Short of Repeal, G.O.P. Will Chip at Health Law

[onehandle]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — Republicans are serious. Hopeful of picking up substantial numbers of seats in the Congressional elections, they are developing plans to try to repeal or roll back President Obama’s new health care law. This goal, though not fleshed out in a detailed legislative proposal, is much more than a campaign slogan. That conclusion emerged from interviews with a wide range of Republican lawmakers, who said they were determined to chip away at the law if they could not dismantle it.

House Republicans are expected to include some specifics in an election agenda they intend to issue Thursday. Although they face tremendous political and practical hurdles to undoing a law whose provisions are rapidly going into effect, they are already laying the groundwork for trying. For starters, Republicans say they will try to withhold money that federal officials need to administer and enforce the law. They know that even if they managed to pass a wholesale repeal, Mr. Obama would veto it.

“They’ll get not one dime from us,” the House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, told The Cincinnati Enquirer recently. “Not a dime. There is no fixing this.” Republicans also intend to go after specific provisions. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, has introduced a bill that would eliminate a linchpin of the new law: a requirement for many employers to offer insurance to employees or pay a tax penalty. Many Republicans also want to repeal the law’s requirement for most Americans to obtain health insurance.

Alternatively, Republicans say, they will try to prevent aggressive enforcement of the requirements by limiting money available to the Internal Revenue Service, which would collect the tax penalties. Republicans say they will also try to scale back the expansion of Medicaid if states continue to object to the costs of adding millions of people to the rolls of the program for low-income people.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/health/policy/21repeal.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "We will do whatever we can to trash Americans." - RepubliCronies (R)

"We are fully committed to supporting our fatcat corporate medical-industrial complex cronies at any price. So all you Americans, you little people, well you can just shut up, get sick, and die. Sneer."

- RepubliCronies (R)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Gs6OjFG7dZY/TExUzd3iUzI/AAAAAAAACyk/pIS5dW5dipU/s1600/GOP+Logo.jpg

[madrchsod]

2. this is why you always ask for more than you know you can get.

obama did`t do this and by the time the rethugs take over the house and senate they will be able to finish off "obama care"

[SkyDaddy7]

3. There were many things Obama asked for that...

that did not make it into the bill due to lack of votes...Like the Public Option.

[COLGATE4]

4. They will just trash HCR with death by a thousand cuts until

they can get Obama out of office in 2012, at which point they will shitcan the whole program. That's the new game plan. We've got to do everything in our power to see that it doesn't come to pass.

[4lbs]

5. Even if the GOP takes over one branch of Congress, there's almost no way they can repeal HCR.

It's just a campaign rallying phrase.

To repeal HCR, they would not only have to pass it in both houses, overcoming cloture in the Senate, but also have to override a Presidential veto.

Any attempt at chipping away at HCR would also have to overcome a Presidential veto.

That means 67 votes in the Senate, and 290 votes in the House.

Where are the Repukes going to get that many votes, since it's unlikely they'll have that many outright?

Only if some idiot Democrats side with the Repukes will it happen. They would do so at their peril.