Fix Health Care Policy

Obamacare: Forgotten But Not Gone?

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is introducing an amendment that would deny money for Obamacare during the upcoming fiscal year.

Has Congress forgotten Obamacare? All the promises to repeal it mostly faded into the background months ago, even as the health law disrupts our economy.

Fortunately, at least one lawmaker is still trying to undo that disruption. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) is forcing the Senate to confront the issue. He’s sponsoring an amendment that would deny money for Obamacare during the upcoming fiscal year (which starts Oct. 1st).

The law was structured to provide $105-billion worth of automatic funding and $1.4-trillion over the next 10 years, so the money gets spent unless Congress blocks it. Stopping the funding is exactly what Sen. Shelby is trying to do.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Amendment, defund Obamacare, ObamaCare, repeal the law, Sen. Richard Selby

House Moves Toward Draining Obamacare Slush Funds

Efforts to defund Obamacare one bite at a time are making progress in the House, although Senate prospects remain dim. The House is addressing parts of Obamacare which are so loosely-drafted that House Speaker John Boehner and others label them multi-billion-dollar “slush funds.”

Five bills (numbered HR 1213 through 1217) targeted at parts of the health care law were approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday. The bills repeal some portions of Obamacare, totally defund other parts, and convert some automatic funding into a requirement for annual Congressional approval before anything could be spent. (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: defund Obamacare, House Energy and Commerce Committee, House Speaker John Boehner, slush funds

Defunding Obamacare: Istook Testifies in the House

Yesterday we highlighted two recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports (October 14, 2010 and February 10, 2011) that detail how Obamacare bypassed the traditional yearly budgeting process and created a $105 billion slush fund for implementation. As we explained yesterday, if conservatives are serious about stopping Obamacare, they must proactively defund this money program by program.

Today former Congressmen and Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow Ernest Istook will testify on this subject before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. The hearing started at 10 AM and is titled Setting Fiscal Priorities in Health Care Funding.

(Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: congressional research service, defund Obamacare, Ernest Istook, Obamacare slush fund

The Dirty Little Secret About De-Funding Obamacare

Several members of Congress, like Rep. Denny Rehberg (R, MT) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R.-Wash.) are offering amendments that would prevent any new spending from being used to implement Obamacare. Good for them. Those are important additions to the big spending bill pending in Congress.

But here’s the dirty little secret: Much of Obamacare is being implemented with money that was already appropriated last year. These billions are already available for bureaucrats to put Obamacare into force.

Denying additional funding for Obamacare does not de-fund the huge amounts it already is using for implementation. That requires additional action.

Even though the last Congress failed to pass other appropriations bills (creating the need for the currently-pending spending measure), that former Congress DID provide billions to get Obamacare launched. The money was directly appropriated as part of the health care legislation, rather than included in a separate appropriations bill as is the normal practice. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: appropriations bills, defund Obamacare, spending bill

Now Is the Best Time to Defund Obamacare

Now—when the House considers the bill to fund government for the rest of the year and seeks to reduce spending by $100 billion—is the best of all times to defund Obamacare. But although it’s a golden opportunity, so far defunding Obamacare is not on the agenda.

Republican freshmen have the chance to fix that if they stand firm again as they did last week.

House Republicans say they are crafting a bill to save taxpayers $100 billion. Their revised proposal would rescind funding for 123 different federal programs and would lower future funding for many others. Yet it leaves Obamacare unscathed. Except for transferring $750 million to a different public health program, the tens of billions appropriated last year for Obamacare would remain available for the White House to spend freely.

Only if House leaders expressly permit it can an amendment be offered successfully on the House floor. Otherwise, Members like Representative Steve King (R–IA) may be boxed out by House rules that disallow amendments that try to go back and reclaim money spent by last year’s Congress. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Amendments, defund Obamacare, Rep. Steve King

An Opportunity to Defund Obamacare

So far, the House GOP is not including Obamacare among the programs proposed for de-funding next week.

Why not?

Although the Appropriations Committee has produced a bill that de-funds many other programs, it does not undo the billions of dollars that the last Congress appropriated to implement Obamacare. That omission can be and should be corrected by amendment when the legislation reaches the House floor next week.

Rescinding the billions appropriated to Obamacare would help reach the GOP’s well-publicized pledge to cut spending by $100 billion in their first year as a majority. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Amendment, Appropriations Committee, defund Obamacare

Obamacare Frankenstein Is Scarier Than “Zombie Legislation”

In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Henry J. Aaron, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, writes that rolling back and defunding Obamacare would create “zombie legislation … [i.e.,] a program that lives on but works badly.”

If Aaron is looking for a B horror movie reference to describe the state of American health care under Obamacare, “Frankenstein” would be a much more appropriate choice. Obamacare is a slipshod, pieced-together monster made of bad policy and covered in bolts and scars from the legislative process.

Though proponents of the health care law may still be heard shouting, “It’s alive! It’s alive!,” the truth is that conservatives and liberals alike recognize that, as Aaron puts it, “successful implementation poses remarkable challenges and will require adequate funding, enormous ingenuity, and goodwill from federal and state officials, as well as cooperation from private insurers, businesses, and private citizens.” (more…)

Tags: defund Obamacare, Henry Aaron, zombie legislation