A Blueprint for the GOP's Attempt to Sabotage Obamacare

http://www.thenation.com/blog/175429/blueprint-gops-attempt-sabotage-obamacare#axzz2a5BbKtRI


Say someone blows the wheels off a moving train and blames the accident on whoever built the engine. Fair game?

That’s precisely what Republicans are up to with their onslaught against Obamacare. Their tactics go well beyond political opposition: as others have pointed out, what’s happening now is deliberate sabotage of a duly enacted and court-affirmed law. This morning Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called the GOP’s efforts to block the implementation of the law “unprecendented” and “sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.”

The GOP has a narrowing window in which to wreck the roll out and blame structural deficiencies in the law, and they’re intent on smashing their way through it. Not only are they sacrificing the wellbeing of millions of Americans—now they're gambling the global economy, too.

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Waste time and money voting for repeal

In the past three years, House Republicans have devoted at least fifteen percent of their time on the House floor trying to ruin the ACA, voting 39 times to repeal, defund, or delay the law. These legislative efforts have cost taxpayers upwards of $50 million. Meanwhile, the GOP hasn’t offered any alternative health care plans of their own. These votes present no existential threat to the law, since repeal will never get through the Senate or the White House. But repeated attacks reinforce the idea that the ACA is still up for debate and that its future is uncertain. As of April, four in ten Americans were unaware that the ACA is the law and that it is being implemented.

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