(Newswire.net — September 20, 2013) Washington, DC — The House of Representatives voted to finance the government through mid-December. Another feature was to remove funding for the Affordable Care Act.
Rep. Paul Ryan stated to reporters that “The fight to delay Obamacare doesn’t end next week. It keeps going on until we get it.”
The measure now transfers to the Senate where if passed would not include the defunding part, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
In a prepared statment from Reid, “Republicans are simply postponing for a few days the inevitable choice they must face: pass a clean bill to fund the government, or force a shutdown. I have said it before but it seems to bear repeating: the Senate will not pass any bill that defunds or delays Obamacare.”
Additionally the Obama administration has indicated the bill would be vetoed if it made it to his desk.
The proposed measure from the House includes a provision directing the Treasury on how to prioritize payments if the debt ceiling is breached.
House Republicans indicated that work would start next week on legislation to raise the nation’s debt limit, attach a one-year delay in the health law, make cuts to entitlement programs, and include approval for the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Senate Democratic leaders are considering a procedural tactic that would put Cruz and his allies in an awkward spot and upend their efforts. A Senate rule allows a simple majority vote to strip the defunding language, once debate ends on the measure.
House Republicans are weighing their options on the expected stripping of the defunding portion in the Senate. House Speaker John Boehner would need enough Democratic votes to join Republicans to pass it and avoid a govenment shutdown.
Another option for Republicans would be to continue revising the measure and send the amended version back to the Senate for a vote, complicating the process and raising the risk of a shutdown as time runs out.
Obama and Democrats frequently criticize Republicans for focusing so much attention on repeal efforts without coming up with an alternative.
However the country as a whole is confused by “Obamacare”.
A recent poll by NBC indicates Among those 65 and old, just 22% think the law is a good idea, versus 55% who believe it’s a bad idea. Among those 50-64, it’s 34% good idea, 46% bad idea. Among those 35-49, it’s 33% good idea, 49% bad idea. And among 18-34, it’s 31% good idea, 33% bad idea. Strikingly, however, the people who are most opposed are those who aren’t impacted much by the law, because they already qualify for Medicare. The silver lining for the Obama administration and Democrats is that young Americans — who will continue to vote in elections for generations to come — are the ones who are most open to the law.
Another poll by the Pew Research Center, as well as USA Today, shows a split between the 53 percent of Americans who oppose the health care law. Twenty-seven want elected officials to make the law work as well as possible. A slightly smaller number, 23 percent, would like to see elected officials make it fail. Sixty-four percent of tea party Republicans told pollsters they wanted elected officials to work against the Affordable Care Act.
While congressional leaders sort out the legislative chaos, it looks like the U.S. Supreme Court may be taking a second try at ObamaCare — this time over the contraception-abortion mandate. Circuit courts have issued conflicting opinions on conscience and the Justice Department is asking the Court to break the tie. The case that seems destined for America’s highest bench is a lawsuit from Conestoga Wood Specialists, a Pennsylvania company owned by Mennonites who “object as a matter of conscience to facilitating certain contraceptives that they believe can destroy human life.”