GOP Leaders May Be Undermining A Core Argument In Supreme Court Case Against Obamacare

GOP Leaders May Be Undermining A Core Argument In Supreme Court Case Against Obamacare

by Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republicans-supreme-court-case-king-burwell

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The Supreme Court will have another chance to cripple Obamacare in 2015, and Republicans are hoping they do just that.


But the Republicans who will run Congress next year may be unintentionally undermining their chances of a victory in King v. Burwell, by arguing that a defeat for the Obama administration would gravely damage the law and signaling they would not fix the language at issue in Obamacare. Such a ruling would invalidate premium tax credits for Americans in most states, rendering insurance unaffordable for millions and imperiling other provisions in the law.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently said a decision against the law would "take it down" and allow for "a major do-over of the whole thing — that opportunity presented to us by the Supreme Court, as opposed to actually getting the president to sign a full repeal, which is not likely to happen." No. 4 GOP Sen. John Barrasso (WY) said a ruling against the White House "alone is enough to bring down the health care law." He said Republicans will "look to the courts" as part of their efforts to repeal or undermine the law, according to Politico.

The problem is that this message — that a ruling against Obamacare would assist Republican efforts to weaken Obamacare — contradicts the message undergirding the lawsuit: that the challengers are simply trying to perfect the law's implementation, not harm it.

"What's telling about these statements is that the challengers claim they're trying to uphold what Congress always meant to do. And that argument has always been hogwash. But the fact that you've got Republicans now admitting that their hope is not to uphold the law but to put a fork in it — that's no great newsflash, but it does complicate the plaintiffs' litigation story," said Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on the King case.





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