from Obama.

Excerpt:

A 17-year-old learned the hard way that breaking into houses is a pretty bad idea after police say a woman he attempted to stab during a home-invasion in Northeast Philadelphia shot him early Saturday morning.

Cops said the teen was one of about 10 men who kicked in the door of a house on Greenmount Road near Millbrook shortly after midnight Saturday and started fighting with two men, ages 26 and 42, who were inside. During that fight, one of the thugs threw a 40-ounce beer bottle and hit a 49-year-old woman who was also in the house at the time in the stomach.

Police said the 17-year-old who was shot during the melee went after that woman with a knife, so she pulled out a gun and shot him in the stomach. A private car dropped him off at Aria Health’s Torresdale hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

Cops said the rest of the pack who broke into the house took off in a gold vehicle. The 26-year-old man who’d been in the house at the time of the incident was bitten several times on his back and suffered lacerations to his face and body, cops said. Police did not report injuries to the woman or the other man who were attacked.

The woman will not be charged in the incident, as she acted in self-defense, authorities said. The 17-year-old is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and related offenses, according to police.

It’s very important to balance the number of times that guns are used to prevent or thwart a crime against the number of times that crazy people with crazy mothers go on a rampage. Some people drive without licenses, and some people shouldn’t be driving. That doesn’t mean that we should ban cars when unqualified and/or drunk drivers get innocent people killed in car accidents.

An important question to ask people who want restrictions on firearms is this: what would happen to this law-abiding woman if she did not have a weapon to protect herself with? The answer is that she would be assaulted and/or raped and/or murdered. And that is just fine with Democrats on the secular left, because they think that criminals are morally good, and law-abiding people are morally bad. They would have nothing to offer this woman, and that is a point that needs to be emphasized.

Keith Hennessey explains one strategy for undoing Obamacare

In the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled ObamaCare’s individual mandate constitutional, the direction of American health policy is in the hands of voters. So how do we get from here to “repeal and replace”?

Step one is electing Mitt Romney as president, along with Republican House and Senate majorities. Without a Republican sweep, the law will remain in place.

But a President Romney does not need 60 Republican senators to repeal core elements of ObamaCare. Democrats lost their 60th senate vote in early 2010 after Scott Brown took Edward Kennedy’s seat. To bypass a Senate GOP filibuster and enact portions of ObamaCare, they used a special legislative procedure called reconciliation.

Reconciliation allows a bill to pass the Senate in a limited time period, with limited amendments, and with only 51 votes; filibusters are not permitted. In 2010, Democrats split their health-policy changes into two bills, one of which they enacted through this fast-track process. In 2013, a Republican majority could use the same reconciliation process to repeal those changes.

The reconciliation process, however, applies only to legislative changes to taxes, spending and debt, or the change must be a “necessary term or condition” of another provision that affects taxes or spending.

Crucial parts of ObamaCare meet this test. Thus, if a President Romney has cohesive and coordinated majorities in the House and Senate, a reconciliation bill could repeal the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, insurance premium and drug subsidies, tax increases (all 21 or them), Medicare and Medicaid spending cuts, its long-term care insurance program known as the Class Act, and its Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member central committee with vast powers to control health-care and health markets.

Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the financial penalty enforcing the individual mandate is within Congress’s constitutional power to “lay and collect Taxes,” and that the mandate and penalty are inextricably linked. This should suffice to enable repeal, through reconciliation, of both the individual and employer mandates, and their respective penalty taxes.

The state exchanges and insurance rules—”guaranteed issue,” which forces an insurer to sell a policy to someone who is already sick, and “community rating,” which severely limits the insurer’s right to charge that person a higher premium—are procedurally more difficult. Yet both are linked to the individual mandate, which increases taxes. Whether they can be repealed in a reconciliation bill will ultimately be decided by the Senate Parliamentarian.

Once the individual mandate is repealed, these popular insurance changes cannot stand by themselves. Without the mandate, people have every incentive to save on premiums and not buy insurance until they fall ill. This will send premiums through the roof for healthy people and, if the government clamps down on increased premiums, destroy private insurance companies. Those Republicans who say they favor legislated guaranteed-issue and community-rating requirements but oppose the mandate will be forced to acknowledge that all three must go.

So, for those who are concerned about repealing Obamacare, this is the way forward. We have a tough battle to get it it done, but it is possible.