Right jabs GOP over Obamacare

Once again, conservatives are unhappy with how congressional Republicans are handling a fiscal fight in Congress.

This time, their ire is because Republicans aren?t trying hard enough to defund, or at least whittle away at, the Affordable Care Act by attaching language to the continuing resolution that passed the House on Wednesday.

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So far, the CR, the legislation that will keep the government funded through March 27, is progressing with minimal drama, with both sides trying to avoid a shutdown. Democrats have mostly abandoned efforts to completely undo the sequester through the bill. Republicans have left out the kind of language that would delight the base but meet a quick end in the Senate.

But some conservative leaders are fuming that Republicans, particularly in the House where the GOP controls the chamber, didn?t at least trying to attach language to eliminate Obamacare through the legislation.

A Republican leadership aide countered that funding national security priorities through the CR is in line with conservative priorities.

The conservative outcry comes as Republican governors are gradually embracing aspects of Obamacare and readying themselves to implement it. But after rallying against the health care reform bill during the 2012 campaign, House Republicans have taken no action to stop it in Washington. It may simply be that their energies are consumed by the other fiscal fights playing out on Capitol Hill, including the sequester, the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff.

In previous Congresses, efforts to defund the health care law were attached to spending bills. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) attempted to defund the law through the CR in 2011.

But Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, said Democrats were successful while in the minority with attaching party priorities to ?must-pass? legislation but Republicans haven?t followed that model.

?It was the best instrument to use to get these issues over the Senate and to the president?s desk,? Perkins told POLITICO. ?The defunding of Obamacare, if Republicans are serious about it, this was the place.?

He added, ?I would have been tickled to see the defunding of Obamacare because that is the driver behind this attack on religious freedom.?

And it?s just not Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the GOP leadership taking the blame. RedState.com?s Erick Erickson dinged the House conservatives for not helping the cause.

?Today is not the day House Conservatives will kill America, but they will show they are the real problem by enabling and funding what they have campaigned against and claim to oppose,? Erickson wrote. ?They will have become all that they claimed they were not.?

Conservative groups haven?t given up the battle, however. They have their sights set on the Senate, where the CR heads next.

In the upper chamber, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has filed an amendment to the CR that would completely defund Obamacare, threatening to object to any spending measure that doesn?t include his amendment.

?In my view, Obamacare should be fully repealed, and I have introduced legislation to do so,? Cruz said in a Wednesday statement. ?At a minimum, however, it should not be implemented at a time when our economy is struggling so mightily, at a time when its implementation could push us into a full recession.?

And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced shortly afterward that he would join Cruz.

Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=b1587577c5e7919a42bf50f95a808ca0

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